I do not largely recommend the Astron BB series for proper battery maintenance. The issue is the charge voltage is directly related to the operating voltage so to se the appropriate float voltage you need to tweak the operating voltage pot to a lower level and the charge current is strictly resistive limited...A simple choice but not a good one for long term proper operation of the battery...
Our Trace Engineering charger/controller has 22000 current amps passed through it over the last number of years and the original batteries are still there... they were good batteries to start with and they are non vented UPS type... 5 years or so at this point...Trace Engineering is now known as Xantrex..I think... Real Charge controllers on real UPS type batteries have very tight control on bulk, float and maintenance charge cycles to optimize charge for your particular battery and work VERY well for a rather insignificant amount of money in the big picture... The BULK charge is fed straight through from your Power supply and is regulated by the Charge Controller... The station will largely run on the power supply but as I said it is used as a source to the battery charger.. not the source to the station... Size it all correctly and you will never revisit the "problem" again.... Astron's are good sources ... but lousy chargers on their own.. at least that is my opinion... Doug KD8B At 07:33 PM 2/10/2009, you wrote: >Doug Bade wrote: > > The loaded voltage is about 12.5 to 12.8 comparable to what would be > > in the trunk of a car starting at 13.8 at the battery alternator > > connection.. including voltage drop... > > That was the design anyhow... Astron's or eq are some what of a > > problem as they really do not sag at all.. 13.8 all day all night > all nice.... > > >The club is talking about building a battery band that will be somewhere >around 400ah at 12vcd. they want to buy some "smart charger" that puts >out 5a. I tried to explain at the club meeting last night that should be >battery bank go completely down because of an extended power outage, >that a 5a charger would take 80+ hours to bring the batteries back up, >and it woul probably take longer than that if the repeater was on during >the charge. I was thinking about a rs50BB or the like, but wasn't sure >what the MastrII needed if 13.8 would be too much.. That's the basis of >the original question. > > > I chose a different route at work and built a battery stack with a > > trace engineering charge controller float charging the batteries > > active all the time using a astron or eq as the "charger" source.. > > The trace engineering controller ( from the solar world) does the > > charge maintenance etc like no aftermarket tool I have found for eq > > money....I think it was a Model C40 or C65... maybe a C30 would do... > > all are different current specs... > > >Back we go to Google for product specs. Thanks for the idea! 73 Mike > >
