Hey Eric, hope you had a great holiday. Just though I would give you a brief update about my unit before I send another note to Support.
As you know, I have tried 2 SP and they both died at the 7 day mark. Well, the roof was free of snow cover today and I took of the SP and installed brand new 8 lithium batteries. The wind voltage started at 3.64 and has been on a steady decline ever since. After about 8 hours it is down to 3.26 with a slow but steady decline showing up on the graph.
If this decline continues, I will be back offline by daybreak or shortly thereafter. If that happens, I assume this means the unit is bad, and this was not a SP issue at all? Do you agree? My id is 13157 if you want to see the voltage trend.
John
John Bagioni, Meteorologist
Fax-Alert Weather Service, LLC
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Imagine my surprise when i checked the support board to see almost exactly what happened to my solar panel charge. Temps here have jumped back into the high 30s and low 40s but the panel is not charging. I have just submitted a support ticket. Until then Iāll be lowering the unit, which is at 15 feet, to add batteries.
Iāll try to keep posted here as things progress.
Itās 1:20am morning and Iām reading a weather stations forumā¦ Must mean Iām a geek.
I see your station is in the Whitesboro area of NY. My solar panel just did the same thingā¦and I, too, am giving them a pass. Overall I like the unit.
I am having the same problem to here in Calgary AB.
We had +5C on the 20th , but zero or below since. The SPA battery went dead on the 24th. I thought the SPA battery would last for weeks without a change. It is supposed to be >0 next week, it will be interesting to see if it comes back on line.
I cannot get on my roof to remove the SPA and install batteries until the snow melts.
I wish I would have know how terrible the SPA is before purchasing this. It clearly is not designed for Canadian winters. I too will start researching other weather station options.
Mine did exactly the same, and then dropped offline. I was going to wait for the replacement SPA which was on its way, then after a couple of days the voltage on the batteries started to increase again, and it all sprang back to life and has been running for 14 days now, at around 3.18v. So if yours does continue to drop and goes offline, it will probably come back online once the batteries stablise.
I cant get it all in the graph, but faulty SPA came off, new Lithium batteries went in on 9th December (just off the graph on the left), the voltage plummeted and the sensors went offline, then slowly rose and came back online on 14th December (just off the graph on the right), and been runnings solid since:
Hey Daveā¦ Thanks for the info. Actually my batteries have stabilized at 3.16 v to 3.19 v and everything seems to be fine. Eric had indicated that would likely be the case. Fingers crossed; but think I am all set nowā¦
I have been making a few observations here in Toronto where temperatures recorded by the Air unit have been close to 2 C. My Sky unit running off the original SPA drops offline at around 2.1V. When the voltage reaches approximately 2.8V the drop to 2.1V usually happens within a few hours. The Sky will come back online at about 2.8V and usually charge back up to about 3.1V after several hours, at which point the charge starts a slow decline, sometimes over a day or two, sometimes over several days, until it reaches the 2.8V threshold.
We have had very cloudy and rainy days lately, so I am curious to see how these charging/offline cycles change with sunny days.
Hey Dan, Iām in Redwood Meadows about 30km west of the city, and my device set up on our firehall shut down the SPA on Dec 23 (abrupt battery charge decline starting on the 21st). I guess weāre in the same boat. I too am not thrilled with the failure to operate below 0Ā°C, especially since I donāt see it specified in any documentation anywhere.
Iām going to try to get one of my crewmembers to put batteries into our Sky this weekend and hold onto the SPA until the temps warm up. You and I know though that the temperature fluctuates so much in our area that it could be 10Ā°C tomorrow afternoon and -15Ā°C by evening.
Hoping that one set of lithium batteries will last until springā¦
Iām having the same problems in Stonington, CT. Looks like every winter Iāll have to install lithium batteries. Very disappointing. Does anyone have experience using lithium batteries? How long do they last?
My apologies if this was mentioned elsewhere but do you live in an area that experiences winter, and if so, did your 8 month battery test occur during this time?
It was through one winter but cold here is in the mid to high 20sF so rather warm as winters go. Typically we have rain in the 30sF. The SKY that I ran the test on did end up getting replaced and Iām suspicious that it may not have been as energy efficient as my other SKY, possibly due to a very slow water leak. @GaryFunk probably has a better test for cold winter use. Maybe take mine as a low end and his as an upper bound on the time you may get.
My Sky with SPA went offline again about 4 days ago - battery at 2.15V. Unfortunately in the three days of 6-7 C that followed the batteries did not charge as they had done after the previous freeze periods. I believe I have enough logged data to put in a support ticket at this point.
Same issue in Central New York so I put lithium batteries in mine. In my AccuWRONG 1025 the lithium lasted well into two years. Not sure what theyāll do in this unit.
I have a solar cell on my Sky. Around Christmas we had a long succession of very cloudy days. When the Sky dropped to 2.3 volts, it quit communicating with the hub.
After one partly sunny day and one clear day, the voltage was back up to 2.8 volts and the Sky came back on line. The voltage quickly rose up to 3.2 volts.
Are you sure it was just cloudy days and not freezing weather (eventually with cloudy days) that made your battery to stop charging as explained in this thread ?
I donāt think the batteries discharged because of cold temperatures. The daytime and nighttime temperatures have been roughly the same before and after the low voltage and the recovery. During December, we had a string of much colder temperatures, but with the sun available, the voltages stayed up.
