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It's a balancing act. Undercharge sulfates batteries. Overcharge causes positive plate corrosion and lots of water consumption. Water usage is easy to deal with , at 50 cents a gallon for good DI water.
I believe 90% of early battery failures are from undercharge/sulfation. Overcharge is much less common, mostly because you need a lot of solar PV to overcharge batteries in just 7 hours.
Water usage is a good guideline, if you track usage by cell. When charging starts using lots of water, you have just surpassed the sweet spot. Undercharged uses little water. Barely charged uses more, over charged you go crazy trying to keep them watered.
If you don't have time to add another half hour to absorb, raise the bulk & absorb voltage .2V and see if that helps after a couple days. If not add more voltage to cram more charge into the cells in s shorter period of time. Don't violate any max charge rate spec from the factory though.
Batteries have to be fully charged before EQ (which is a slight overcharge) can begin.
I believe 90% of early battery failures are from undercharge/sulfation. Overcharge is much less common, mostly because you need a lot of solar PV to overcharge batteries in just 7 hours.
Water usage is a good guideline, if you track usage by cell. When charging starts using lots of water, you have just surpassed the sweet spot. Undercharged uses little water. Barely charged uses more, over charged you go crazy trying to keep them watered.
If you don't have time to add another half hour to absorb, raise the bulk & absorb voltage .2V and see if that helps after a couple days. If not add more voltage to cram more charge into the cells in s shorter period of time. Don't violate any max charge rate spec from the factory though.
Batteries have to be fully charged before EQ (which is a slight overcharge) can begin.
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