Battery Life and Low Temps
I have been having a ball up at Iris Meadow off of Rock Creek Road, Close to Mammoth Lakes, CA. It's the steeper side of the Sierras just East of Yosemite. It's a little known area comparably, but v...
Forum Discussion
Some comments - hopefully lower than rant level:
1) The last time I checked electrical theory, my 550 watt generator should be able to approximately power about any 30 amp charger or converter built with a reasonable power factor.
2) My converter is (and many in OEM outfitted RVs are also) 45 amps, and if anybody cared to read certain of my particular links, a curve provided by Parallax shows it capable of initially delivering this to a 50% SOC deep cycle 12V Group 27 battery. However, of course my 550 watt generator cannot power it up to the converter's maximum 45 amps output ... only up to around 35 amps from the converter's output..
3) The "more costly" long and slow approach over short and high argument was never proved to my satisfaction. Along with other subtleties, the heavier currents resulting from short and high charging into a battery does cause some heating within the battery, which inherently is wasting more power in heat alone than long and low charging.
4) I've tried this test many times - charge our 200AH of batteries with the 13.8 volts from our "low powered" (45 amp) converter until the ammeter finally reads zero amps. Then I start up the V10's 130 amp alternator and hit the batteries some more with 14.4 volts and guess what - the ammeter won't budge off zero. So ... were my batteries fully charged from their long enough exposure to only 13.8 volts or not? It looks like they were to me. I hold that other than for periodic "stirring of the electrolyte" or "equalizing of the potential between cells", any fixed voltage above a lead acid battery's natural rest potential will "eventually get it charged" because of physical current flow from high potential to low potential.
For Ray's (the OP) or any other one's cooler weather charging needs, yes indeed higher voltages than when in warm weather must be used to get the same charging currents. With my equipment in Ray's situation, I would merely have gone to bed with a full tank of gas in the 550 watt genny and left it running powering our converter until it's 0.51 gallons of gas ran out in the middle of the night. While it was running, it would be doing two things ... charging the batteries up - plus powering the RV's furnace and everything else in the RV. In the morning the batteries would be at a higher SOC than they were in the evening when the generator was started because the heavy-draw furnace would not have been supplied from any battery power during a portion of the night. Doing this about every other night would have taken about 1 gallon of fuel from the little generator every two days.
Not too expensive a way to enjoy the beautiful Mammoth Lake area, IMHO.
1) The last time I checked electrical theory, my 550 watt generator should be able to approximately power about any 30 amp charger or converter built with a reasonable power factor.
2) My converter is (and many in OEM outfitted RVs are also) 45 amps, and if anybody cared to read certain of my particular links, a curve provided by Parallax shows it capable of initially delivering this to a 50% SOC deep cycle 12V Group 27 battery. However, of course my 550 watt generator cannot power it up to the converter's maximum 45 amps output ... only up to around 35 amps from the converter's output..
3) The "more costly" long and slow approach over short and high argument was never proved to my satisfaction. Along with other subtleties, the heavier currents resulting from short and high charging into a battery does cause some heating within the battery, which inherently is wasting more power in heat alone than long and low charging.
4) I've tried this test many times - charge our 200AH of batteries with the 13.8 volts from our "low powered" (45 amp) converter until the ammeter finally reads zero amps. Then I start up the V10's 130 amp alternator and hit the batteries some more with 14.4 volts and guess what - the ammeter won't budge off zero. So ... were my batteries fully charged from their long enough exposure to only 13.8 volts or not? It looks like they were to me. I hold that other than for periodic "stirring of the electrolyte" or "equalizing of the potential between cells", any fixed voltage above a lead acid battery's natural rest potential will "eventually get it charged" because of physical current flow from high potential to low potential.
For Ray's (the OP) or any other one's cooler weather charging needs, yes indeed higher voltages than when in warm weather must be used to get the same charging currents. With my equipment in Ray's situation, I would merely have gone to bed with a full tank of gas in the 550 watt genny and left it running powering our converter until it's 0.51 gallons of gas ran out in the middle of the night. While it was running, it would be doing two things ... charging the batteries up - plus powering the RV's furnace and everything else in the RV. In the morning the batteries would be at a higher SOC than they were in the evening when the generator was started because the heavy-draw furnace would not have been supplied from any battery power during a portion of the night. Doing this about every other night would have taken about 1 gallon of fuel from the little generator every two days.
Not too expensive a way to enjoy the beautiful Mammoth Lake area, IMHO.
