Re: Battery Question
Sorry, I was trying to be brief, but I just came out confusing. I'll try to be more clear.<br /><br />The more you discharge a lead acid battery, no matter what type, the more damage you will do to it. The damage will cause the battery to only live through a fraction of it's possible discharge/recharge cycles.<br /><br />For example, a battery regularly discharged 20% down from fully charged may have ten times the potential life of a battery discharged 80% of it's capacity.<br /><br />If you discharge a battery past 80%, it will damage it very badly, and may quickly kill it. The plates inside the battery accumalate lead sulfate very quickly at this depth of discharge. This buildup gets too heavy to be removed by recharging often within a couple of days.<br /><br />Shallow discharges under 10% can actually hurt a deep cycle battery. They need a bit of exercise.<br /><br />Percent of discharge is related to battery voltage, but it is also dependant on tempurature and load. Here's a chart for room tempurature and just after a load is taken off:<br />100% charge - 12.7 Volts<br />75% charge - 12.4 Volts<br />50% charge - 12.2 Volts<br />25% charge - 12.0 Volts<br />Just about empty - 11.9 Volts<br />The best way of determining percent of charge is to measure the electrolyte's specific gravity. Unfortunately, that's really inconvinent.<br /><br />Hope this helps!
