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Old 07-27-2020, 02:11 PM   #1
LSUgoTIGER
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Default Battery Charging Best Practices

So without going back and checking all the multitudes of pages and posts I'm pretty positive I've read on here and on cartsunlimited, I'll confirm here...

So in my neighborhood, there are probably about 20-25 golf carts at this point. One of the other guys stopped by this weekend while I was working in my garage and chatted for a minute. He and his family were just out cruising around on their cart. His family has a business doing small engine repair/equipment sales, etc. On the side, they flip a few carts out of their shop here and there.

So he tells me they're just out cruising around, "trying to drain the batteries all the way down." When I asked why, he said that he just found out from his "battery supplier", that you aren't supposed to be plugging it in after each use and leaving it plugged in. You're supposed to just drain them until they're dead and it won't go anymore before plugging back in to charge. This allows all the oxidation or sulfates, or whatever to be able to fall off the plates.

I told him that was the exact opposite of everything I've ever heard or read on here, and suggested that he get a second opinion before doing that. His response was, "well this is directly from the battery guy, not just some golf cart guy on the internet."

I wished him luck as they drove off into the sunset. Is he about to ruin his batteries?
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Old 07-27-2020, 02:42 PM   #2
kernal
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Default Re: Battery Charging Best Practices

Trojan battery user guide: https://www.trojanbattery.com/pdf/Tr...UsersGuide.pdf

Charging starts on page 16. Other brands of flooded batteries would be very similar if not the same.

Battery University: https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/...d_acid_battery
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Old 07-27-2020, 09:33 PM   #3
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Default Re: Battery Charging Best Practices

A battery supplier's income source is the sale of batteries and this one appears to be trying to give himself a raise.

A lead-acid, wet-cell, deep-cycle battery's cradle to grave lifespan is inversely proportional to the average SoC (State of Charge) maintained. See attachment-1, which is based on data received from the four battery manufacturers listed.

Attachment-2 is the chart that K. Fred Wehmeyer (Senior Vice President - Engineering -- U.S. Battery Mfg. Co., Inc.) emailed me a few years ago amongst other stuff in response to some questions I submitted to their tech support. (Yes, my questions were forwarded to the VP level.) It is now available on the USB website. Note: It is in DoD (Depth of Discharge) which is the reciprocal of SoC. The composite chart I made is in SoC.

---------------------------

In a nutshell, under ideal conditions and perfect maintenance practices, if you are using US Battery brand cart batteries and maintain an average SoC of 60%, you should expect roughly 1475 charge cycles (4.04 years if charged every night), but if you maintained a 70% SoC average, you'd get 3300 charge cycles (9.04 Years). Of course, it is highly unlikely of us while get battery livespans anywhere near those numbers, but the trend still applies.

I also attached a white paper on Opportunity Charging.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg Avg SoC vs Charge Cycles.jpg (127.8 KB, 0 views)
File Type: jpg USB Cycle Life vs DoD.jpg (204.5 KB, 0 views)
File Type: jpg Oppertunity charging.JPG (145.0 KB, 0 views)
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Old 07-27-2020, 09:47 PM   #4
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Default Re: Battery Charging Best Practices

Quote:
Originally Posted by LSUgoTIGER View Post
Is he about to ruin his batteries?
He will certainly reduce the life expectancy of his batteries ... as JohnnieB's charts indicate.
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Old 07-28-2020, 05:44 AM   #5
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Default Re: Battery Charging Best Practices

he is a battery suppliers dream....as he (your neighbor) has drank his Kool-Aid and is killing off his batteries LONG before they should die....not sure how long he has abused his batteries, but no doubt he has most likely caused irreputable damage already.
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Old 07-28-2020, 10:01 AM   #6
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Default Re: Battery Charging Best Practices

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Originally Posted by Sir Nuke View Post
he is a battery suppliers dream....as he (your neighbor) has drank his Kool-Aid and is killing off his batteries LONG before they should die....not sure how long he has abused his batteries, but no doubt he has most likely caused irreputable damage already.
Is suspect you meant irreparable rather than irreputable.

For those who aren't aware of it, when you drop the battery voltage under load to below 1.5VPC (Volts per Cell) the plates start disintegrating. The higher the amp draw at the time, the greater the destruction and the lower the SoC is at the time, the easier it is to drop the under-load voltage down to 1.5VPC and under.

1.5VPC equates to 27.0V for a 36V pack, 31.5V for a 42V pack and 36.0V for a 48V pack, so cart owners with programmable controllers ought to set the Low Voltage cutoff at least 1.0V above those numbers.
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Old 07-28-2020, 10:19 AM   #7
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Default Re: Battery Charging Best Practices

per the Trojan Post graciously supplied by Kernal: "Lead-acid batteries do not have a memory effect and should not be fully discharged prior to charging"
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Old 07-28-2020, 10:38 AM   #8
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Default Re: Battery Charging Best Practices

So maybe a little clarification is in order. I talked to him again yesterday, and the batteries he has he got well used, and they had been neglected and treated pretty poorly. As such, currently (and as long as he's had them) the cart only runs about 20-30 minutes anyway before needing to charge. His battery guy told him to just try running them all the way down and charging for a couple cycles, because he said that would help knock off some of the sulfation that was already there.

It wasn't meant to be a standard charging practice, just a last ditch effort to squeeze a little more life out of the batteries. Still not sure that would do much for him. He's probably getting new batteries soon one way or the other.

Slightly off topic, and in the wrong forum, but he has what appears to be a Club Car DS. But he says it's actually an '03 Pathway. Built in partnership with GM as a street legal cart so that GM could get emissions points with the EPA. Basically still a CC DS, but with some extra bells and whistles from the factory
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Old 07-28-2020, 10:53 AM   #9
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Default Re: Battery Charging Best Practices

The Pathways were real.
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Old 07-28-2020, 10:59 AM   #10
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Default Re: Battery Charging Best Practices

Quote:
Originally Posted by LSUgoTIGER View Post
So maybe a little clarification is in order. I talked to him again yesterday, and the batteries he has he got well used, and they had been neglected and treated pretty poorly. As such, currently (and as long as he's had them) the cart only runs about 20-30 minutes anyway before needing to charge. His battery guy told him to just try running them all the way down and charging for a couple cycles, because he said that would help knock off some of the sulfation that was already there.

It wasn't meant to be a standard charging practice, just a last ditch effort to squeeze a little more life out of the batteries. Still not sure that would do much for him. He's probably getting new batteries soon one way or the other.

Slightly off topic, and in the wrong forum, but he has what appears to be a Club Car DS. But he says it's actually an '03 Pathway. Built in partnership with GM as a street legal cart so that GM could get emissions points with the EPA. Basically still a CC DS, but with some extra bells and whistles from the factory
That is basically the same physical process the snake oil additives work. Problem is the material sloughed off the plates is conductive and if enough of if collect together on the was down to the bottom of the cell, it causes a short, which may in turn cause and explosion.

Safest way to rejuvenate a battery that won't take a full charge is to repeatedly charge it without discharging it between charge cycles.

The batteries in my cart when I acquired it would on charge to 88% SoC and after a month of back-to-back charging, they were charging to 97% SoC. By then I had a charger that went into float charge after the regular cycle and by the next summer when I replaced them, they were charging to 98.5%.
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