🟦 AGM Optimized Charging
A deep study on deep charging your Absorbent Glass Mat batteries…
Everyone,
I subscribe to a lot of technical sites, and recently read this great article on AGM (Absorbent Glass Mat) battery charging from Clore Automotive. If you thought that using a FLA (Flooded Lead Acid) setting on the Charger or Converter for your AGM battery was okay, then you were wrong. Here’s an excerpt from their article below. You can read the entire article HERE.
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before – You Need an AGM-Optimized Charger
We’ll get this one out of the way first, since, if you been with us for any length of time, you are likely sick of hearing this mantra from us. It is very important, though.
Any time you are servicing (charging or maintaining) an AGM battery, it is in your best interest to use a quality charger with an AGM-specific charge profile built into it. AGM batteries are very sensitive to voltage – deploying a flooded battery charge profile on one will raise the internal voltage above the recommended limit, which will cause damage to the battery. This is especially true when charging an AGM battery using a flooded profile at high amperages (+20A) or for the long duration charging that happens when maintenance charging seasonal use vehicles (even at low amperage).
Let’s play (and charge) safe out there… Mike
COSTCO sells “standard”and AGM lead acid batteries and offers them as performance upgrades with “superior technology.” I just checked their catalog and they still offer both types for my vehicle. I purchased one for my Honda Ridgeline a couple of years ago knowing the charging profiles were different but neither COSTCO or any written source I could find at the time said this would be would not be a good thing to do. The only guidance I could find was to periodically connect a battery maintainer. I then checked and found that the Battery Tender battery maintainer I have does not seem to care what kind of battery you connect it to (there is no battery type setting). I believe they somehow automatically detect and adjust their voltage but I’m really not sure what they do or how they do it. This article did not help in that they did not specifically say it was bad to upgrade to an AGM but they didn’t say it was good either. I couldn’t find any info on whether my vehicle’s charging system was designed to work with either battery type. I’d appreciate hearing any wisdom that anyone has to share. I’ve had the COSTCO AGM battery in my car for several years now and all has been good so far.
ANY of the Victron chargers (Orion, Multiplus, Mppt, or Smart chargers) are infinitely adjustable to whatever profile you want using a very user friendly App.
This gizmo is just a advertisement that is a bit exaggerating.