JHZR2
Staff member
Like a number of us on here, I have a number of battery chargers. I keep a bunch because I have a number of cars that dont get year-round use, and I also have some for maintenance.
Because there is now an Automotive Electrical subforum, and because there are a lot of good questions, discussions, and general interest on battery chargers, I thought it would be interesting to test a few, to better observe and discuss how they operate.
I intend to test a number of chargers that I own, as time allows, and invite others to test them to if they are able and so inclined. I intend to edit this thread heavily, questions and good discussion welcome, but unrelated questions should be asked separately.
I wont get the testing perfect. I dont have a battery cycler to extract exact amounts of energy from a specific test battery. Who knows how this will go in the end. But its a shot to see how these thing work, one after another, as time and energy allow me to do it.
The testing will be done using two Owon B35T+ Bluetooth Datalogging multimeters. These are cheap and available on Amazon. I am not looking for low mA accuracy, so will take current readings through the 20A sensing port. Data is taken at a pre-defined interval, and the CSVs that are pulled from the meters will be processed in Excel. Ill try to keep the charts consistent. In the end each chart can be tens of thousands of data points, but its nothing that a computer cant handle. My time and energy to manipulate charts may be a different matter though...
Example of setup in vehicle:
Meter Bluetooth GUI example:
1/10/21 Edit: Going to use a spare Group 29 DC battery that I have in my garage. It read 12.6V initially, but to load it, I am using a 150W inverter an a 4.5W and 25W LED (just whats convenient in my garage). Voltage quickly dropped with load, but this plot shows a very consistent voltage when the 4.5W load was applied. At the end, far right, is when I used a 25W LED.
Efficiency of the load appears to be ~ 60% for the inverter and light. Note the image below, that shows 3.27A @ 11.72V, which is 43.6W. I don’t know that this battery is the best as a result, but it’s what I have to easily and consistently test in my garage.
Im going to reserve a few response windows right below this for future tests. When I get as far as Im going to go, I can always delete the rest. Each reply window only allows a certain number of embedded images, so I want to reserve enough for my anticipated use.
Please keep unrelated questions/comments to a minimum in this thread. Non-specific discussion, not associated with the details of the chargers and their voltage/current profiles will be removed at my discretion to ensure consistent discussion and flow of relevant information. No hard feelings.
Enjoy, and I look forward to good discussion!
Because there is now an Automotive Electrical subforum, and because there are a lot of good questions, discussions, and general interest on battery chargers, I thought it would be interesting to test a few, to better observe and discuss how they operate.
I intend to test a number of chargers that I own, as time allows, and invite others to test them to if they are able and so inclined. I intend to edit this thread heavily, questions and good discussion welcome, but unrelated questions should be asked separately.
I wont get the testing perfect. I dont have a battery cycler to extract exact amounts of energy from a specific test battery. Who knows how this will go in the end. But its a shot to see how these thing work, one after another, as time and energy allow me to do it.
The testing will be done using two Owon B35T+ Bluetooth Datalogging multimeters. These are cheap and available on Amazon. I am not looking for low mA accuracy, so will take current readings through the 20A sensing port. Data is taken at a pre-defined interval, and the CSVs that are pulled from the meters will be processed in Excel. Ill try to keep the charts consistent. In the end each chart can be tens of thousands of data points, but its nothing that a computer cant handle. My time and energy to manipulate charts may be a different matter though...
Example of setup in vehicle:
Meter Bluetooth GUI example:
1/10/21 Edit: Going to use a spare Group 29 DC battery that I have in my garage. It read 12.6V initially, but to load it, I am using a 150W inverter an a 4.5W and 25W LED (just whats convenient in my garage). Voltage quickly dropped with load, but this plot shows a very consistent voltage when the 4.5W load was applied. At the end, far right, is when I used a 25W LED.
Efficiency of the load appears to be ~ 60% for the inverter and light. Note the image below, that shows 3.27A @ 11.72V, which is 43.6W. I don’t know that this battery is the best as a result, but it’s what I have to easily and consistently test in my garage.
Im going to reserve a few response windows right below this for future tests. When I get as far as Im going to go, I can always delete the rest. Each reply window only allows a certain number of embedded images, so I want to reserve enough for my anticipated use.
Please keep unrelated questions/comments to a minimum in this thread. Non-specific discussion, not associated with the details of the chargers and their voltage/current profiles will be removed at my discretion to ensure consistent discussion and flow of relevant information. No hard feelings.
Enjoy, and I look forward to good discussion!
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