Fuse Question

[BWagner]

I have written here before regarding what I believe to be a problem with my house battery bank. Long story short, 10 six volt trojan golf cart batteries, total capacity 1200 amp hours. Have not been able to utilize much of this capacity, bank needs to be recharged after drawing out approximately 250 amps. Essentially i have to recharge using a Xantrex 2500 watt charger/inverter. I have had this problem looked at by professionals, no one seems to be able to figure it out. My question is this large house bank is connected through a T-Tron 300 amp current limiting class T fuse. Is this an adequate fuse for this size bank or doesn't it make any difference?

The use is woking in that the voltage is the same on both sides of it. The thing that makes me wonder is the "current limiting" aspect or am I barking up the wrong tree here? Any thoughts would be great.

Thanks.

 

[Don Lucas]

I think you are barking up the wrong tree. That fuse is to protect the cable from the battery, nothing else and it isn't a power user in practical use (it is in pure thoery but is meaningless). What is the largest draw you normally use out the batteries and what is it (for me it is the mircowave and that is only about 100 amps).

You have a LOT of battery capacity installed. How many banks do you have and what is the capacity of each bank that you say you can only use 250AH out of? Do you run the banks all together or do you switch back and forth between them?

How are you deterining that you need to recharge?

How much charge do you do each time and how are you determining they are in fact charged? What is the specific gravity after charging?

What type of batteries? If they are AGM are you leaving them in a non fully charged state (I bet they are FLA if they are 6V batteries)?

If they are flooded led acid have you ever equalized them?

How old are the batteries and how any cycles have they had (FLA batteries take a while to get to their full capacity).

I bet the problem is that you really aren't getting the batteries fully charged