I have 4 new 206Ah batteries in series for 48V. I'm using a Victron SmartSolar 250/85 charge controller, with the "Smart Lithium (LiFePo4)" battery settings: Abs 56.80V, Float 54.00V.
They do not appear to charge fully. The charge controller charged them in "Bulk" from 45.0V this morning (starting at about 20A from 5@325W panels) until it held it in Absorption at about 56.8 or 56.9 with 0A charge current. But when I turn off the charge controller the battery voltage drops to about 51.8V. Further, by then putting them under load with 30A the voltage will hang at around 51.2V initially. Under this same load last night the batteries gave 30A for a few hours before the inverter shut off at 45V.
So: The voltages come up to 56.8 where the CC thinks they are full and stops charge current, but they are not charged. How can I debug the issue?
No, I don't have this balancer. I used the batteries all summer long and they worked great.
Update: Now, 4 hours later at about 6:20pm the batteries are taking a charge. The CC shows 52.83V at 11.4A in the "Bulk" stage. All I did was leave the CC on and wait. Now the battery is behaving as I would expect. An hypothesis is that the batteries were too hot earlier. The ambient temp was about 90F however the batteries were in the sun, so it's very possible the cases got much much warmer. Now it's only 77F and the sun is far less intense.
Would we expect a battery to show an "incorrectly" large voltage when being charge when too hot?