Reply To: additives or gadgets to fix or renew batteries

[12vman]

“I have been very hard on my deep cycle batteries, the ones I have are not that old, just a couple of years old, but are not holding a charge very well, I’m bad about not equalizing them because my inverter will not work while the batteries are being equalized and I live off of my batteries, I refuse to equalize them while I’m not home, I don’t want to risk overheating or boiling out my batteries.”

I ruined a set of batteries in the early years by draining them too much over and over again. I didn’t get 2 yrs. out of them. (4 Golf Cart Batteries, Series – Paralleled for 12 v.d.c.) Sometimes I’d let the voltage drop to 10-11 volts before I started shutting things down. That was a huge mistake! You should never take a 12 volt battery below 11.9 volts UNDER LOAD, meaning do the voltage test when you have things running. An unloaded battery will show a higher voltage than the real capacity. They show their real color under load, hence, load test..

Most inverters will shut down when the battery voltage drops to 10.5 volts “Under Load”. If your inverter shuts down, you seriously discharged your battery way too low. It doesn’t take many cycles like this to damage a battery, believe me..

If your inverter won’t operate during a charge period, you have your bulk charge voltage set too high. Most inverters will operate to a voltage of ~14.5-14.8 volts before the over voltage sense shuts it down. If your bulk voltage is going higher than ~14.2-14.4 volts, all you are doing is boiling the life out of them. That isn’t good either. If you need to add water more than once a month, you have your bulk voltage set too high. It can take a week of sunny days to get the settings adjusted correctly but it’s a must. You can’t guess..