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Ask HN: Keeping a lead-acid battery healthy

2 points by VariableStar ↗ HN
How do you keep lead-acid batteries healthy when they are not in use for a long (~ >1 yr) time?

I wonder what people more knowlegeable than me would suggest. Is it ok to use a simple home method like applying for some time a simple load like a resistor or lamp and then recharge? Would it be ok to do that every now and then, say 3-6 months?

5 comments

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eimrine
Not an electrical engineer but an accumulator itself has a resistor inside due to laws of Physics. How about just to recharge?
VariableStar
Thank you. You are right. This is what I do now. But I wonder if there are better methods.
h2odragon
I've seen lots of advice that generally comes down to "get a commercial battery conditioner charger and hook it up" today. Even those are likely to cause whiskering if you're not using the battery often. Understand the chemistry of what's happening and it'll help you see which processes you're trying to balance against each other.

You're gonna need to spend some maintenance time on them anyway, even just testing.

VariableStar
Thank you, this is more or less what I am finding as well.
giantg2
My systems that use it as a backup have their own conditioning built in (supposedly), so I do nothing with them. The other ones that don't get used often get voltage tested and recharged periodically. So far it seems to work well enough.