Battery State of Charge Chart

Anything electric, AC or DC

Battery depth of charge vs life?

Postby Richard A. » Thu Aug 11, 2011 10:41 am

I've known for some time that discharging a battery as little as possible will increase it's useful life .. however ..

The less you discharge .. the less time you get using your battery. That is ... if you stop at 70% you only get (pulling a number out of my hat) one hour before you need to stop. If you stop at 50% you will get much more time .. but the battery will not last as long before it needs to be replaced.

However we don't use our batteries every day. Likely not even every week. Yes, if you go for a week or two trip you will use it every day, but most of us just camp every once in a while on weekends.

So is the number of recharges (useful life) REALLY that much of a issue?

I'm getting a "battery monitor" that I can set an alarm to a specific voltage. http://www.batterystuff.com/battery-products/UPGvoltminder.html and will likely set it to around 50% for now.

ANOTHER THING ... I make it a practice of putting my battery on a charger once a week when I'm not camping. In the off season I will remove it, bring it inside, and put it on a float charger for the winter.
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Postby Ron Dickey » Fri Feb 03, 2012 11:10 pm

Home Power magazine offers this on

Understanding Battery Capacity

http://homepower.com/article/?file=HP147_pg34_ATE_1
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Postby eamarquardt » Fri Feb 03, 2012 11:21 pm

Here is a doo dad (technical term) that will measure dc watt hours:

http://www.powerwerx.com/digital-meters ... nline.html

To monitor your charge and discharge it would take two of them. One on the charge circuit into the battery. A second one in the discharge circuit to your distribution panel.

Cheers,

Gus
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Re: Battery State of Charge Chart

Postby Ron Dickey » Mon Oct 14, 2013 9:41 pm

Basic understanding of Batteries.

I am still trying to understand the whole thing. I understand starting batteries and that they are for quick starts not long running. and Deep Cycle are for where there is nothing to start and you use it like a electric car or bike and those you have to watch because nothing is going to start up to charge it like it does in my Prius.

http://www.marxrv.com/12volt/12volt.htm
It is a basic understand your battery site. made from other sites and includes a disclaimer.
It starts by saying: Welcome to the page of all things 12 Volt! The information here was either excerpted from various sources on the web and in the public domain, or results directly from my personal experience.

my disclaimer is I am an amateur T&TTT hobbies trying to help myself and others find the right direction. And inso looking for that direction I realize not everyone totally knows the answers.
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Re: Battery State of Charge Chart

Postby Shadow Catcher » Tue Oct 15, 2013 5:46 am

The two most accepted battery monitor are the Victron http://www.victronenergy.com/battery-monitors
And the Bogart Engineering Trimetric http://www.bogartengineering.com
Both use a shunt to measure the current going into and coming out of your battery(s).

I went with the Victron because of space constraints and easy set up and it is normally set on % state of charge. I mounted it inside the cabin so I can reach up and find out if it is time to be careful of current use. In reality I did not need to worry as we have never gotten even close to 50% SOC.

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Re: Battery State of Charge Chart

Postby Ron Dickey » Thu Oct 31, 2013 11:59 am

speaking of charge if you have 2 batteries parallel and you are charging them.
can you charge both with the same charger
Would it be better to have two chargers disconnecting the link between them?
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