Does DEKA make a good UPS battery?

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
The Lifeline holds 13.3 - 13.4 volts for a couple of hours of 13.65 and displays 13.01-13.5 after an all-night rest.

Charging for a few hours at say 14.4 versus driving 8 hours at 13.9 volts certainly will yield a different state of charge. Some of you out there gave me static about using kWh for energy tranactions. Welcome to the great revelation.

Storage Battery Energy is measured in voltage, AMPERAGE plus time. VA or KVA.

Those telecomm batteries have charactertistics different than automotive or marine AGM batteries. The goal should be how to exploit the positive attributes.

I am in no way complaining about the characteristics of this battery, I am just sharing observations. I will see an hour of this battery while trundling down the road taking 14.3V on the Scan Gauge 2, sometimes 70 minutes, sometimes 45 or 50 minutes, after an overnight Wallyworld session. SCVJeff knows I was watching TV on the nights I could get channels, most of them. I was pulling signal from 60 miles away from mountains near Portland OR while I was in Tillamook, with a stock batwing... very impressive! Of course, the TV pulls not quite 2 amps/hr, 24" samsung in outdated 1080p, everyone knows 4K is here, now.

All I can say is this... with a fully charged standing Voltage as almost new at 12.88V, top charged and sat on for 72 hours in storage, almost all of the time, a 2 to 3 hour drive traveling up the road has this battery doing what it's supposed to do, and the remaining charge the next morning can vary... 12.55V, and if I recall correctly, not temperature corrected, 12.38V was the lowest V seen in the morning on a 38F morning at Divide campground, with rain almost every day the 4 or 5 days I was there trying to catch fish on the Big Hole. A drive up the road, to Missoula, 138 miles, and a V meter check pretty much matched what I saw with an overnight in Cedar City, and a drive up to Mid Vale /SLC UT.

That alternator and V settings in the ECU of the VW Touareg diesel, for reasons unknown, currently (pun intended) appears, so far, to me, to be doing a recharge much much faster than the Mega 30. Is it truly getting topped off and taking no more? I doubt it. Is it taking it almost all the way topped off? Can't be sure.

I will know more when I get the Teleco battery back into the garage, and on the MegaWatt 30 with a RC watt meter in line, so I can actually see what it has taken in for a charge, until I reach a .75 Amp take rate.

To say the least, this is a very interesting battery to monitor.

My goal, ASAP, it to get the battery in the garage, and see what it will take, at a 14.4V setting to get it to stop taking on charging amps at a rate greater than .75 Amps per hour, after 12 days of on the road camping, the first week under rainy conditions for 4 or 5 of 7 days... I was not running the Eu2000i for hours on end for charity purposes, nor for science, with the MegaWatt30... if it wasn't doing a 8-10 amp take rate or better with the generator, it got put on the 150W solar panel, and rain, shine, sun or clouds, it got what it got, the rest of the day.

If the sun was shining at 8 or 9 AM, and the panel was pointed at the sun, sure as shooting, if the battery was low enough, SOC wise, that 150W 12V panel was giving it 8.7 to 8.9 amps. 5 or 6 hours on a partly cloudy / sunny day, sometimes as early as 10:30 or 11 AM on a fully sunny day, with aiming the panel 2 or 3 times in that time frame, would have the battery suitably charged for another night of usage.

All I am trying to do is provide information as I observe it, so that one has options to consider, with this brand of battery, in this configuration as a used UPS TELECO battery, for a very good price, and perhaps what one can expect with buying and using one of these unusual options for a battery pack on your RV... they are not like other brands or other models of AGM's. If it's as heavy duty /industrial as Mex says it is, then with some proper care, keeping it stored top charged, and using the heck out of it, in between, then I'll be a happy camper. It does have thick plates, it is heavy, and it is acid rich. All it really needs is a little TLC when coming back from a trip to make it ready for storage, with a little bit of metering the V and the Amp take rate, to assure it is truly top charged, and not sulfating, and I will be happy. Anally obsessed readers can follow along and make their own choices as to suitability and fit, for their applications.

The Trojan T-1275 was a bit cranky to get top charged, when well into it's life. This AGM, so far, is young, and a different animal, with its care and feeding of V and AHrs. I won't feel too bad if I end up the $125 for science guinea pig on this one.