14.5 volts indicated

[miyu1975]

My skyview has been showing 14.5 volts, well into the preset skyview range of yellow.. My question is, is 14.5 high, too high?...if so how do I lower it.

[Ron Lee]

I am not a battery expert but check with your battery manufacturer to see what they say about charging voltage.

If too high, see if you have access to a voltage regulator that may have an adjustment screw/device.

Figure 6 on page 15 here indicated 14.7 V for apparent ground charging of an Odyssey battery. I do not know if that is a normal in aircraft charging voltage.

http://www.odysseybattery.com/docume...1_0411_000.pdf

[miyu1975]

it is the EXP plane power alt.

[Radomir]

14.5V should be just fine.. between the two I'd adjust SkyView's settings

[miyu1975]

I thought so too...and considered adjusting the settings, but what are the approriate ranges to set?

[Wayne Gillispie]

If you have an overvoltage condition 16.0 vdc or higher your PP will short field to ground and trip 5A breaker(on mine). I set my high limit at 15.0(max per Odyssey and low at 12.0 so that I would have some reserve battery capacity with the warning. Some of my avionics goes down at 10.5 or less.

[Ron Lee]

What is your normal battery voltage when fully charged?

About 12.8 V?

Now imagine that you lose the alternator output. Unless you have another warning indicator you might consider having the low end (RED) be around 13.0 V. That way you are alerted if the alternator is not charging the system.

Whether it helps to have a higher value that would be yellow is unknown. Perhaps anything below around 13.5 to 14.0. I am uncertain if there are failure modes that make a low end YELLOW range worthwhile.

This is from an Odyssey document:

Voltmeter Reading State of Charge
12.84 Volts or higher 100%
12.50 Volts 75%
12.18 Volts 50%
11.88 Volts 25%

At 12.0 V you are around 40% charge. I would prefer to know immediately that the battery is no longer being charged so that I could reduce the load if possible and get to a suitable spot for repair while the battery will supply a useful load.

[Wayne Gillispie]

Our voltages indicated at GRT while powering avionics will be less than actual battery OCV. I have an aux battery(pc680) that once recharged in flight, gets disconnected from main bat(pc925) and is then my backup plan. A voltage indication of 12.0 V in flight is actually about 12.3 OCV. This leaves enough capacity to power main bus back up for landing lights, strobes, boost pump and flaps for landing. All my avionics can run on aux battery at least one hour to get me back on the ground.