Care for Lead acid batteries

[Sukhbinder]

i just got an inverter installed. its a 800 VA system with a pure sine wave output and runs on a 12V 190Ah lead acid battery. i know that the electrolyte level has to be topped up each 2-4 months in the battery, i want to know that when adding water to the battery should i use distilled water or battery water (available at petrol stations, which i think is distilled water with some acid added). the acis content of the electrolyte must also be maintained so which is a better choice, normal distilled water or slight acidic distilled water. any other precautions and care instructions for a long life for the battery.

 

[ante1]

Hi Sukhbinder,

You should add distilled water only, no acid! Battery water is an alternative even though it’s not really distilled only de-mineralized i.e. they have removed lime, iron and other stuff from it to make it non-conductive. You should not fill unless the level is low, if the level is unnecessary high you will get spill when charging which is extremely corrosive and at the same time the acid will be diluted over time. The water consumption depends on many things; battery age, working temperature, and how smart and good charger you have.

Use protective glasses when removing the plugs to fill water! 8)

 

[indulis]

The best thing to use is de-ionized water if you can find some. Go to a good golf cart forum... they deal with this sort of stuff every day!!

Check out

http://www.golfcarcatalog.com/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=2&sid=9d4161888160d5bbdf41fac46ef484ba

 

[ante1]

Hi indulis,

De-ionized water is cheaper to produce and easier to find (any gas-station) and works fine but still nothing beats the real thing; distilled water!

 

[Sukhbinder]

thanks for your help guys, i think i'll stick to the deionised water as we have a deioniser system set up at our research lab so it will be easy for me to procure it.
My inverter uses an SMPS based battery charger and is a Fuzzy logic based charger system. it has options of Normal charge at 9Amps and High Charge at 15 Amps. whish one is better, normal charge or high charge, they say that high chargeing is used if u have frequent power cuts to alloww for fast charging. in my opinion normal charge is better although it takes a longer time but the battery life and performance increases. any ideas for it ???

 

[ante1]

I agree; normal charge is preferable to increase the life of the battery!
Once in a while it might be a good idea to run a charge cycle on high at the same time as running a test of the UPS say every 6 month or so. This will also let you know when the capacity of the battery starts to deteriorate.

BTW. Congratulations Full Member Sukhbinder (100 posts)!  ;D