Smart Charge Regulators

[goboatingnow]

The funny thing is that most external regulators I see installed are running absorption psettings that are hardly any different than the regulator they removed thus giving no faster charging.

+1+1

I just finished debugging a Balmar system and I agree entirely. Its amazing that people buy this stuff without a basic understanding of their specific battery setup. The manufacturers tend to pick defaults that are all on the "safe" side of any curve, which as you say, is basically what you had before.

Dave

[Maine Sail]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

+1+1

I just finished debugging a Balmar system and I agree entirely. Its amazing that people buy this stuff without a basic understanding of their specific battery setup. The manufacturers tend to pick defaults that are all on the "safe" side of any curve, which as you say, is basically what you had before.

Dave

Except that you get temp compensation for the batts, a GEL setting if you have gels and an alt temp sensor too. Sadly I often see the sensors stuffed into a tool bag or locker....

I'm curious as to why you feel wet cell batts are not self limiting? I can point to lots of deep cycle wet batteries I have charged on my bench that will max out at 22-26% of their 20 hour capacity in charge acceptance. With some thin plate starting SLI batteries I have seen upwards of 30-35% but not with thick plate batteries.

They have not "blown up". I've also experimented in drawing a known amount of Ah's out of a fully charged 100Ah battery to get it to 80% depth of discharge (20% SOC) then hit it with a 90A charger. After the innitial in-rush it settles right down to about 22-26% of it 20 hour rating and accepts that until 72-80% state of charge, based on returned Ah's but not Peukert corrected..

I did this to see if a charger that was too large would simply raise the terminal voltage to early before the energy had been replaced. With a healthy battery I have not found this to be the case. With deep cycle batts of most brands I see about 22-26% +/- accepted in bulk no matter how big a charge source I am using.

I even took batteries off-line one at a time on a customers boat one day to show him exactly how acceptance worked.

With all batts on-line his 105A alt was peaked at about 80-84A. By the time we got down to just one 105 Ah battery the alt was putting out just 23A and the bank was still at about 55% state of charge as we brought them back on-line the amperage climbed right back to about where we began.

Surely I can't be imagining what I have observed as normal deep cycle wet cell behavior for years, or can I?

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Maine Sail

I'm curious as to why you feel wet cell batts are not self limiting? I can point to lots of deep cycle wet batteries I have charged on my bench that will max out at 22-26% of their 20 hour capacity in charge acceptance. With some thin plate starting SLI batteries I have seen upwards of 30-35% but not with thick plate batteries.

They have not "blown up". I've also experimented in drawing a known amount of Ah's out of a fully charged 100Ah battery to get it to 80% depth of discharge (20% SOC) then hit it with a 90A charger. After the innitial in-rush it settles right down to about 22-26% of it 20 hour rating and accepts that until 72-80% state of charge, based on returned Ah's but not Peukert corrected..

I did this to see if a charger that was too large would simply raise the terminal voltage to early before the energy had been replaced. With a healthy battery I have not found this to be the case. With deep cycle batts of most brands I see about 22-26% +/- accepted in bulk no matter how big a charge source I am using.

I even took batteries off-line one at a time on a customers boat one day to show him exactly how acceptance worked.

With all batts on-line his 105A alt was peaked at about 80-84A. By the time we got down to just one 105 Ah battery the alt was putting out just 23A and the bank was still at about 55% state of charge as we brought them back on-line the amperage climbed right back to about where we began.

Surely I can't be imagining what I have observed as normal deep cycle wet cell behavior for years, or can I?

But thats the point, what you described is C/5 charging, but most LAs are actually specified at C/10 or even a bit lower ( as in C20/10 or C5/10)

Thats what I mean, LAs will actually accept charge rates faster then the specification, usually charger companies handle this by dramatically reducing charging current once teh voltage starts to rise, so as to ensure that where possible they stay at much lower rates then the manufacturers specified. It also bring to play the fact that often large chargers do nothing of the sort becuase unless you tell the charger what the Ah is, it plays very safe.

Dave