Battery Maintenance Charging in Cold Weather Questions

Fergie

Following  PXLated's example, I just purchased a NOCO Genius G7200 (V2.0) battery charger. I store my original AGM battery in-place in the battery box of the T@B which is now covered (including the battery/propane bin) with a  Classic Accessories Overdrive Polypro 3 R-Pod Trailer Cover - 16'.  (I posted a comment on this in "T@B Covers" in this blog)

 

Last winter I kept shore power on the T@B and let the WFCO unit do the job of keeping a maintenance charge on the battery. However, after reading a lot of entries on this blog I decided this could shorten the WFCO and/or battery life and since I have since installed a battery disconnect switch and hooked up a cheap battery maintenance unit.

 

My intension was to place the NOCO Genius in the bin to maintain the battery over the winter as I was concerned that the cheap battery maintainer I had been using would not do the whole charging process on an AGM battery.

 

Upon receiving the Genius and reading the User Guide, I was surprised to see that it's operating range is between 0 degrees and 40 degrees C or between 32 degrees and 104 degrees F! This seems a pretty narrow range. We have been down below 32 degrees here in Southern Minnesota for over a month now and we have several more months of winter!

 

Has anyone had experience with maintenance charging in the winter with this charger and will I have to take the battery inside the house to maintain it?

 

Minnesota Fergie

ColoradoJon

If you are using it just to maintain the battery over the winter it will be fine.  The cheap maintainer you replaced would have been fine, too, provided it was a smart charger.  If looking for optimum charging in cold weather the Noco will not be as efficient as it doesn't have temperature compensation, but it will be plenty good for most uses.

Fergie

To: ColoradoJon

Thanks! It does have a mode with a slightly higher charging voltage for AGM's which was my original concern as the cheap one doesn't. We are supposed to have a relatively mild week coming up so I plan to put it in use then and see what happens. I have a digital voltage monitor installed (I did a post on that also) so I can see what it does.

Thanks again for your input.

Minnesota Fergie

Nomad

That MN January thaw where Minnesotans are tricked by Mother Nature into thinking winter's over and you can break out your flip-flops only to be sadly disappointed :-(

Fergie

Got the NORCO Genius installed during our previous week of January thaw. Glad I did, thanks to Coloradojon. It registered 75% charged when I started and went up to 100% a short time later when it went on maintenance. Good thing too, as we just had 4 inches of wet snow and more cold weather moving in!



Minnesota Fergie

ericnliz

Fergie, Mine looks like that, only add about another foot! No fooling me though, PXL, I KNOW it's not over yet even though we had a couple days of 40* weather. Just enough to start the flooding, only to freeze all of it again! SHEESH!

ColoradoJon

I really wish we had snow here in Florissant, Colorado!  We have maybe 2" which is not good enough to cross country ski on, dang it.

ericnliz

ColoradoJon, Want some?

Nomad

Snow - What's that ... Prefer this ...



Hot springs, palm trees, sun :-)

ericnliz

PXL, Now that's just down right mean!

Nomad

Nobody said I was nice :-)

Sharon_is_SAM

Ok, I'll take the bait... Where are the hot springs?

ColoradoJon

@ericnliz - I'll take some if you can deliver .  Need about 10 square acres 12" deep.  I got some new cross country skis in October and haven't been able to use them!

ericnliz

ColoradoJon, Be careful what you wish for, winter isn't over yet!