hopefully Ghurd chimes in here. i seem to remember him saying something along the lines of backing off the voltage a bit for longer term storage. somehow this made them last longer??
OK, by request.
"the general consensus for correct float float voltages for flooded lead acid cells in extended standby applications...
By "standby", I am referring to use where the bank floats for at least a week straight at a time,
without interruption".
This is a 24/7/365 grid fed charger? Then 13.2V is fine.
Solar has interuptions I like to refere to as "night", so 14.4V.
Wind is about like solar, so also 14.4V unless it is some crazy windy place when I would back it down to maybe 13.8V.
I have seen very abused SLAs still work fine after 5 years, but most 'never' used SLAs floated at 14.2V 24/7/365 do not last more than about 2 years?
On my front porch, I just got a pair of 7.2AH SLAs (glued together into a 24V pack for a nice UPS) that register about 7V. They are less than 2 years old, were in a major name brand UPS, in an area that probably never lost power for more than a couple minutes since they were installed. They are from a UPS a company that does software/internet type stuff.
I believe most (maybe all?) 24/7/365 chargers float the battery too high.
RE specific devices from a good name brand do not, because the person buying the charger is more knowledgable?
Stepping on toes expected here... Present company excluded.
Most computer geeks know nothing about batteries. UPS companies can get away with murdering batteries intentionally because the target demographic (computer geek) knows nothing about batteries.
They don't know about batteries. I don't know about computers.
G-