Inverter/Deep Cycle battery charging question

I would agree with the post that said stick to what the battery manufacturer suggested.

The manufacturer's of the battery should know best what is the most suitable charging method for their battery.

You will find good batteries come with all that info.
 
My Energizer bought yesterday has a EC18 on the lable ? What should it read when charged?
 
dunkyd said:
My Energizer bought yesterday has a EC18 on the lable ? What should it read when charged?
Click to expand...

What do you mean read?

Get a smart charger like the Ctek or the Noko Genius. It will charge your battery properly for you. Its really not rocket science.
 
dunkyd said:
What should the voltage read on my meter ?
Click to expand...

on a 12v battery it should read anything between 12.4v and 13.4v. There is more to it than that, but its all actually unnecessary. Seriously, just get a decent charger and it will check the battery while its charging and tell you when its fully charged.
 
Thanks. It's part of a complete kit with the Mecer IVR1200 . Just wanted to make sure the battery is fully charged because the fan stays on after the green light goes to always on/float charge.
Various people say the fan stays on, some say it switches off.
Can't use as a UPS with that noise in a small cottage :eek:
 
dunkyd said:
Thanks. It's part of a complete kit with the Mecer IVR1200 . Just wanted to make sure the battery is fully charged because the fan stays on after the green light goes to always on/float charge.
Various people say the fan stays on, some say it switches off.
Can't use as a UPS with that noise in a small cottage :eek:
Click to expand...

To be honest with you I have not heard good things about that Mercer inverter. I know of two people who have sent theirs back. One was DOA and the other's fan never turned off.
 
Phoned Mustek to confirm. The fan stays on when charging and slows down when powering tv via battery.
Battery reading was 13.33 @ 8.30 today. Now at 4.30 it reads 12.98.
Seems ok ?
Sod's law....no shedding since I bought it. :eek:
 
Thank goodness no beeping when powering via the battery. But the fan noise is irritating though. Thinking of moving the whole setup somewhere else, and just taking a lead to the living room.
 
Madman88 said:
Spec sheet? Ive sold tons of these batteries, been in the industry for 15 years and I have never seen anywhere that it states the minimum charge rate for a 102ah battery. .
Click to expand...

Based on this comment:

Could you please comment on my post below? I really need a second opinion. Thank you.

"We are currently going through a very interesting phase ( no pun intended ) re. battery life in UPS's. What ESKOM is doing right now, is destroying batteries. We have quite a few clients who's UPS's are not getting the initial runtimes due to battery degrading in a very short time. This is especially the case with large battery banks or battery packs where batteries are connected in parallel so as to provide the same voltage, but with higher capacity i.e. longer runtimes.

The issue is the very short times between load shedding occurrences. It may seem that the batteries are recharged in time, but the issue comes with "voltage balancing". Apparently ( and I'm paraphrasing here, from what I heard from our UPS supplier ) it can take up to 72 hours for all these batteries that are in parallel to all reach the same floating Voltage. If the batteries are discharged before that, they are damaged and lose a lot of their life cycles.

CSB, one of the biggest manufacturers of batteries used in UPS's, have apparently written a letter to their VAR's saying that using a UPS for sustaining hardware running times for these long and frequent outages, like we do in South Africa, is unheard of and "not what UPS are for." They are stressing this fact and urging people/businesses to revert back to using generators and ups's only for load swap. "
 
This is my worry/concern aswell. These UPS's is being sold all over the show, especially now since load shedding is an regular thing for us. I guess i worry about "battery care" too. I'd hate to spend almost R2000 for a deep cycle battery just to damage or destroy it later.
 
MightyQuin said:
Based on this comment:

Could you please comment on my post below? I really need a second opinion. Thank you.

"We are currently going through a very interesting phase ( no pun intended ) re. battery life in UPS's. What ESKOM is doing right now, is destroying batteries. We have quite a few clients who's UPS's are not getting the initial runtimes due to battery degrading in a very short time. This is especially the case with large battery banks or battery packs where batteries are connected in parallel so as to provide the same voltage, but with higher capacity i.e. longer runtimes.

The issue is the very short times between load shedding occurrences. It may seem that the batteries are recharged in time, but the issue comes with "voltage balancing". Apparently ( and I'm paraphrasing here, from what I heard from our UPS supplier ) it can take up to 72 hours for all these batteries that are in parallel to all reach the same floating Voltage. If the batteries are discharged before that, they are damaged and lose a lot of their life cycles.

CSB, one of the biggest manufacturers of batteries used in UPS's, have apparently written a letter to their VAR's saying that using a UPS for sustaining hardware running times for these long and frequent outages, like we do in South Africa, is unheard of and "not what UPS are for." They are stressing this fact and urging people/businesses to revert back to using generators and ups's only for load swap. "
Click to expand...

I will refer that statement to my manufacturer and find out what they think of it. My initial reaction is that its nonsense, a battery's life is measured in cycles, and it is true that during loadshedding you are using more cycles than you would ordinarily be using, but batteries charge at different rates, to different voltages simply because that's the way they work. There are no values built into a battery that says x = fully charged and y= fully discharged. Its simply a chemical process that reaches optimal state. I have never heard of voltage balancing in my life so I'm a bit sceptical.
 
I have a Mecer 2400va (will this take care of my Energizer 105Ah Deep cycle battery's)

Is it best at 10A or 20A ? (the mecer has a switch to change the charging to 10A or 20A)


Is this a good charger in this unit. Will it not mess my battery's up.
 
Napalm said:
I have a Mecer 2400va (will this take care of my Energizer 105Ah Deep cycle battery's)

Is it best at 10A or 20A ? (the mecer has a switch to change the charging to 10A or 20A)


Is this a good charger in this unit. Will it not mess my battery's up.
Click to expand...

Can't comment on the Mecer, but my inverter has been set to 20A charge for my 4 batteries (2 in series, paralleled, 24v system) and no issues so far. Single/double battery I would suggest try 10A first and see how it goes.
 
Last edited:
Hi Everyone,

I need some help here. I bought a SS Pro Plus 2kva 1600w from Tescom, pulled out the six 7ah 12v batteries and connected it to six 102ah 12v deep cycle batteries in series. On the spec sheet it lists charging current at 1A Max. I don't mind waiting for the batteries to charge because the power only goes off for 2 hours every second day or so. I'm scared the batteries won't charge to full capacity though and get damaged. So my question is this: will the batteries last as long as they should if being charged at only 1A?

Some observations I made while the batteries were charging for the first time.
Charging voltage was 84v
Charging A was 0.4 +-
Battery 1 was 15.8v
Battery 2 was 15.8v
Battery 3 was 13.1v
Battery 4 was 13.1v
Battery 5 was 13.1v
Battery 6 was 13.2v
Why were two of the batteries such a high voltage? Is it safe? When I checked the voltage a few hours later Battery 1 and 2 had come down to about 14.9v and 3, 4, 5, and 6 had raised a bit to about 13.4 or 13.5.
 
mattvan1 said:
Hi Everyone,

I need some help here. I bought a SS Pro Plus 2kva 1600w from Tescom, pulled out the six 7ah 12v batteries and connected it to six 102ah 12v deep cycle batteries in series. On the spec sheet it lists charging current at 1A Max. I don't mind waiting for the batteries to charge because the power only goes off for 2 hours every second day or so. I'm scared the batteries won't charge to full capacity though and get damaged. So my question is this: will the batteries last as long as they should if being charged at only 1A?

Some observations I made while the batteries were charging for the first time.
Charging voltage was 84v
Charging A was 0.4 +-
Battery 1 was 15.8v
Battery 2 was 15.8v
Battery 3 was 13.1v
Battery 4 was 13.1v
Battery 5 was 13.1v
Battery 6 was 13.2v
Why were two of the batteries such a high voltage? Is it safe? When I checked the voltage a few hours later Battery 1 and 2 had come down to about 14.9v and 3, 4, 5, and 6 had raised a bit to about 13.4 or 13.5.
Click to expand...
The damage has begun.
 
I think I know why the voltage varied between the first two batteries and the rest.
Battery 1 and 2 was bought about a week before the rest. I also fully charged battery 1 and 2. Then I bought the other four batteries that were clearly not fully charged, put these all in series and when I started charging them 1 and 2 were already full, but the charger carried on charging because the other 4 batteries were not yet full. Could this be the reason?
Today I discharged the batteries for about 30 minutes and the voltages are already looking much better while charging.
Battery 1 13.7v
Battery 2 13.6v
Battery 3 13.2v
Battery 4 13.2v
Battery 5 13.2v
Battery 6 13.2v

Do these voltages look better now? Can charging at a low current such as 1ah really damage a 102ah battery? Even if I give it lots of time to make sure it charges to full capacity. The SS Pro Plus isn't rubbish, it was almost R8000 for the ups alone and it has proper charging stages as well as float.
 
I might be selling my 12 amp charger soon. It's a good quality 3 stage charger. If you interested give me a pm. New price was R1300 and I only used it a few times, so still almost brand new.
 
KOPITE said:
I might be selling my 12 amp charger soon. It's a good quality 3 stage charger. If you interested give me a pm. New price was R1300 and I only used it a few times, so still almost brand new.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that I can connect an external charger to the batteries since the UPS charges the batteries automatically. Also it needs to be able to charge a 72volt battery bank (six 12v in series).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X