Constant current battery chargers

Salvo wrote:
What do you mean by SAFELY? No explosions? That charge rate will definitely boil your batteries. Probably need to fill water every week.

The 20C of your typical 220AH battery bank is 11A. 8% of 11A is 0.88A. Maintaining 14.8V till current drops to 0.88A is no way to treat your batteries. Sounds more like a equalize procedure.

Sal

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
At 20C the "fastest" way to SAFELY recharge FLA batteries is to apply 14.8 volts until such time as the current drops to less than 08% of total 20 ampere hour rating.

Sal, you actually need to DO this stuff rather than merely pontificate over it.

The formula worked for what, thousands perhaps tens of thousands of battery charge cycles.

At 68F try it sometime, apply 14.8 volts and disconnect from charge at 8.5 amperes for a standard 105 ampere hour BCI group 27 battery.

REMEMBER! This is to minimize generator run time, and is NOT APPROPRIATE for shore power recharging where a generator is not gulping fuel at several dollars an hour. I furnished that formula.

And no, you cannot drive to Death Valley Scotty's castle, in August, or Prudhoe Bay in February and do this either. That's why I furnished a Celsius temperature rating for this.

Left at 14.8 for a long length of time, a battery will indeed electrolyze too much water. The 8% amp hour limitation should have provided enough of a clue to keep you out of trouble.

Fuel costs money. So do worn out generators, runs to the gas station, oil changes, and baseball size rocks chucked through the living room window because you run the generator too long. So what if an off grid battery trades 5% of it's total possible lifespan to save oh say four or five hundred dollars? It's helps to live completely off grid for several years or be an engineer to appreciate this point...