Niner Bikes Brought Up An Excellent Criticism Point

[MEXICOWANDERER]

I was being remiss in not saying with the basics, when discussing batteries. To me this is a cardinal error. Forgive me...

Here is a little something I composed last night before my fingers gave out...



SAFE BATTERY CHARGING

There has been so much hyperbole written about “what's safe” and “what's unsafe” regarding battery charging voltage that my head spins. You need to know what voltage level your batteries are at – at rest, when being charged in earnest, or when they are kicking back on a maintenance level voltage. Without a voltmeter reading, you are driving blind. Personally I won't ride alongside a blindfolded driver.

There is no such thing as a “Plug N Play” battery charger or “total hands-off” battery maintenance charging device – plug in, solar, or vehicle alternator. I wish there was one, I would be first in line to buy one.

Most folks go camping when air temperatures are agreeable and not when it's 0 C or 40 C (320F) or (1040F) outside. Batteries are like people. They like hot food to eat when it's cold (higher voltage charging and storage) and a nice chilled salad (lower voltage) when it's sweltering outside. But let's talk about charging voltage and camping. And for crying-out-loud, let's avoid techno babble.

Deep cycle wet acid batteries are similar enough in behavior (oops Canadians “behaviour”) to engine starting batteries, that for charging purposes we can “assume” they will like and appreciate a fairly similar charging diet (voltage). The difference between the two types of batteries is not great enough to be like trying to feed a cat a chef salad. The two types of batteries will love the following charging advice. Remember now, we are talking about charging not float maintenance where the batteries sit in the shade, do nothing but sip cold Coronas for months-on-end.

The point all the so-called experts forget about or miss (intentionally? To make their own advice seem more important than it really is?) is that hundreds of millions of high powered battery chargers have been already proofed out over the last 80-years. A billion flooded lead acid batteries taken care of with these “chargers”? I don't know the exact number but regardless, it adds up to one hell of an impressive number of batteries.

The Secret? Tah-Dah! It's the alternator in your car, pickup, or motorhome. When you start your rig, the alternator and voltage regular supply charging energy right up to the limit of the alternator's amperage rating. Some alternators have impressive charging ability – 130 amperes and even more than that.

What does this mean? Let's use a motorhome as an example. One modern unit with a 130 amp alternator and a pair of group 27 house batteries. When you start the engine the alternator goes to work. From experience I can tell you a group 27 battery will gobble around 45 amperes of power when it's discharged. So the pair will consume 90 amps. In effect when you start the engine the batteries will have as much power on their plate as they can possibly use. Yes batteries can be overcharged. But your car's alternator is throttled by a control device called a voltage regulator. The voltage only goes “so high” and that's it. The alternator stops charging at this limit. To be blunt, that exact limit in numbers is referred to as the Voltage Regulator Set Point.

So what does all this have to do with the price of dates in Qatar? Think about it. You start your engine, and the house batteries get charged right to the set point of the alternator voltage regulator. There is no self-imposed limit to the charging amperage. The batteries are “offered” the voltage at the set point of the voltage regulator and the batteries automatically consume just so-many amperes. As far as cars go, this magic charging process has been around for 90 years or so.

Keep your thinking hat on please. Do alternators cause fires, boiled batteries, flood, famine and disease? No. Start your engine with depleted house batteries and drive for a dozen hours on the interstate. What do you imagine is happening all those miles? In tens or millions of cars? Over a ninety-year period. Yes alternators can fail and cause problems. I can have a heart-attack and that will pretty much screw-up my plans, too.

Automotive alternators are controlled by a voltage regulator, the brains of the outfit. Most “regulators” operate in the 14.0 to 14.4 volt range. Thats four-tenths of a volt variation. Remember, tens of millions of cars, and perhaps a billion batteries have been baby-sitted with this for more than 90 years. Yes, there were 6-volt systems back then and generators and they operated on half the voltage. Sue me. It's exactly the same thing. Each cell of the battery saw the same voltage back when San Francisco shook horses whinnied and buildings burned as they see today, this very second, in tens of millions of motor vehicles running around occasionally smacking into one other.

Can we therefore assume a battery that needs to be charged can have 14.0 to 14.4 volts INSTANTLY applied to its terminals and be a happy camper? Remember we are talking about charging and not float maintenance or equalization. Let's not play Three-Card-Monte word-games here. Yes, we can not only assume we can, we can (and will) take this assumption to the bank!

Yeah you got some discharged batteries and you need to charge them. Why not supply them with 14.0 – 14.4 volts? Instantly? “But I have eight golf car batteries!” you complain. Tough! That's enough of a battery bank to have an ability of accepting a few hundreds of amperes charge rate when the bank is hungry. Want to recharge the batteries as fast as safely possible? Give them 14.0 – 14.4 volts, and stand back. Yes, it's like feeding a 6'6” 16-year old. They'll open the refrigerator door, tilt it and let everything slide into their mouth. Like that sliding food, buying enough charging ability to instantly achieve 14.0 – 14.4 volts ain't cheap. The point here, is 14.0 to 14.4 volts recharging is safe regardless of the amperage. One millionth of an amp – one million amps, it's all the same when the voltage is controlled.

Why is this important? It's important when camping. Generators, generally, are like your unemployed brother-in-law, most of the energy they use does nothing more than empty your bank account. For a generator to be the least useful, when you start it, it should have the ability to immediately bring the voltage of the batteries to 14.0 to 14.4 volts and stay there. Stay there until the batteries are charged. Or mostly charged. That's another subject. A two thousand watt generator should have to ability to achieve 120 amperes of recharging rate if switch-type battery chargers are used.

When you crank up a generator it costs a lot of money. Money for fuel (only available after you burn 10-gallons more fuel to go get it). Do you love wasting time driving to and from a gas station? Or paying four dollars a gallon for generator fuel of which more than ninety percent is normally wasted? Like to listen to the 80 db “purr” of your generator for hours on end? How about changing oil, or shelling out a ton of money to replace a worn-out generator? If you don't present 14.0 to 14.4 volts to your battery bank right off the bat, your generator is laughing while your batteries are chirping to be fed faster. Even a “financially comfortable” RV owner should get quivering knees at the thought of wasting that kind of money on running a generator inefficiently.

Any individual who wishes to argue against the points brought out in this article had better start off by running around the world screaming “You Can't Do That!!” at several billion automotive charging systems, before complaining to the author.

Forget so called “rules” printed by battery manufacturers. Their engineers live in a dream world. Their rules are for batteries that can be recharged at “leisure” connected to an electrical grid. You live in the world of four dollar a gallon fuel that is a long way off. It is ummm.... (is the word “not wise” politically correct enough?) not wise to spend four-hundred dollars plus trying to extract twenty dollars worth of “extra-life” out of a pair of RV batteries by following battery manufacturer's “rules” for achieving “optimum life” out of a battery. If you have time and money to burn to try and meet a worthless goal then go for it.

But if you're smart. When you recharge, you present 14.0 to 14.4 volts to a discharged battery INSTANTLY. The issue is you may have one hell of a large battery bank and need lots of amperage to meet this specification. Multiple chargers needed. Is the generator “Big Enough”?. “Which is worth more to me: Not running the generator or putting in more recharging ability? Do I wilderness camp enough to make this worthwhile?” Those are “smart” questions to ask and arrive at an honest answer.

But needlessly running a generator for hours on end, is dumb, dumb, dumb.

And it's all up to you, now that you know facts...

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Drop some 80 C dilute H2SO4 on your skin and you will observe "Boil".

I tried to simplify this process to make it understandable. Yes there are three hundred dollar ZXY 99999K model 12-stage chargers with optional probes and gamma X ray emitters that can manage a battery closer than playing the Plug N Play Route.

There are also people who NEVER boondock, and others who never plug-in. I tried my damndest to explain some basic criteria so folks can get a grip on the subject minus all the freakin' hyperbole. If you want true Plug N Play, hit the window switch and ask folks in the other Rolls to please pass the Grey Poupon.

"How do you charge your batteries?"

(Sniff) "I have people who do that for me"

[azrving]

When you breath that stuff for years in a factory with poor ventilation you would swear they are "boiling". But it's probably just part of the lingo from people saying bring to a boil and simmer as in going through the different phases. I dont think it means literally.

[fla-gypsy]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
I should eat a special diet I cannot afford, drive a 200 mile per gallon electric car I cannot afford, have a heli-pad next to Johns Hopkins, and a 9 room suite aboard the WORLD condominium yacht.

But this is the real world, and life is not theoretical.

Sorry, but my MEE battery engineering career trumps the 12 volt side of life on this one. Forget "C-10" ratios. This is theoretical gobbly-gook. Why not send "The 12-volt side of life" an email, asking them to come look at this article?"

I love the theory vs applied life angle. BTW, most of us are fortunately ignorant enough of all of this to just hook em up and let em rip so all is well. LOL

[pianotuna]

Hi,

They don't boil. They gas. It is a huge difference.

[azrving]

Lol. Because I really dont care about anyones batteries but mine. i unfortunately spent 35 years as an electric fork truck repairman. I never liked the battery side of it all as they have to "boil" during the cycle to properly mix and avoid sulfation or that other fancy word that I cant think of right now. The proper method was to have 3 sets of batteries. One in the fork truck, one on charge and one cooling down from charge. At 4800 pounds each and probably $6,000 to $7,000 each even the bean counters would concede to installing the proper chargers for deep cycling. But, like I say, whatever works for you is fine with me. Oh oh it just came to me, that other word is stratification. We would always laugh when the ties would come down and start asking questions about costs etc. and say things like "Well, my car battery doesnt take this much care and I never add water to it".

Hold on, ole mex you rascal you, yer just jokin again aint ya. Lol. Dang ya got me cuz I know you caint be seer ee us. lol.

[wa8yxm]

I too enjoied reading that but then I've also enjoied Stephen King, Ben Vova, EE "Doc" Savage, Mike Resnick, and a host of other writers of Science Fiction.

I do agree, if you want absolute maximum battery life there is no plug and play solution..

BUT: for all practical purposes the Progressive Dynamics WiZARD controlled converters like the 9200, or the IOTA with IQ-4, in the proper size, comes mighty close.. These are pre-set for flooded wet cells. and they do a very good job of both charging and maintaining.

of "Bench" storage, the Battery Minder Plus, or Battery Tender Plus (Both (TM)) are good plug and play boxes.

These are devices I highly recommend.. They are also much better at battery maintenance than the Alternator on many vehicles.

Of course if you are a real puriest.. Well some top tier converters (3 stage PLUS) the PLUS is a thermal probe, it measures the temperature at the battery and the computer in the unit adjusts the charge parameters to account for changes in temp. A good example of that is the Xantrex Prosine 2.0 (No longer made).

And the models I've listed are NOT the only ones in the top tier.. Many others in there.

What you want to avoid is single stage jobs like the Parallex 7300.


And even with all the above: There is still no "One size fits all: For eample.. I have a Progressive Dynamics 9180 with wizard (Equal to the 9280 operationally) My motor home come with a pair of GC-2 plus a 78 Amp Hour chassis battery that when charging is in parallel That's 300 amp hours of battery (Very slightly rounded) so teh 9180 is just under 30% of total c/20 amp hour.. I've expanded the house side a bit So now I have about 600 amp hours at C/20.

That 9180 is way too big for the O/P's 2 group 27's though. (9160 for those).

[pianotuna]

Hi rjxj,

Why would I trust a site that can't even get the wiring diagram for 12 volt batteries perfectly balanced?

rjxj wrote:
This is from "The 12 volt side of life"

[MEXICOWANDERER]

I should eat a special diet I cannot afford, drive a 200 mile per gallon electric car I cannot afford, have a heli-pad next to Johns Hopkins, and a 9 room suite aboard the WORLD condominium yacht.

But this is the real world, and life is not theoretical.

Sorry, but my MEE battery engineering career trumps the 12 volt side of life on this one. Forget "C-10" ratios. This is theoretical gobbly-gook. Why not send "The 12-volt side of life" an email, asking them to come look at this article?"

[azrving]

This is from "The 12 volt side of life"
Most flooded batteries should be charged at no more than the "C/10" rate for any sustained period. "C/10" is the battery capacity in amp/hours divided by 10. For a 220 AH battery, this would equal 22 Amps. Charging at 15.5 volts will give you a 100% charge on Lead-Acid batteries. Note that flooded batteries MUST bubble (gas) somewhat to ensure a full charge, and to mix the electrolyte. Float voltage for Lead-Acid batteries should be about 2.15 to 2.23 volts per cell, or about 12.9-13.4 volts for a 12 volt battery. Flooded battery life can be extended if an equalizing charge is applied every 10 to 40 days. This is a charge that is about 10% higher than normal full charge voltage, and is applied for about 2 to 16 hours. This makes sure that all the cells are equally charged, and the gas bubbles mix the electrolyte. If the liquid in standard wet cells is not mixed, the electrolyte becomes "stratified". You can have very strong solution at the top, and very weak at the bottom of the cell.

So you ask: "what does all that mean?" It means that battery charging is a little more complicated than most people think. It's not really safe to assume that driving your motorhome will keep your house batteries up to par, or that plugging your trailer in to A/C power and letting the converter run will make everything hunky-dory. The truth is, most of the RVs on the road have very poorly designed battery charging systems courtesy of the factory. Why? Well, cost plays a key role in deciding what equipment a RV will have installed when it's sold. Most RVs depend on the 12volt converter to charge the house batteries. In most cases, that's a very poor compromise!

The life of your batteries will be longer and happier if you charge them correctly. The best chargers on the market are 3-stage chargers. Use of a good quality 3 stage charger will significantly improve your battery's performance and lifespan. These chargers can be purchased separately or are included as part of many of the better quality inverters. When using a 3 stage charger, battery charging takes place in 3 basic stages: Bulk, Absorption, and Float.

Bulk Charge - The first stage of 3-stage battery charging. Current is sent to batteries at the maximum safe rate they will accept until voltage rises to near (80-90%) full charge level. Voltages at this stage typically range from 10.5 volts to 15 volts. There is no "correct" voltage for bulk charging, but there may be limits on the maximum current that the battery and/or wiring can take.

Absorption Charge: The 2nd stage of 3-stage battery charging. Voltage remains constant and current gradually tapers off as internal resistance increases during charging. It is during this stage that the charger puts out maximum voltage. Voltages at this stage are typically around 14.2 to 15.5 volts.

Float Charge: The 3rd stage of 3-stage battery charging. After batteries reach full charge, charging voltage is reduced to a lower level (typically 12.8 to 13.2 volts) to reduce gassing and prolong battery life. This is often referred to as a maintenance or trickle charge, since it's main purpose is to keep an already charged battery from discharging.

I actually also dont want a cheesy RV of any sort connected to my space ship quality $55,000 tow vehicle. Just me, but whatever works for you is good. Thanks.

[pianotuna]

Hi Mex,

As usual you make me smile. I'll probably be doing at least some incidental battery charging this summer when I run the genny for the air conditioner. I'll make a point of triggering the PD converter to the 14.4 setting. I have seven batteries and a trik-l-start for the chassis, so I doubt I can "over charge" with a profile of 14.4 volts and maximum of 40 amps, even in the heat of the summer (42 C).

Thanks as always for the great (and humorous) advice.

[diazr2]

Wow you write very well you should be a writer. Not sure I get the story but it was a fun read. I just let my truck and the converter in the fifth wheel charge the batteries and when they go dead I just buy two more. Never gave it a second thought LOL.. But I did love the story. Thanks for sharing