www.odysseybattery.com
15
Publication No: EN-ODY-TM-0002 - February 2015
(B) Selecting battery type on your charger
Although it is not possible to cover every type of battery
charger available today, this section gives the ODYSSEY
battery user some general charger usage guidelines to follow,
after the charger has been qualified for use with this battery.
In general, do not use either the gel cell or maintenance free
setting, if provided on your charger. Choose the deep cycle
or AGM option, should there be one on your charger. Table
5 below gives suggested charge times based on charger
currents. As previously indicated, deep cycling applications
require a minimum 0.4C10 current available from the charger
so the values shown in Table 5 do not apply to all products in
all applications.
To achieve maximum life from your ODYSSEY
battery after completing the charge time in Table 5, we
recommend that you switch your charger to the trickle charge
position and leave the battery connected to the charger for
an additional 6-8 hours. The trickle charge voltage should be
13.5V to 13.8V.
Table 5: Suggested charge times (excludes cycling
applications)
The charge times recommended in Table 5 assume that
the ODYSSEY
®
battery is fully discharged and these charge
times will only achieve about a 80% state of charge. For
partially discharged batteries, the charge times should be
appropriately reduced. The graph in Figure 2, showing
OCV and SOC, must be used to determine the battery’s
SOC. The battery should be trickle charged after high rate
charging, regardless of its initial SOC.
Temperature compensation
Proper charging of all Valve Regulated Lead Acid (VRLA)
batteries requires temperature compensation of the charge
voltage – the higher the ambient temperature the lower the
charge voltage. This is particularly true in float applications
in which the batteries can stay on trickle charge for weeks
or months at a time.
The temperature compensation graphs for ODYSSEY
batteries in float and cyclic applications are shown for
ambient (battery) temperatures ranging from -40°C to 80°C.
The compensation coefficient is approximately
+/-24mV per 12V battery per °C variation from 25°C. Since
the charge voltage and ambient (battery) temperature
are inversely related, the voltage must be reduced as the
temperature rises; conversely, the charge voltage must be
increased when the temperature drops.
Note, however, that the charge voltage should not be
dropped below 13.2V as that will cause the battery grids
to corrode faster, thereby shortening the battery life.
RAPID CHARGING OF ODYSSEY
®
BATTERIES
All ODYSSEY batteries can be quickly charged. Figure 7
on the next page shows their exceptional fast charge
characteristics at a constant 14.7V for three levels of inrush
current. These current levels are similar to the output
currents of modern automotive alternators. Table 6 and
Figure 7 show the capacity returned as a function of the
magnitude of the inrush
3
current.
Standard internal combustion engine alternators with an
output voltage of 14.2V can also charge these batteries.
The inrush current does not need to be limited under
constant voltage charge. However, because the typical
alternator voltage is only 14.2V instead of 14.7V, the
charge times will be longer than those shown in Table 5.
ODYSSEY
®
Battery Model
Charge time for
100% discharged battery
10-amp charger
20-amp charger
PC310
1.28 hours
40 minutes
PC370 & PC535
2.25 hours
1.25 hours
PC545
2 hours
1 hour
PC625
3 hours
1.5 hours
PC680
2.7 hours
1.5 hours
PC925
4.5 hours
2.25 hours
PC950
5.25 hours
3 hours
PC1100
7 hours
3.75 hours
PC1200
6.75 hours
3.5 hours
75/86-PC1230
9 hours
4.5 hours
25-PC1400 & 35-PC1400
10.5 hours
5.25 hours
34-PC1500, 34R-PC1500,
34M-PC1500 &
34/78-PC1500
11 hours
5.5 hours
PC1700
11 hours
5.5 hours
PC1220 & 65-PC1750
11 hours
5.5 hours
PC1800-FT
Not
Recommended
17 hours
PC1350, 31-PC2150
& 31M-PC2150
16 hours
8 hours
PC2250
20 hours
10 hours
Temperature, ˚C
Charge voltage, V
17.40
16.80
16.20
15.60
15.00
14.40
13.80
13.29
12.60
Theoretical cycling (ideal)
V-0.00004T
3
- 0.006T + 2.5745
Theoretical float (ideal)
V=0.00004T
3
- 0.006T + 2.3945
and 2.20VPC minimum
3
Inrush is defined in terms of the rated capacity (C
10
) of the battery. A 0.8C
10
inrush on a 100Ah battery is 80A.
