Technical Info
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Technical Alerts
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Sea-Doo® Personal Watercraft Installations
Sea-Doo® personal watercrafts tend to transfer an electrical load to the battery while in storage. Be confident that your ODYSSEY® battery can handle it. However, if not properly maintained, you may not get the top performance from your ODYSSEY battery. Read on to ensure your ODYSSEY battery is at its best at all times.
Issue – This brand of watercraft experiences an electrical load on the battery during storage, caused by a control module monitoring the lanyard socket. If the lanyard is left installed the electrical drain is 18 ma after 10 minutes of shutting down the engine. If the lanyard is removed, the electrical drain is 7 ma. These electrical loads are continuous and can accumulate to be significant over time. At 18 milli amps, the battery will lose 1 amp/hour of capacity in 55.5 hours or 10 amp/hours (Ah) in 23 days. On a PC 625, 10 Ah is 59% of battery capacity.
Solution – For Sea-Doo watercraft always disconnect the lanyard from its socket when not riding the watercraft. Install a waterproof disconnect switch in the negative battery cable, so the battery can be disconnected after riding. Use switch P/N 32965 from Overton’s Marine Catalog or use the 12V, 6A Odyssey Battery charger suggested above.
Check your ODYSSEY battery voltage periodically for full charge, which is 12.84V. Recharge whenever below 12.65V.
Sea-Doo is a registered trademark of Bombardier Recreational Products Inc.
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Considerations When Using Engine Start Capacitors in Commercial Trucks
Introduction
Capacitors are two- or three-terminal electrical devices that have the ability to quickly store and to discharge large amounts of potential energy. Commercial truck fleets have been field-testing and using capacitors to assist or provide engine-start power in the starting of diesel truck engines. This is because traditional lead acid engine start batteries have not provided the reliable engine start performance these fleets require.
The most common no-start conditions relative to batteries are low ambient temperature, unexpected failure of the batteries or a discharged battery caused by applications that do not provide enough time to recharge the battery pack. These occur often enough to consider alternative engine-start power options.
When a capacitor is installed, frequently one of the service batteries is removed, reducing the ability of the battery pack to handle hotel loads for the full sleep cycle, which can lead to greater problems down the road.
The Advantages of Capacitors
Capacitors on a commercial vehicle can be a real value to a fleet in specific applications. As fast as the capacitor can be discharged, it can be recharged, if the recharge energy is available. As the capacitor stores electrons on the surface of the carbon material in the capacitor, it can be recharged and discharged much faster than the chemical reactions inside typical lead acid batteries.
The capacitor can dramatically step up the voltage in cold weather to provide more cranking power:
Voltage2 x Capacitance of the capacitor = Power that the capacitor delivers
Any time you square a number, the value increases exponentially.
Chemical batteries, in converting chemically stored energy to electrical energy, cannot match the instantaneous and exceptionally high discharge power of a capacitor. Cold weather has very little influence on the capacitor’s ability to deliver power. In addition, the capacitor can have a cycle life of more than a million cycles. Operating range is generally specified at -40°F (-40°C) to 149°F (65°C).
The Drawbacks of Capacitors
Despite their positive attributes, capacitors do have drawbacks:
- They are expensive.
- In some installations, the capacitor requires some rewiring to integrate it into the truck.
- They have very little reserve storage capacity for repetitive discharges.
- While cold has little impact, heat can cause damage if voltages are not reduced.
- Warranty coverage is not the length of time one would expect of the capacitor.
In the Real World
Many capacitor companies recommend replacing one battery with a capacitor to solve hard-starting problems. However, this does not take into consideration real-world conditions. When a driver is in a rest period, they reduce or eliminate idling the tractor by turning off the engine and then running all the hotel or parasitic loads off the vehicle batteries. While the capacitor most likely will start the vehicle, the service life of the remaining three lead acid batteries is greatly impacted by extremely deep discharges and low states of charge.
Now, instead of each of the four batteries supplying a quarter of the hotel/parasitic load, the three remaining batteries are supplying one-third of the load. This increased load on each battery increases the depth of discharge, resulting in shorter battery life for all batteries. The deeper the depth of discharge, the fewer cycles the battery will produce.
The assumption many have in replacing one battery with a capacitor is that by taking the cranking load off the batteries, battery life will increase. However, this is not the case. In cold weather, the typical starter will pull 1600 amps for three seconds. Equating this to amp-hours (Ah) out of the batteries:
- 3 seconds ÷ 3600 = 0.000833 hours
- 0.000833 x 1600 amps = 1.33 Ah
1.33 Ah represents 0.0033 percent out of a 400 Ah pack (four 100 Ah batteries). A small electric refrigerator that typically pulls 4-amp constant load overnight draws 40 Ah (10 hrs. time 4 amps). Over a weekend it would be 204 Ah (51 hrs. times 4 amps). One would wish the typical parasitic loads were only 4 amps on today’s commercial vehicles; in the real world, they are much higher.
Another operating limitation of the capacitor when connected in parallel with the truck batteries is that the capacitor and the batteries tend to operate at different voltage ranges, unless the cap has a DC/DC converter built into it.
If a sleep cycle discharged four batteries to 50 percent State of Charge (SOC), a three-battery system would be discharged to a 33 percent SOC, or a 67 percent Depth of Discharge (DOD). If the battery were rated 650 cycles at 50 percent DOD, a 67 percent DOD on the battery would only provide 500 cycles.
In the real world, the batteries can become so discharged that the fuel injectors do not have adequate voltage to operate. The capacitor will still enable the engine to turn over, but injectors not functioning will not allow it to start.
Finally, some capacitors have a DC/DC converter inside. The purpose is to raise the voltage, as it gets colder. Thus by raising the voltage, more cranking power is achieved, but the capacitor will self-discharge in 24 hours to the point where the DC/DC converter must step up the voltage. This power must come from the battery.
Conclusion
There are three conditions that can cause an unpredicted no-start issue: a deeply discharged battery, the effect of cold weather on the battery or an early-unexpected failure of the battery.
Making the change to three batteries with a capacitor can reduce sleep/hotel load runtime and discharging batteries to deeper depths of discharge. This has the result of reducing delivered battery cycles or sleep cycles.
A more effective way to prevent no-start situations is to replace traditional lead acid batteries with batteries featuring Thin Plate Pure Lead (TPPL) technology. TPPL battery technology provides the user with dual purpose batteries offering the highest rated Cold Cranking Amps (CCA) and deep cycle rated at 400 cycles to 80 percent DOD.
Conventional flooded-wet SLI batteries offer 60-80 cycles and AGM conventional are rated 125 to 150 cycles based on 75%+ depth of discharge. Experience has demonstrated that TPPL batteries will deliver three times the service life of what a fleet operator has experienced with conventional batteries.
The ultimate starting and long service life truck power system, would utilize the benefits of TPPL batteries, stay with the original OEM quantity of batteries per truck model, and adding a capacitor. This complete system would provide an improved confidence in engine starting under all conditions.
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