another source for agm batteries
Hi, It's time for me to consider replacing four of my batteries that are now 8 years old. I came across this on Amazon. Any one have an opinion on this company? http://www.vmaxchargetank.com/...
Forum Discussion
IMO more attention needs to be paid to this:
Mex says, "A maintenance charge profile for a battery that gets discharged over a period of a week, stays discharged for four days then goes and gets connected to a charger, is absolutely different than a battery that cycles to 50-60% off capacity every day then gets promptly recharged. How the profile must differ is to offset impending loss of capacity with the first example"
The fist case is how it goes with solar where it is used to delay the time between gen recharging (like I do it usually) It also applies to those who have large banks and no solar and wait till they get home before a recharge.
That all means you need to do a serious "recovery" session to get back to full charge (in my case using the Equalize feature on the charger)
Now the crunch is how to do that routine with AGMs? You can blast away on the Wets gassing up a storm. But "recovery" with AGMs is a very tricky, fussy business. Hard to even find a charger that will do that within AGM specs.
This suggests that AGMs are not the best choice at all for the first case, but only would be suitable with solar where you are sure to get back to full every day (not possible in some seasons in some places)
Glad to see mention of good old "progressive capacity loss" too. I bet those with some solar who operate like the first case and have AGMs are losing battery capacity at a good clip, but don't know it.
Mex says, "A maintenance charge profile for a battery that gets discharged over a period of a week, stays discharged for four days then goes and gets connected to a charger, is absolutely different than a battery that cycles to 50-60% off capacity every day then gets promptly recharged. How the profile must differ is to offset impending loss of capacity with the first example"
The fist case is how it goes with solar where it is used to delay the time between gen recharging (like I do it usually) It also applies to those who have large banks and no solar and wait till they get home before a recharge.
That all means you need to do a serious "recovery" session to get back to full charge (in my case using the Equalize feature on the charger)
Now the crunch is how to do that routine with AGMs? You can blast away on the Wets gassing up a storm. But "recovery" with AGMs is a very tricky, fussy business. Hard to even find a charger that will do that within AGM specs.
This suggests that AGMs are not the best choice at all for the first case, but only would be suitable with solar where you are sure to get back to full every day (not possible in some seasons in some places)
Glad to see mention of good old "progressive capacity loss" too. I bet those with some solar who operate like the first case and have AGMs are losing battery capacity at a good clip, but don't know it.
