So I am wondering if my cells will ever balance when running off only solar. We are able to reach nearly full (98%) but we never reach more than 13.7 volts in a given day even under all day full sun.
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Hello, once the battery charged up to 13.5V, it's fully already, during the charge/discharge, the battery cells will do balancing job, after cycles using, these cells voltage will close.
We are charging at 14.5 volts but the batteries take time to reach 14.4 volts. We have over 1200 watts of solar @ almost 40 volts each.
What I am getting at is that other brands of lithium for marine use have lower thresholds at which they begin balancing. For example, Battleborn batteries begin balancing at 14.2 volts and Victron batteries start balancing at 13.2 volts. External BMS such as the RECBms allow you to set a band in which balancing starts and when its switched off - for example you can set the battery to start balancing at 14.2 and stop balancing at 14.4
In the SOK scenario if I regularly used a large amount of Ah from my bank of batteries I may never reach a state where the cells balance so I either need to add capacity to my battery bank so the starting battery voltage is already higher or I need to add substantially more solar power to be guaranteed to regularly reach 14.4 volts
So my follow on question is - about how long to your batteries need to remain above 14.4 volts to effectively balance? And you may want to consider adding a feature to your next BMS design that allows the user to set the balancing voltage within a range of values that are optimal for their overall system.
what is your solar panel power?