Friday, Jul 29, 2005 at 09:05
Folks the argument about whether a battery is only charged to 70% or can be charged much higher using no more than the garden variety vehicle alternator, is being muddied because people are not taking into account the situations in which the batteries are being used.
If we were taking about battery use in a taxi like environment then there is probably a valid argument that the battery will never get fully charged and will have a short life span.
A taxi is use for continuos short trips, there motors are stopped and started dozens of times a day and their motors can be started and then run for no more that a few seconds at a time, as many as 3, 4, 5 even 10 times in a short period, the to allow the taxi to be moved up in a taxi rank and yes they are never going to be fully charged.
Now correct me here but aren’t most of the people on this site talking about long trips which at a minimum would entail driving continuously for at least 2 hours a day.
This is in now way similar to city driving and the 70% charge is based on city drive conditions. For someone who is driving continually for a few hours at a time, the battery charge conditions are completely different.
Here’s a quick way to dispel the “No more that 70% charge” myth for anyone doing hourly continuos drives and have maintenance free batteries.
simply
check the state of charge in the battery indicator after a days driving.
This type of battery usually has a coloured indicator that shows the state of charge of the battery.
These indicators work in exactly the same manner as a Hydrometer.
They have two or three small balls that are set to float at a specific gravity point, when the colour in the indicator is RED, the battery will be at or bellow 50 or 60% charged ( the difference depends on the make of battery ).
When the colour is CLEAR or WHITE, the battery is somewhere between 50% and 90% charged.
When the indicator colour is GREEN, the battery is at or above 90% charged.
Now even if there is a 10% margin of error, this is still a minimum of 80% charged indication ( BTW, none of the battery sites I have looked at list a likely margin of error ).
Why would the manufactures give a charged indication that is set at 90% if they thought that the batteries would never get over 70% charged. They would be over run with people complaining that they could not get their battery charged and so.
My point is that, and is I have stated, the Inverter/charger set up will work, but this set up is not only unnecessary, it is inefficient, added expense expensive set set up even if you already have the gear and an increased load factor for the alternator particularly when the alternator can do the same job by itself and more efficiently.
Cheers.
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