Judging/comparing Battery Performance
We've all read about person X who does nothing more than plug in their converter and claims the batteries are just as good as new 6 years later, although this is an impossibility. More accurate wou...
Forum Discussion
BFL13;
I, and pnichols, both have previously noticed a drop of Amps and use it to mean fully charged. I have seen Amps drop so low that the Turnigy displays 00.00A from solar.
I have never conditioned, equalized or manually bumped up volts on my AGMs. Of course, I have observed 15+V due to temp comp with cold batteries. I just set ABS to 14.4V and let temp comp do its job. Maybe thats why my 5+yo Deka just failed! It would only charge to 10.5V after resting. Bad cell? I replaced it already with a $200 Sam's Club AGM.
The daily charging by solar results in a unknown daily shortfall in bank AHs remaining. I have no 50-90 type measures.
I use two indicators:
1.Turnigy low Volts as the signal to fire up the genny to run chargers. The Turnigy has a handy feature where it holds the lowest Volt reading since it was last reset. Low Volts do not represent AHs. What that tells me is how close I am getting to inverter LVD.
2. KAW to note low Wattage draw by the chargers as a signal to stop the genny.
I dry-camped 27 consecutive nights this winter in SW Arizona. I knew the Deka was weak, but used it anyway to run 2 x 12V compressor fridges. It failed about a month after that. It was my first AGM.
Mex;
I just read your definitions. Thanks for your contribution.
HTH;
John
I, and pnichols, both have previously noticed a drop of Amps and use it to mean fully charged. I have seen Amps drop so low that the Turnigy displays 00.00A from solar.
I have never conditioned, equalized or manually bumped up volts on my AGMs. Of course, I have observed 15+V due to temp comp with cold batteries. I just set ABS to 14.4V and let temp comp do its job. Maybe thats why my 5+yo Deka just failed! It would only charge to 10.5V after resting. Bad cell? I replaced it already with a $200 Sam's Club AGM.
The daily charging by solar results in a unknown daily shortfall in bank AHs remaining. I have no 50-90 type measures.
I use two indicators:
1.Turnigy low Volts as the signal to fire up the genny to run chargers. The Turnigy has a handy feature where it holds the lowest Volt reading since it was last reset. Low Volts do not represent AHs. What that tells me is how close I am getting to inverter LVD.
2. KAW to note low Wattage draw by the chargers as a signal to stop the genny.
I dry-camped 27 consecutive nights this winter in SW Arizona. I knew the Deka was weak, but used it anyway to run 2 x 12V compressor fridges. It failed about a month after that. It was my first AGM.
Mex;
I just read your definitions. Thanks for your contribution.
HTH;
John
