We hope we haven’t destroyed our house batteries! When we arrived at the boat today we discovered a refrigerator at 50 degrees F and a freezer at 40 degrees. When the boat was last being secured, instead of turning AC house circuits off, the battery charger was turned off. The wrong switch was flipped. So, 400 amp hours of stored DC power drove the freezer and refrigerator for a while, but ultimately the DC power ran out. It was surprising to still find ice in the freezer.
We do now know our Charles charger puts out its rated 60 amps, and we know the charger could be larger. In about four hours the batteries were back to about 50% charged. There was no abnormal heat rise. We left the boat with the charger on and with hope that we only slightly shortened the life of the batteries with this deep discharge.
1 comment:
Craig,
I followed the conversation on the IP list, but think more than one cycle has been wasted, but so what? There are many mistakes and misdeeds but this is not a biggie, so do not whip yourselves.
When I worked at West Marine the biggest selling point on the GELs were they can be discharged to about nothing without damage. AGMs are closer to wet cells and you may lose 80 cycles of recharging, but its still not that expensive a learning experience. You have not ruined them, just used them a little more than you wanted. So maybe you will have to replace em 3 months earlier than otherwise?
Good luck,
Ed & Sue on Angel Louise
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