Hi All,
Well I finally got my "big green" battery to fully charge. I simply forgot how much I had taken out and my 10 Amp charger had a bad diode and was not charging properly. I'll fix it later. It took almost 24 hours @ 2A to do it with a smaller supply/charger. When you really kill a ALUM battery, it doesn't seem to hurt it (might lower capacity for a few cycles) but you really have to put back ALL the energy you took out of it. After a full charge, I did a "normal" discharge from a floating 12.65 VDC (drops immediately to 12.3 VDC under load) down to 10.5VDC and got out 20.13 Amp Hours @ a rate of 5 amps/hour with a measured 220 Watt hours of energy out. Easily could have removed another 100 watt hours of energy if I taken it down another couple volts but didn't want to get into the deep area of the curve. I suspect it will regain another 25-30% with some normal cycles. It is almost recharged now at a higher rate of around 5Ahr rate. The battery is what it is. It works. Now I just wonder how long it will work, number of cycles, etc. What temp range can it work cold wise.
I expected my 5# of ALUM to come today and it didn't......Oh well, there is always tomorrow and eager awaiting John's next video.
Ben K4ZEP
Well I finally got my "big green" battery to fully charge. I simply forgot how much I had taken out and my 10 Amp charger had a bad diode and was not charging properly. I'll fix it later. It took almost 24 hours @ 2A to do it with a smaller supply/charger. When you really kill a ALUM battery, it doesn't seem to hurt it (might lower capacity for a few cycles) but you really have to put back ALL the energy you took out of it. After a full charge, I did a "normal" discharge from a floating 12.65 VDC (drops immediately to 12.3 VDC under load) down to 10.5VDC and got out 20.13 Amp Hours @ a rate of 5 amps/hour with a measured 220 Watt hours of energy out. Easily could have removed another 100 watt hours of energy if I taken it down another couple volts but didn't want to get into the deep area of the curve. I suspect it will regain another 25-30% with some normal cycles. It is almost recharged now at a higher rate of around 5Ahr rate. The battery is what it is. It works. Now I just wonder how long it will work, number of cycles, etc. What temp range can it work cold wise.
I expected my 5# of ALUM to come today and it didn't......Oh well, there is always tomorrow and eager awaiting John's next video.
Ben K4ZEP
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