Battery book and charging

photonboy

Hi all,  I upped the stakes in my off grid adventure with the purchase of 4 6v gc batteries for my Colorado cabin.  I was curious if I can use a standard battery charger connected appropriately for my series-parallel Battery configuration for my 12v system.  Also, I would love a good reference for a battery book for off grid living.

thanks

chris. 

BB.

It depends on what you mean by a standard battery charger.... For the most part, people use Automotive battery chargers---Which many times are optimized to dump a lot of current (and high charging voltage) to get the battery "working" as soon as possible.

I have used cheap trickle chargers (the little 1 amp cube) and used it on stored cars to keep the battery up (cars with LoJack, Cell Phone, GPS stuff--Which would take the car's battery dead in 4-8 weeks if not driven/charged). And after about 2 months, found the cheap trickle charger "boiled" the electrolyte level down below the top of the plates (on a car battery that I never ever had to add distilled water too).

And I had another car charger I purchased a long time ago--That actually does a good job of keeping the battery charged (charges until ~13.8 volts or so, then stops all charging until the battery goes down to 12.7 volts or so, then charges again).

Between my and my in-laws'-cars, I ended up buying "real" float chargers.

"Batteryminder" and "BatteryTender" (I have several Batteryminder units) work well (batteries stay charged, and never had to add water).

I also have a couple "Duracell DRMC4A 4 Amp Battery Charger Maintainer with LCD Display for 6V, 12V, Lithium Ion Battery" that have been working well too (both are and small genset starting batteries)...

The above chargers are really "float chargers"--But they have worked well on batteries with no other issues (i.e., the batteries are mostly charged from other sources).

A 4 amp charger should float something like a ~400 AmpHour 12 volt battery bank pretty nicely. If your battery bank is drawing over 1-2% rate of charge (and especially >2% rate of charge)--Your batteries are probably ready to be recycled (high rates of float charging--Batteries will get hot and other things (worst case, could cause a battery fire).

But--Perhaps I have misunderstood you? Are you looking for 120 VAC "float chargers", or some other type of charger?

-Bill