Battery Charger Testing Results

The charger is misleading you.
The initial charge took 5 hours or so. Weekly charges take about 20 mins on Camry. They take longer the more time goes by between intervals. Corolla takes an hour with weekly charges but is only driven a few times per week type business.
 
i have the 4.3 for years for my motorcycles + car + truck, retired + only drive as needed + pleasure in summer, bikes + TT roadster. my 13 vic hammer has the OE battery + car + truck gets "shots" on a regular basis + they are doing well for many years!! charger stays on at least a day, best charger i ever owned!! TT's are known for parasitic draw so it has a "quick disconnect" in the battery that kills everything with a quick unscrew knob. TT sets all winter in garage + only used on nice sunny days!!
 
BatteryMinders on all my toys. '09 SkiDoo OEM AGM battery got replaced due to age in '20 not for lack of cold cranking but it was down a little bit compared to new fresh one. Same for my HD's battery, 10 yrs and replaced it also. Both for not lack of starting but for lack of a pull or kick start backup incase of a no crank issue.
Maintainers are connected full time when parked for more than a couple days and for entire off season on the toys.
 
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JHZR2, do you have a Pro-Logix charger in your testing queue?
It’s in the plan. I started doing this then life catches up and the experiments stop for a while. It’s a good week to maybe try to do a few and I’ll pull this one. Not sure I can do a full power test because of the meter capabilities (voltage I could I guess), but let me give that some thought.
 
Question about the Noco Genius10 or any other really. At what voltage does a "smart charger" consider a typical lead acid group 24 battery fully charged?

I ask because I've been charging a 24F marine type battery used on my gate opener for two days with a Genius10, voltage is 14.2 right now, and the green light continues to slowly blink.
 
Question about the Noco Genius10 or any other really. At what voltage does a "smart charger" consider a typical lead acid group 24 battery fully charged?

I ask because I've been charging a 24F marine type battery used on my gate opener for two days with a Genius10, voltage is 14.2 right now, and the green light continues to slowly blink.
Voltage isn't the only thing that determines the length of the charge cycle in a smart charger. It may also will look at the amount of amperage being drawn, ambient temperature as well as the internal resistance of the battery. Some will perform battery "conditioning" as well, be it "pulsing" (gimmick?) or equalization charges.

 
Voltage isn't the only thing that determines the length of the charge cycle in a smart charger.
I have those instructions too. There's a mistake on page 9 referring to "10.) Repair Mode LED Illuminates solid Red when Repair mode is selected." WRONG. The updated instructions from Noco's web side state "10.) Repair Mode LED When selected, a red LED will illuminate and flash." Which is what mine does.

So I came here for a general answer as to the voltage for a fully charged battery. It's now up to 14.4V.
 
Any thoughts on Schumacher smart chargers? I bought this one well over a year ago and I have been using it on a bunch of my stuff. I don't know how to properly test it, but it caught a failing battery before I knew it was failing. It seemed to improve it temporarily until I was able to get a warranty replacement (the charger stopped saying the battery was bad after 2 nights of desulfation but it still failed the load test when returned to where I bought it).
 

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I have those instructions too. There's a mistake on page 9 referring to "10.) Repair Mode LED Illuminates solid Red when Repair mode is selected." WRONG. The updated instructions from Noco's web side state "10.) Repair Mode LED When selected, a red LED will illuminate and flash." Which is what mine does.

So I came here for a general answer as to the voltage for a fully charged battery. It's now up to 14.4V.
14.4V is not the battery voltage, it is the charger voltage. When the charger voltage goes down to 13.x volts, it will usually indicate the charger is in float mode or standby mode. At this point the battery should be fully charged, assuming it is not defective. AT 77degF, the open circuit voltage of a fully charged battery will be around 12.4 to 12.8 volts, depending on the battery manufacturer.
 
JHZR2,

I'm impressed with your knowledge and efforts on this kind of stuff. Thanks much for your effort! I know just enough about electrical to be dangerous. What would be great, is if and when you ever have the time, do a little tutorial on how to use the basic functions of a multimeter.

A lot of people like to think they know more than they really do, when it comes to even the most common electrical work. And having the ability to understand how even the basics work on these things is valuable. (They're getting cheap enough so most anyone can afford them).

The problem with a LOT of You Tube tutorials on this stuff, is a lot of these guys like to hear themselves talk. And the rest like to think they know more than they really do. You end up more confused after watching, than before. You have a way of presenting this stuff that makes it understandable.
 
Question about the Noco Genius10 or any other really. At what voltage does a "smart charger" consider a typical lead acid group 24 battery fully charged?

I ask because I've been charging a 24F marine type battery used on my gate opener for two days with a Genius10, voltage is 14.2 right now, and the green light continues to slowly blink.
UPDATE: Well looks like it finally reached battery nirvana. The Noco's green light is steady. My mistake was buying a Marine Starting battery from Walmart two years ago. I did not know at the time there are Marine Starting batteries, "MS" and Marine Deep Cycle batteries"DC". I grabbed the first battery with "Marine" on the label. It was about $20 cheaper than the next one up, a Deep Cycle. My application is in a gate opener charging from a solar panel (when the sunlight is bright enough) so it needs good reserve power and able to take deep discharging during dark dreary days. Originally it came with an Interstate Deep Cycle Marine battery, 20+ years ago. It lasted about 4 years. The unregulated solar panel voltage gradually boiled the battery dry and it failed. I added a regulator circuit and next battery, a 100 AH SLA AGM big orange beast originally used in cell tower backup power I bought at a ham radio sidewalk sale, which lasted 14 years. Was sad to see it go. A similar battery now is way out of my price range for new and I haven't seen surplus batteries like that in years.
 
Question about the Noco Genius10 or any other really. At what voltage does a "smart charger" consider a typical lead acid group 24 battery fully charged?

I ask because I've been charging a 24F marine type battery used on my gate opener for two days with a Genius10, voltage is 14.2 right now, and the green light continues to slowly blink.

Voltage-based SOC determination is really only relevant at open circuit (OCV) (nothing connected, nothing loading it or charging it). Getting a true OCV is a hassle in practice, so we usually just apply the meter to the battery and check with everything turned off, and hope that the minimal load that is always there isnt enough to sway it much. Usually its not.

Chargers apply some variant of constant current and constant voltage, with cutoff voltages based upon a variety of factors. An example is to charge a battery at constant current (say 10A for your NOCO Genius 10) until the battery voltage hits 14.7V, and then hold a constant voltage at 14.7 until the current accepted by the battery reaches some level.

In theory, the low current level reached that indicates full charge is based upon ampere-hours of the battery... Which is often not provided on car batteries. In theory, the end of charge is when, say, 0.05*Ah is flowing in at 14.7V. Note we dont tell chargers the Ah of our batteries. So its usually some arbitrary number.

Thus you can kind of tell by a few things:
1) Specific gravity of electrolyte (the real test as it tells you what the chemistry is doing)
2) OCV if the battery is sitting stagnant
3) A fraction of the Ah rating of the battery if it is undergoing charge

UPDATE: Well looks like it finally reached battery nirvana. The Noco's green light is steady. My mistake was buying a Marine Starting battery from Walmart two years ago. I did not know at the time there are Marine Starting batteries, "MS" and Marine Deep Cycle batteries"DC". I grabbed the first battery with "Marine" on the label. It was about $20 cheaper than the next one up, a Deep Cycle. My application is in a gate opener charging from a solar panel (when the sunlight is bright enough) so it needs good reserve power and able to take deep discharging during dark dreary days. Originally it came with an Interstate Deep Cycle Marine battery, 20+ years ago. It lasted about 4 years. The unregulated solar panel voltage gradually boiled the battery dry and it failed. I added a regulator circuit and next battery, a 100 AH SLA AGM big orange beast originally used in cell tower backup power I bought at a ham radio sidewalk sale, which lasted 14 years. Was sad to see it go. A similar battery now is way out of my price range for new and I haven't seen surplus batteries like that in years.

As I recall, the NOCO units swap back and forth between blinking and solid. And it pulses green in two different ways (duration and rapidness of pulses). My take is that when it is doing the CC portion of the charge, the red and yellow lights are on based upon what fraction of the maximum charge current is currently reached (as a proxy for how the battery is changing and SOC is increasing. Again, it has no real way to know % SOC, because it doesnt know the nameplate Ah capacity, or how degraded the battery is. After some period of time above a setpoint voltage and low current, it changes to a pulsing green. When the provided current is below some fraction of an amp, and voltage is above a certain level, it goes solid green to indicate full charge. Im not sure why my 2A unit doesnt hold a CV charge for some period. After sitting with the power supply on at that low level for some period, and the solid green light lit, it then turns off the power supply (so for example it might go from a tiny fraction of an amp to zero), and it just monitors the battery voltage as an OCV-type measurement. Once the measured voltage goes below a certain level, it will re-initiate at least the last part of the charging profile.

Recall the noco plot from the first page.

1640582093527.jpg


I suspect that the red and orange are some of the blue peaks where upon hitting a voltage, it ratchets down the current... It creeps up on max voltage, which is somewhat low for battery charging, but safe, multiple times, all in CC mode.
 
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Excellent information JHZR2 and thanks for taking the time. You recall correctly about how the NOCOs maintain. I also have a Genius1 I keep on the weekly driver, and from my observations it's usually steady green but when the parasitic drain from the vehicle's electronics pulls the battery voltage down enough the green light begins to slowly pulse for a while then goes back to steady.
 
This short 2015 academic paper has a good overview of lead acid charging protocols:


.....In this paper, the traditional charging techniques such as Constant Voltage (CV), Constant Current (CC), the two-step (CCCV), and the pulse method are mentioned. Besides, the negative pulse discharge method, and the superimposed pulse frequency technique are explained thoroughly. The intermittent technique is also included from two different sources. Furthermore, Interrupted Charge Control (ICC) is another method this paper is going to deal with.....

There is no definite perfect charging technique for lead acid batteries. There are several methods each having its advantages and its disadvantages.

Starting with the conventional methods’ drawbacks, the constant current mode has an initial current less than the acceptable charge current. This causes the charge time to be large. Similarly, the constant voltage method has charge current greater than the acceptable value. This technique has a higher gas evolution in the battery, which affects its functioning [7].

Concerning the pulse method, its major disadvantage is the poor efficiency [4]. Although some new studies were introduced to improve this technique, it is still not the most suitable charging mode.

The negative pulse technique is a sensitive method. If its amplitude is too small, the effect of depolarization is neglected. However, if the amplitude is large the battery will be damaged. Moreover, if the technique is maintained for a long time, the battery will go through thermal runaway, which affects its lifetime.

The superimposed pulse frequency technique invented recently extends the lifetime of the battery in addition to have high efficiency. Not having drawbacks does not mean that it is perfect. It is a new technique and research has not found yet its disadvantages.

Concerning the intermittent charge method, it reduces grid corrosion, which helps in extending the operating life of a battery [9]. However, beside the risk of undercharge, it adds costs to the chargers. In addition, this mode is avoided when frequent discharges occur. Nevertheless, this technique is also sensitive depending on the value of its functioning parameters.

Finally, the intermittent charge control is a new technique also. It ensures full recharge as mentioned previously, without affecting the temperature, thus not causing thermal runaway. Furthermore, it extends the battery’s life by minimizing grid corrosion and protecting the battery from undercharge. In a similar manner to the SPF, this technique definitely has some drawbacks but its side effects need years to show up.
 
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It would be nice if the charger manufacturers mentioned what technology they are using in their chargers.

Afrer I had a battery gradually go dry from overcharging from an unregulated solar panel that puts out 19.5V open circuit, I made a simple regulator with a 12V 7812 IC with a green LED (2V drop) and a silicon diode 4003 (.6V drop) in series with the ground pin of the IC to raise the maximum regulated voltage to 14.6V. It will put out all the current it can up to that point. That simple circuit on a 100 Ah SLA AGM battery mentioned above ran 14 years without a problem, never had to top off the battery with an external charger.
 
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