Perhaps Capacity is Not King
I don't want to derail the current "charging AGM batteries" thread more than I already have. During the course of that thread I was shopping for AGM batteries, trying to determine which ones could ...
Forum Discussion
wa8yxm wrote:
But DEEP CYCLE are designed to recover from 50 percent discharge (or more claim some) and Starting is not.
True. And the claim is more than a claim. There is simply a curve for that. The old standby for GC2s is below. The bottom set of figures is percentage of discharge. The left is number of cycles expected (so long as the battery is well cared for otherwise.) So if you discharge to 50% every single time and fully and immediately recharge each time, you should expect to get 1000 cycles out of the bank. All 100% discharges should still yield 350. (Well, yeah.... maybe. I'd be interested to hear Mex's opinion on that.) But if you do a dozen 100% discharges with a starting battery?
I am a deep cycle fan, mainly due to the antimony which allows for gassing at a lower charge voltage and temperature, which allows for much easier recovery from Progressive Capacity Loss.
But Hybrids have their place. I don't have the height in my battery box to allow for GCs. ALSO... I can fit 3, but not 4. So I have 3-G27s in parallel. Over a pair of golf cart batteries, this gets me an extra 100 Ah or so with the added benefit of limping along if one or two batteries were to fail. If one out of 2 6V batteries fail while your hunting way up in the mountains... you might be SOL.
Also... Hybrids hold their voltage better with heavy inverter use. So... whatever floats your particular boat.
