This past year I picked up (16) of Valence's 1st generation (black in color - not green; about 10 or more years old) U24-12XP 100 amphour batteries that I have yet to charge and am concerned about having them fail. I'm looking for a cheap way to charge them at this time, and possibly do some capacitylife testing as I've seen in some youtube videos.
What little I know is that because I don't have the maintainer monitor buss controller for the battery interconnecting cable system I should only charge them in the range of 14.1 to 14.5 volts (not at the full 14.6) and to only charge them at temperatures above freezing.
I don't want to heavily invest into any type of charging system yet and so I'm thinking of getting one of those 3 amp or 5 amp constant voltage/current Lab Power Supplies I see on Ebay for $40 to $60, or maybe a programmable 5 amp one I see for around $100. I do also see a dedicated LiFePo4 20 amp charger on Ebay that I can get for around $105 that only had LED indicator lights for charging but when I asked the seller if the 14.6 volt charging rate could be tweeked he suggested I buy the more expensive 70 amp charger they sell for over $300 which is more like a Lab Power Supply. Granted I was indicating to him I was hoping to charge the batteries (4) at a time connected in parallel but for now I don't need to at that price. In the future the larger power supply may be the way to go once I have a continuous dedicated use for them but for now my big concern is to mainly keep them from going bad so charge time isn't that big of a deal.
I've attached a couple of photos, the first is a snapshot data sticker on the top of one of my 1st gen batteries, the others are the Valence Data sheet for the current 3rd gen batteries. I was told by the stateside rep that the only significant difference between them is that the gen 3 batteries have a higher 118 amphour rating.
What little I know is that because I don't have the maintainer monitor buss controller for the battery interconnecting cable system I should only charge them in the range of 14.1 to 14.5 volts (not at the full 14.6) and to only charge them at temperatures above freezing.
I don't want to heavily invest into any type of charging system yet and so I'm thinking of getting one of those 3 amp or 5 amp constant voltage/current Lab Power Supplies I see on Ebay for $40 to $60, or maybe a programmable 5 amp one I see for around $100. I do also see a dedicated LiFePo4 20 amp charger on Ebay that I can get for around $105 that only had LED indicator lights for charging but when I asked the seller if the 14.6 volt charging rate could be tweeked he suggested I buy the more expensive 70 amp charger they sell for over $300 which is more like a Lab Power Supply. Granted I was indicating to him I was hoping to charge the batteries (4) at a time connected in parallel but for now I don't need to at that price. In the future the larger power supply may be the way to go once I have a continuous dedicated use for them but for now my big concern is to mainly keep them from going bad so charge time isn't that big of a deal.
I've attached a couple of photos, the first is a snapshot data sticker on the top of one of my 1st gen batteries, the others are the Valence Data sheet for the current 3rd gen batteries. I was told by the stateside rep that the only significant difference between them is that the gen 3 batteries have a higher 118 amphour rating.
