"Joe AutoDrill" fired this volley in
news
I am not an electrical guru, but I always thought that the charge
was
a result of the higher voltage going in VS the actual amperage...
Thus the reason a trickle charger may take an entire day to recharge
a
standard bike or car battery if it is pretty low... I figured a
small
trickle charger might be able to handle a 12 volt forklift-size
battery in a week or something similar presuming the "sitting still
and not being used" discharge of the same battery was less than what
was going into it.



Joe, the problem with that is that a certain minimum current (I'll
call it "leakage current", but that's not really an accurate
description) is necessary to overcome electrolytic losses during
charging.

An automotive trickle-type "maintainer" might work on, say, a 125AH
battery, but the batteries in our lift are 600AH types (like big 6V
diesel truck batteries). The plate areas are greater than a smaller
battery's would be, and thus the "leakage current" is larger. I don't
think a trickle charger of the ordinary type would work, even if you
had a 36V version.

OTOH, our battery charger for the lift is "intelligent". It charges
at maximum rate until it determines that the battery is fully charged,
then switches to a pulsed maintenance rate which is supposed to break
up sulphation on the plates, staying there unless or until it sees the
voltage drop below the "charged" value.

The charger alone weighs about 300lb, and runs off 240V.

LLoyd