I came across a faulty battery on 24 volts system with 200 amp-hr bank capacity.
2 strings of 100 amp-hr
The battery bank is 1 year old, Could it be wise to replace the only faulty battery?
Works better than replacing the good ones. Have you checked voltages at various points in the string to make sure you're not overworking one by it being lower resistance and higher voltage than the other ones?
If that is the case you can avoid this in the future by replacing cable connections with just buying some 1" by 1/2" copper stock and making bus bars for interconnects. If your posts aren't big enough to handle 1/2" thick you can use 1"x3/8" copper rectangle stock.
For your configuration it would be 2 bars from the pos to neg. Then put the paired batteries facing each other and put a bar pos to pos and neg to neg. Drill the very center of these bars and tap them out for a bolts. Screw a bolt in each side and hook it up. You'll have a nearly no resistance bank that draws from each battery absolutely equally.
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0's where you draw and charge on the bank. 4 bars.
If you need 8 batteries make a 2nd floor and bend 2 bars like a handle. Bolt and braze the 1st floor to the 2nd floor and then tap from the center of the handle. Voltages will be dead equal between every 24 volt postition on the bank.
You can round off edges the bars with a few swipes on a belt sander or disk sander or use a drill and sandpaper flap wheel and then cover them in appropriately sized automotive hose or large shrink tubing etc. Just be sure you take the same amount of material off on each bar pair and each bar pair is within a few grams of each other on weight as well as matching the 2nd floor bar pairs. The only inconsistency you can bring into it is the bolting or brazing of the handles between the 1st floor and 2nd floor.
It's not much more expensive than interconnect cables and guarantees you a bank that can deliver massive amps or trickle out low amps uninterupted. It won't trick up or confuse computer controlled chargers and keeps your solar charge controller working well. You'll still have to equalize it but not as often and if you try to use a desulfator on it you want to use a large pulse to keep the good batteries from soaking it all up.
