On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 05:26:08PM -0000, joemultihuller wrote:
>
> Ben,
>
> I've had my 4D Deka AGM battery onboard as part of my house bank since 2006 and it's still going strong.
>
> THE bible on Deka VRLA batteries is:
>
> http://www.dekabatteries.com/assets/base/0139.pdf
Yep - that's what I found yesterday, and where the temp chart came from.
Thanks!
> Temperature compensation of the charging regimen is most important, and the table in the above document shows the changing voltage requirements. You will find that when you hold the voltage constant that the battery keeps absorbing but the current continues to drop ... I have mine set to drop down to float when the current drops to 800ma, float being around 13.5v, depending on temperature. Having it drop down into float at a higher current (e.g., 2A) would also be just fine IMO.
>
> As a general rule in shirtsleeve weather I don't allow the voltage to go over 14.4v and have an alarm just in case.
Makes sense. When I do get the Balmar charge controller, or some similar
smart gadget with temperature compensation, that's how I'm going to set it up.
> I've had very good results violating the basic rule against paralleling AGMs with FLAs, documented here:
>
> http://www.katiekat.net/Cruise/KatieKat2007H.html#Battery
>
> Furthermore, regarding paralleling batteries, here's another corroborating perspective:
>
> http://www.battcon.com/PapersFinal2002/McDowallPaper2002.pdf
>
> My ranting on paralleling batteries is here:
>
> http://www.katiekat.net/Cruise/KatieKat2004F.html#Batteries
Oh, interesting! Not a question I asked, but one I was definitely
interested in, since I currently have a somewhat complicated,
distributed battery system: the main bank, the starting battery, the
windlass battery (at the end of a longish piece of 12-gauge wire), and
the battery in the dinghy (ditto, although I'm planning on adding an
inverter to that battery: 12-16V in, 14.4V out at about 5A, so that it
will charge regardless of what's going on with the main system.) It's
all going to be AGMs, and charging that entire kit correctly is going to
take some thinking.
Again, thanks for much juicy food for thought.
--
Ben Okopnik
-=-=-=-=-=-
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