Another Battery Charger Question

[Wesley Cobb]

After reading many of the threads on battery chargers, I have a (potentially dumb) question for the masses. Most of you keep your boats in garages or store on the trailer at home w/easy access to power. I keep my boat in dry storage -- on a rack about 30 feet off the ground -- w/out power at the stall. However, I do have access to power at the wash racks and maintenance racks. If I were to install a battery charger, would it be beneficial? I can only see pulling the boat off the rack and plugging it in to keep the battery charger charged. How much of a charging time commitment are we talking here to be beneficial? Are we talking several hours on the rack plugged up after each time I take the boat out? Taking it down and plugging it up during the cooler season to keep the batteries in good health? At the moment, I have low voltage on my batteries so the topic is quite close to my heart! Appreciate all the advice and install pictures. This forum is a wealth of great information!

 

[Mainah]

Battery charging takes time. An on baord noco gen 2 will take a few hours with enough DOD to cause low voltage warning. You can cut that down with a big shop charger but there is no getting around absobtion rate and float with lead acid batteries. AGM batteries have a faster absorption rate than standard deep cycle. They will charge faster from the stators in the boat amd from a plug in charger. That said real world is only about 10 percent faster. If only getting the warning after storage for the off season the best solution may be to remove the batteries when putting it up for storage and bring them home to sit on a float charger.

If the issue is presenting itself during the season the best answer is lithium but that is going to cost a lot. A single 60 ah 12v nominal lithium battery will replace two group 31 lead acids if going down to the bottom end recommended dod. A large high quality litithium will accept a 50 amp charging rate meaning about an hour to fully recharge but that lithium specific charger is going to cost a lot as well. One more downside to lithiums is they are more prone to combusion than lead acid.

One more option would be a suit case inverter generator like a honda to run while at the sand bar or just floating to charge the batteries.