NOCO Genius 1 Poor Tempurature Compensation

Thankyou-
But what is the base charging voltage to apply the +- correction to? Knowing this for each specific car and its battery is probably impossible to find out?
In your car, an alternator puts out 14.1 or 14.2V constant

But are we saying that that is variable?

As to the charger.. the CTEK unit I have (MXS 5.0) says it is *supposed to* top out at 14.4V (Stage 3 - Charging phase)
Battery Ready To Use at Stage 4
More ready at Stage 7...
 
Thankyou-
But what is the base charging voltage to apply the +- correction to? Knowing this for each specific car and its battery is probably impossible to find out?
That’s the problem. Differences in lead alloy and paste compositions does change the base voltage. The guidelines of 14.4 or 14.7 might be good enough, and anything is much better than nothing.

We’re not trying to achieve 20 year life on expensive UPS batteries in mission critical data centers. We’re trying to increase the overall performance, and limit degradation for a range of batteries in different applications, and likely will still replace the battery when it is “old enough”. So splitting hairs still has the potential to be wrong for most. IMO we need to accept that, and find the best charger for our needs, that has the least potential to do harm, and roll with it.
 
That’s the problem. Differences in lead alloy and paste compositions does change the base voltage. The guidelines of 14.4 or 14.7 might be good enough, and anything is much better than nothing.

We’re not trying to achieve 20 year life on expensive UPS batteries in mission critical data centers. We’re trying to increase the overall performance, and limit degradation for a range of batteries in different applications, and likely will still replace the battery when it is “old enough”. So splitting hairs still has the potential to be wrong for most. IMO we need to accept that, and find the best charger for our needs, that has the least potential to do harm, and roll with it.
Are there also "variable output " alternators? Or is that still a 14.1 or 14.2V constant
 
Are there also "variable output " alternators? Or is that still a 14.1 or 14.2V constant
I don’t exactly know what you mean. Most every alternator I’ve ever seen varies output for one reason or another. There can be temperature adjustment in voltage regulator or the PCM, and some cars now vary voltage much more, since lowering the voltage will limit how much current will go in.
 
I don’t exactly know what you mean. Most every alternator I’ve ever seen varies output for one reason or another. There can be temperature adjustment in voltage regulator or the PCM, and some cars now vary voltage much more, since lowering the voltage will limit how much current will go in.

Ahh.. okay. I always thought the alternator put out a "constant" voltage when the car was running that DIDN'T vary. So the premise of my question confused you. I apologize.
 
Ahh.. okay. I always thought the alternator put out a "constant" voltage when the car was running that DIDN'T vary. So the premise of my question confused you. I apologize.
Even my early 1980s fully mechanical MB diesels change the voltage over the duration of operation. Perhaps because the alternator and underhood gets hot, perhaps because of something else.

Most every car Ive seen starts somewhere between 14-15V (GM has a pretty aggressive charge voltage and temperature compensation), and drops to high-13s/low 14s.
 
Thankyou-
But what is the base charging voltage to apply the +- correction to? Knowing this for each specific car and its battery is probably impossible to find out?
On my Exide AGM battery the recommended 77degF charging voltage is printed on the top label. Some battery manufacturers also have that information on their website.

The photo below is of a Northstar AGM battery from Batteries Plus.
 
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I have a NOCO Genius 1 I use Occasionally and I put it on our tractor that I normally run a battery minder on. The tractor is in an unheated garage, temperature this morning was 18°f this morning out there. The float voltage was sitting at 12.91v, which I give the charger an A for effort, however it was far below what it should have been. The charger was indicating it was in maintenance mode. I should mention this tractor battery is under 2 years old and has almost a perfect internal resistance reading. There is no draw what so ever on the battery.

I hooked my Battery minder 2012 up and sure enough it did its thing and I checked it an hour later and it was floating along nicely at 13.95 Volts.

The Battery minders with temperature compensation have the temp sensor outside the device, the NOCO Genius 1 supposedly has temperature compensation and the sensor is inside the device. I can only assume that the heat generated from the transformer inside the device effects the ambient temperature sensor inside the device and there is not correct internal compensation, or the programing of the logic does not continually hold float voltage at the maximum allowable voltage for the corresponding temperature and this is by design and part of the Genius working its magic, or the float voltage simply is not as high as on the battery minder, which doesnt make sense and would create its own issues.

I cannot find any information in the NOCO manual on the charging algorithm like I have found in battery minder or Ctek manuals.

I am going to run a few more experiments and see what we find. The Battery Minders have been my favorite thus far, I have several and they are top notch in my book. I do like that my NOCO 5 has a "repair" mode that runs the voltage up high and gives the battery a nice equalizing charge, which is why I bought that particular one to begin with.
"...the NOCO Genius 1 supposedly has temperature compensation and the sensor is inside the device. I can only assume that the heat generated from the transformer inside the device effects the ambient temperature sensor inside the device and there is not correct internal compensation..."

Just a guess...That NOCO probably records ambient temp before you begin charging, and uses that stored reading for temp compensation through out the entire cycle. Better than using the internal temp as the unit heats up.
 
"...the NOCO Genius 1 supposedly has temperature compensation and the sensor is inside the device. I can only assume that the heat generated from the transformer inside the device effects the ambient temperature sensor inside the device and there is not correct internal compensation..."

Just a guess...That NOCO probably records ambient temp before you begin charging, and uses that stored reading for temp compensation through out the entire cycle. Better than using the internal temp as the unit heats up
Got curious-
My NOCO Genius 1 has been connected to my vehicle continuously for at least a week. Ambient temp in the garage is 49.6 F and the NOCO housing is reading 49.3. I don't think it is heating up much to fool its temp compensation.
 
Got curious-
My NOCO Genius 1 has been connected to my vehicle continuously for at least a week. Ambient temp in the garage is 49.6 F and the NOCO housing is reading 49.3. I don't think it is heating up much to fool its temp compensation.
Interesting result.

I’m At float this is expected, under full 1A CC operation that may differ.
 
I’m currently studying my 2A unit via two data logging multimeters. Ultimately I hope to plot the results and we can do more of an analysis.

When the green light is flashing, constant current charge is still occurring. So the colored lights seem to only roughly and loosely align to voltage/SOC.

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Compression makes it hard to see, but I deliberately took the second pick when the green LED had flashed on.

Then it reverts to a lower state still while flashing. As @wrcsixeight says, these don’t hold CV for long, which makes it harder to achieve the fullest charge. The question for SLI batteries is more if it keeps them in a regime where it’s not thermodynamically favorable to either oxidize or sulfate.

As can be seen, it drops the voltage. I’ll plot the results in a new thread.

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I've had one of our vehicles that has been idle on the noco for a week, I checked voltage and we were at 12.7 while in maintenance mode (slowly pulsing green light). Temperature was 34 degrees f.

I put my 1.5 amp battery minder on and it charged for over an hour, which at least 15 minutes of which was the bulk charge.

Definitely need to run a few test when I get the chance.

I dont know, I like my battery minders and thier strategy at this point
 
This thing is interesting. It seems to just keep doing CC charges up to a set point voltage (that is I assume dictated by the thermistor), then ratcheting down current and doing it again. I won’t pull any more data tonight, and I’ll ultimately create a thread on charger testing, but here’s what I saw from my last data grab (there was about 5 hours of data before but I haven’t merged it in excel).

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I've had one of our vehicles that has been idle on the noco for a week, I checked voltage and we were at 12.7 while in maintenance mode (slowly pulsing green light). Temperature was 34 degrees f.

I put my 1.5 amp battery minder on and it charged for over an hour, which at least 15 minutes of which was the bulk charge.

Definitely need to run a few test when I get the chance.

I dont know, I like my battery minders and thier strategy at this point

Remember that there are two green light pulses. One when nearing 100%, then solid for a while, then another slow pulse when per Noco’s description, they just watch the battery until it hits a threshold, and then they top it up again.

Interestingly, since the wife’s van sat for over a week for the holidays, I put my battery minder on there. It didn’t stay on CC/CV as long as I thought. I am playing with a ctek Bluetooth sensor so these data aren’t as good, ultimately I need to do my two data logging meter setup on the minder on a somewhat depleted battery. But the minder set at 8A quickly hit Mac voltage and then went to float, while on 2A just took longer to hit voltage.

The ctek graph isn’t great. The voltage graphing is downright terrible because you can’t adjust the y axis or get real clear values. So use this SOC chart as a proxy.

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This thing is interesting. It seems to just keep doing CC charges up to a set point voltage (that is I assume dictated by the thermistor), then ratcheting down current and doing it again. I won’t pull any more data tonight, and I’ll ultimately create a thread on charger testing, but here’s what I saw from my last data grab (there was about 5 hours of data before but I haven’t merged it in excel).

View attachment 39510

That stair step charging algorithm does not make much sense to me, but NOCO seems to feel it is superior.
Look at the bottom of page 2 in this NOCO sell sheet for the G26000 and you see the stair step algorithm: Lots of jumps up and down for volts and amps.
 
That stair step charging algorithm does not make much sense to me, but NOCO seems to feel it is superior.
Look at the bottom of page 2 in this NOCO sell sheet for the G26000 and you see the stair step algorithm: Lots of jumps up and down for volts and amps.

Corrosion is as much an issue as sulfation. Spending lots of time at higher voltages accelerates corrosion. I suspect that this type of ratcheting up is intended to get more and more Ah in while limiting the battery’s exposure to elevated voltages.

Corrosion liberated antimony, which tends to migrate and ultimately reduce the hydrogen gassing potential, which accelerates electrolyte loss and other issues.

While such an approach might not force every last Ah in, it has the potential to be the best of both worlds, where it isn’t thermodynamically favorable to form sulfate, nor is is as corrosive.
 
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Went all night at 0.2A. The green light only is flashing (pic from yesterday had all lights on and green flashing). Have not gotten to solid green.

it’s colder this AM (35 currently, was maybe 33 overnight), and the voltage the charger is taking it to is higher. Still capturing data for the next 11 hours...

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Nevermind the blue line.

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Went all night at 0.2A. The green light only is flashing (pic from yesterday had all lights on and green flashing). Have not gotten to solid green.

it’s colder this AM (35 currently, was maybe 33 overnight), and the voltage the charger is taking it to is higher. Still capturing data for the next 11 hours...

View attachment 39550

Nevermind the blue line.
As a side note, hoe do you like those Owon meters? I need a new data logging meter and those look like a good value.
 
As a side note, hoe do you like those Owon meters? I need a new data logging meter and those look like a good value.

They are a good value. Are they better than my fluke meter? No. But I bought one initially to leave at my remote (unconditioned) garage to try to catch some parasitic drains, and it fit the bill. The 10k data points is somewhat limiting, but it can be managed. All the data logging is done through an app over Bluetooth, but it logs while offline to conserve energy, you don’t need a device hanging with it long term.

It’s two or three steps to get the CSV file with data, but it works well for the price. Because I want to do my data manipulation in excel, I wasn’t sold on fluke connect and the cost and all. This is bare bones simple and works.

I like that the meter takes 2xAA instead of a more expensive 9V battery. Seems to work for a couple days of data logging.
 
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