Sunday, Jul 16, 2017 at 10:18
Another matter is
What is Fully charged.
Back in the day of open top batteries we would judge state of charge by two things ...... #1 that the battery was bubbling and "gassing freely" and #2 that it's electrolite was a particular specific gravity. .... these both indicated that the required chemical transformation was largely complete.
This was a time of crude unregulated battery chargers where there was a very real prospect of overcharging a battery and " boiling it dry".
we typically charged 12 volt batteries with 15 to 16ish volts for cycle charging or out of vehicle recharge, and used 13.8 volts for continuous or float charge applications.
13.8 volts was chosen because it would charge the battery in a reasonably expedient manner and not result is excessive fluid loss and thus not require excessive topping up and maintenance.
Those generic state of charge figures come from that time and so does a particular notion of "fully charged"
These days both batteries and chargers have changed ...... the old school batteries and chargers still exist ...but there is a variety of new technology in both batteries and chargers.
Many of the modern chargers will take a battery safely to a higher state of charge than would previously been considered safe ....... some batteries will hold this higher state of charge for quite some time, old school batteries won't.
This higher state of charge is not worth much in terms of battery capacity held, because as soon as a load is connected the curve will flatten out rapidly.
What is the benefit of this higher state of charge ....... yeh
well that is a whole multi-page argument in it's self
cheers
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