![]() ![]() The bigger the charge going in, or, fuller the battery is, the further the voltage readout is from accurate. ![]() A battery that’s being charged–power going in–will read falsely high.Here’s what you have to always remember about the voltage readouts on your batteries: The truth is that total accuracy is complicated, but ball park is pretty easy and close enough to monitor it so we get maximum life out of our battery. With it jumping around like that, how are we supposed to know exactly what the voltage of the battery really is? How to Get “Good-Enough” Accuracy Worse, it can seem to change very suddenly by as much as two volts or more. If you’ve ever watched your voltmeter you know it can read as high as 14.4 during the day and and as low as 11.6 when a big load is put on it. Because Deep Cycle batteries are expensive (from $100-$350 each), and we often have 2-4 of them (totaling $200-$1200) you want to get the longest life possible out of them!īelow is a chart that lists battery voltage and what it means to the State of Charge of your battery:Īs this chart makes clear, it’s very important we know at any given moment exactly what the charge of our battery is but that’s not as easy as it seems. If you lightly cycle (25% discharge) it every day it will last much longer than if you deeply cycle (50% discharge) it every day. Going below 50% will cut that even much more.Īs you can see from this, knowing how deeply you are cycling your house battery is very important to getting as long a life as possible out of it. I wouldn’t expect to get much more than 100-200 Deep Cycles out of one, and maybe less. However while it’s okay at both jobs, it’s not great at either. A high quality Deep Cycle battery could last 10 years if it’s lightly cycled (25% or less) every day!Ī Marine Battery is a hybrid battery, it’s designed to both start engines and to be cycled. ![]() On the other hand, if you only take it down to a quarter, 25% discharge, that’s only a partial cycle and a quality Deep Cycle battery might could do that 1000-3600 times. It’s common for a quality Deep Cycle battery to be able to be deep cycled 500-1000 times.īut, if you are abusive to your batteries, and cycle them down below 50%, you are actually damaging them each time and reducing the number of deep cycles they have. ![]() On the other hand, a quality Deep Cycle battery is designed to intentionally be discharged to half throughout their life and are purpose-built to be able to handle it. A starting battery is never supposed to be deep cycled and after 3-7 accidental deep cycles, it will be destroyed and need to be replaced. The difference between a starting battery and a true Deep Cycle battery is how many cycles they are designed to handle. If you take your battery down to 50%, or half of it’s capacity, you want to bring the battery back up to 100% full as soon as possible, preferably the next day! That’s considered one full deep cycle. Every time you draw power out of your battery it is being discharged somewhat and that is called cycling it. Monitoring your State of Charge is critically important to the long term health of your battery bank, because they want to be as close to full as they can be all the time. Many of us have a house battery in our van or RV that we are charging either off our engines alternator or starting battery, or you have installed solar panels which are charging our house battery. Hopefully you have a charge controller with a digital display that give you the volts of your battery or you have installed you own voltmeter to monitor your batteries State of Charge. Just because your voltmeter tells you the battery is full, should you trust it? ![]()
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