Hi folks and sorry for taking so long to reply but I am still trying to shake this flu.
Unfortunately one of the symptoms of this flu is a severe lack of concentration and this has resulted in the forced termination of the SSB test.
When testing any form of lead acid battery, I use a low voltage cut-out unit ( modified ABG-25 ) to set the exact discharge level I want to take the battery down to and to protect the battery being tested from being over discharged.
When testing my brand of lithium batteries, I deliberately delete the low voltage cut-out unit so I can test the effectiveness of the lithium battery’s BMS.
While down with the flu, and not firing on all cylinders, I inadvertently discharge tested the SSB with out applying the low voltage cut-out unit to set the limit of the discharge.
Next day, when I checked the monitor, the battery had been discharged down to 1.79v, an absolute no-no for any lead acid battery.
The first recharge after the stuff up shows a 30% loss in capacity and while I have carried out a number of different types charge/discharge cycles, to try to recover the lost capacity, the battery is now permanently down by about 20% and as such, is now useless for my tests.
Some good results and possibly good news, is that prior to my stuff up, I did manage quite a few charge/discharge cycles and the battery performed quite well.
While the manufacturer/supplier recommends a discharge voltage no lower than 10.8v, I have found that there is VERY LITTLE additional usable capacity to be gained by discharging the battery below 11.6v.
There was less than 2% more energy available when discharging bellow 11.6v and by limiting the the discharge to no less that 11.6v should help extend the battery’s overall lifespan while still supplying very good usable capacity.
I contacted the supplier to see if they could give me any ideas as to whether I could recover the lost capacity and explained what I had done, and they want the battery returned as they are a bit surprised that a single over-discharge has damaged the battery.
They want to conduct some tests of their own and have requested a copy of my test data.
Anyway, as soon as I have bought a new battery, I will start the testing again but so far, I am pretty impressed with the SSB.
