Hi all,
I was just wondering something. I have all these large 86Ah 12v SLA batteries sitting here fully charged, and they have been like that for about 3 months now (not attached to a charger - just literally stood there!). Last time they were used was when I was away camping, and drained them all down to about 70%.
I've been chacking the terminal voltages fairly often, and even after 3 months they are all around 13-13.1 volts so I haven't done anything with them in 3 months.
I'm getting slightly uncomfortable that these things appear to be looking after themselves! So simple question really, would exercising them slightly (ie. hook them up to my small solar system so that they get very shallow daily cycling) do them any good? I've read that cycling them can 'help open up new reaction zones' or something along those lines.
Either way knowing my luck they will be shot by the next time I really need to use them properly, but anything to help slow that process down would be good.
I thought I had most of my battery theory nailed, but this is a sort of compromise that has me puzzled which way to go - how to look after rarely used batteries!
Cheers