Lead Acid Battery
Lead Acid Battery
How to guage the capacity of a sealed lead acid battery?
I have a multimeter and a plethora of components. Sadly nothing to monitor voltage over time, otherwise I'd plot a graph of voltage under load and do some integration. I know the spec of the battery but would like to know what condition it's in. Thanks
I have a feeling I'm not going to get any answers here. Maybe I should ask again under a different category?
Sadly, there is no real way to gauge the available capacity of a sealed battery. With batteries that have access to the electrolyte, you could use a hydrometer which gives a very good idea as to the available capacity (if you are aware of the actual chemistry of the cell, you need to know the composition of the acid used). Voltage is better than nothing but is not an accurate indicator as the regulation of lead acid batteries is quite good and they only go below 2v per cell at the end of the discharge curve.
Only other way is to calculate the discharge energy rate and subtract that from the available capacity. There are devices on the market that will do this for you.
http://www.batteryjunction.com/wuprcwamepoa.html
Thanks for visiting!