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AGM batteries and invrter position
#744294 January 06th 2019 2:27 pm
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New to this community, so thanks in advance for any and all information. I will be using three UB121000 batteries as house power (already have one, so want to keep all batteries the same), and as I understand it these are AGM types and labeled as non-spillable on the battery case. Research indicates that AGM batteries can be installed in a variety of situations, so is there any reason they could not be installed standing on end to save me some floor space? A similar question regarding my AIMS inverter/charger, could that be installed in a vertical position as well? Floor space is at a premium in my floor plan.

Thanks!

D.

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Re: AGM batteries and invrter position
Doubtful #744299 January 07th 2019 12:35 am
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You can install AGM batteries any way you like, but upside down.

The inverter has a fan, and installing it in some orientations might have the fan blow hot air under it, which will then rise and bathe the inverter in hot air, which the fan then sucks in making it even hotter.
There are some heavier components on the circuit boards, which should be adhered to the SB not only with Solder, but a big glob of an adhesive, to minimize solder fractruing from vibration. If mounted on their sides the inverter's lifespan in a vibrating van might be less than that one installed flat on the floor.

Check the manual, some of them will recommend NOT installng them in certain orientations.

Your UB12100 AGM batteries, if you deeply discharge them, should be fed 20 to 30 amps each, until they reach 14.5 to 14.8v, and then they should be held at this voltage until amperage tapers to 0.5 amps per 100Ah battery.

If you can hold the 100AH AGM battery at 14.5v until amperage tapers to 0.5 amps anytime you recharge, it will give good service. If you can feed it no less than 20 amps when well depleted and then hold it at higher voltage until amps taper to a low level, you will get very good service.

Just because your alternator might be rated for 120 amps, it is controlled by the voltage regulator, and the voltage regulator might only seek 13.8v. The battery accepts as much as IT wants, at the voltage reaching the battery terminals.

A depleted healthy battery will accept about 1/3 the amps at 13.7v as it will at 14.7v.

A 50% charged otherwise healthy 100AH AGM battery, with 30 amps available to reach and be held at 14.7v can reach 80% charged in an hour, but getting from 80% to 100% takes NO LESS than 3.5 more hours, assuming that 14.7v can be held that whole time.

Any Lead acid battery Ideally always wants to be 100% charged.
It takes a long time to fully recharge the battery even if one can bring it to the mid 14v range and hold it there.

Lower voltages take much longer to fully recharge the battery
An older battery requires much longer times to fully recharge.

Prevention of premature capacity loss is achieved by proper recharging, to full as soon as possible, as fast as possible after any level of discharge. Achieving his can be taken to extremes so one must draw a line in the sand and say this will be good enough, i will simply replace the batteries when they fail.

But it is easy to kill lead acid batteries that are deeply cycled by chronic undercharging, and hail mary recharges once they are sulfated from such use does not work.

A Huge myth in this, which has been and will continue to be promoted ad naseum, is that a trickle charger is the cure all of any battery, and trickle charging is always best. This is not true, especially with AGM, which can and will be tickled to death with too low of charging currents.

If you buy a plug in charging source, get one capable of no less than 20 amps per 100Ah of battery capacity/ I like the progressive dynamics PD 92xx series of charger/converters, as one can override the automatic voltage stages pressing a button.

The UB121000 will say no more than 30 amps at 14.5 to 14.7v. I'd only fear exceeding this if the batteries are enclosed in an unventilated insulated container on a hot day. if you parallel two of them have no fear of the PD9245 charger. It will go as high as 14.4v, close enough to the 14.5v spec on the UB121000. They also sell a PD 9245 14.8 model which will do 14.8v.

Any charging source is better than no Charging source, but your Ub121000s are bottom of the barrell AGMS, at ~170$ each, and their premature failure by poor recharging will be painful financially.

I recommend you get a DC cma,p pn Ammeter or otherwise rig up an Ammeter to see how much amperage your batteries are accepting.

No green light on any charger sold is actually telling the truth in regards to when the battery is full..All smart chargers are designed to NOt overcharge a battery, and in their quest to nbever overcharge, they undercharge, and while 98% charged is good, it is only half as good as 100% chargedm in terms of the total number of deep cycles the battery can achieve.

Most Smart chargers will stop charging in the 92 to 95% charged range, and anyone with a good hydrometer for flooded batteries or an accurate Ammeter when charging AGm bvatteries held at absorption voltage, will easily see this. Everyone else hopes and prays and has misplaced faith in their charger's marketing mumbo jumbo.

Also figure out what voltage your vehicle allows once it and the alternator are HOT, and it will get hot feeding two depleted AGM batteries. DO not idle parked to recharge, Underhood air movement at highways speeds will have the alternator struggle to get above 140F maxed out, but at Idle speeds parked maxed out feeding depleted AGM's and it will easily hit 220F, and above this temperature they will not live for very long.

There is a myth that the alternator is some magical instant battery recharger, but the fact is that the voltage regulator controlling it is timid. The battery accepts as much as it wants to at the electrical pressure(voltage) reaching the battery terminals, and too thin of a copper circuit, and the voltage regulator only seeking 13.8v are like kicking a battery in the balls over and over.

Getting a well depleted lead acid battery fully charged takes a long time, at higher voltages. The higher the state of charge of the battery the slower it charges.

Being able to plug into the grid after any significant discharge of the batteries will do wonders for them, especially with a good charging source. Solar is also good for holding the btteries at higher voltages for the time required once they have been brought up int the 80%+ charged range by the alternator.

Re: AGM batteries and invrter position
wrcsixeight #744331 January 07th 2019 7:26 pm
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wrcsixeight--- thanks for the reply, that's a lot of good and interesting info. I believe I am planning on some serious overkill with my system, as we will run precious little on the 110ac system other than my wife's hot plate for brewing up some coffee in the morning. I doubt I will come close to depleting 3 of the described batteries. Everything else will be 12vdc, mostly charging cell phones and a lap top and running the average car sound system (nothing big or fancy). The AIMS inverter/charger manual says nothing regarding orientation, but I will keep your advice in mind as I look for ways to maximize floor space. If I ever put an electric winch on this van, can I run it off the deep cycle batteries without worry? The batteries will be located mid-van, about 9 feet from the front bumper.

Thanks again--
D.

Re: AGM batteries and invrter position
Doubtful #744332 January 07th 2019 7:56 pm
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3's not a overkill as I run the same amount ..... used it for 4 days before I recharged the system. 2 TV's, PlayStation, frig, lights, fans, microwave, toaster, coffee pot, crock pot and a 700 watt stereo.

WRC68 is the most intelligent electric guy I know !

Last edited by frscke1; January 07th 2019 7:58 pm.

SUNSHINE VANS-VAN DIEGO
ADRENALIN BY THE GALLON & CHASIN RACIN
ONE FOR THE DIRT & ONE FOR THE STREETS
'93 CHEVY G30 454 4X4 SPORTVAN EXT 146" WB
'92 CHEVY G30 454 BEAUVILLE EXT 146" WB
Re: AGM batteries and invrter position
Doubtful #744335 January 07th 2019 8:21 pm
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The hotplate through the inverter is a pretty big draw, but 3 100 Ah AGMs will certainly power it. The only question will be for how long, and how often, and what other things will have brough the batteries to a lesser state of charge.

Say the hotlate is 1200 watts.

1200 watts at 12 volts is 100 amps. A starter motor to start the engine is about 140 amps.

But the inverter is only 85% efficient or so, so bump that up to 1300 watts to run that hotplate off the inverter.

One thing to keep in mind is a 100Ah battery, earned that capacity rating powering a 5 amp load for 20 hours before the battery voltage reached 10.5v. 100Ah however does not mean the battery can power a 20 amp load for 5 hours.

The Peukert effect says the bigger the loadon the battery, the less overall capacity the battery will have to deliver.

So it is not just basic simple math when huge loads are involved, like a winch or big inverter powering a hot plate or coffee maker.

Simply powering a laptop is about 30 watts, but powering the laptop and recharging its depleted battery willbe closer to 80 watts.

3 100Ah AGM batteries is a lot of power though. you should be able to do most of what you want, on the first few outings. if you do not truly fully charge those batteries, but leave them at 85% for 2 months before the next outing, they will have lost a significant portion of their capacity and not be able to deliver as much. Without careful monitoring of voltage under load this might still go unnoticed. Most people will not notice when a large bank of batteries has degraded until the low voltage alarm on theinverter starts screaming well before it is expected. At that point they learn their batteries are capacity compromised, and likely prematurely. At that point they discover they have not been recharging them to full, then decide to treat the next set of batteries better with a charging source which willactually fully rechare them once plugged into the grid after an outing.

My battery diatribes are to help prevent batterycide. it is important to return them to a true full charge promptly, if you expect to get acceptable longevity from them.

Acceptable is however, subjective. Somebody might get 100 deep cycles from them over 3 years and think that is fine. I accumulate nearly 300 cycles a year and if a battery failed at 100 deep cycles I would be seething.

I am at year the 62 month mark on my Northstar group 27 AGM battery, with over 1000 deep cycles. I am not going to say the battery is still going strong, as I can easily see it cannot maintain the voltage it once did when starting my engine, but it is still however holding surprisingly high voltages in my regular overnight usage, powering a 12vDC 2 cubic foot fridge and a laptop and lights and fans and depleted 60 of its 90Ah capacity, can still easily start my engine in mild temperatures.

Keep the wiring between your inverter and battery short, and use thick copper. Make sure your 3 parallelled batteries take power from the + on battery one and the - of battery 3, and use tick copper with proper wire terminations on them, as thick as the inverter cables.

If you halfass the wiring you will get to do it over, at best, and worst you will burn down your van.

http://www.genuinedealz.com/custom-cables

Re: AGM batteries and invrter position
wrcsixeight #744373 January 09th 2019 12:34 pm
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Thanks again WRC68. I've wired houses before, top to bottom with no issues, but this vehicle stuff is a whole nother animal. My batteries will be charged to max via grid power as often as possible, and via solar when I get that far, and through the vehicle's alternator while actually driving. I usually go with a good overkill factor on my wire gauge as well, so hopefully I won't burn anything to the ground. If I run into issues I may whine and beg for more help, but until then, thanks!

D.

Re: AGM batteries and invrter position
Doubtful #766375 October 14th 2020 10:49 pm
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I have had good luck with trickle charges(even the cheap ass harbor freight ones)but ONLY after I have fully charged the batteries with shore power. They will hold the full charge and keep it "topped off" in my experience...


Currently rebuilding an '82 Dodge Maxi...
Re: AGM batteries and invrter position
frscke1 #796457 September 28th 2022 5:54 am
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I recently completed all the work outside of my 1979 G20 and am now ready to start the inside. I have some basic electrical knowledge and can understand schematics. Do you have a diagram of your setup and possible sources of supply? I am also wondering how you were able to post a picture in your profile. I can usually navigate the computer, but I have yet to figure that out. Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks and have a great day


https://www.flickr.com/photos/196781919@N05/shares/qr0e2rJg4X
Re: AGM batteries and invrter position
frscke1 #796463 September 28th 2022 1:47 pm
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WRC68 is the most intelligent electric guy I know !


SUNSHINE VANS-VAN DIEGO
ADRENALIN BY THE GALLON & CHASIN RACIN
ONE FOR THE DIRT & ONE FOR THE STREETS
'93 CHEVY G30 454 4X4 SPORTVAN EXT 146" WB
'92 CHEVY G30 454 BEAUVILLE EXT 146" WB
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