Members' Online Book: Electrical Systems For Cruising Boats, Chapter 12 of 27

Equalizing Batteries, The Reality

Published Oct 5, 2010 40 comments Updated March 6, 2020

JHH5-12590 Fully charging your batteries after each discharge on a live-aboard cruising sailboat is simply not practical. Instead, most of us will cycle our batteries between 50 and 80% of their capacity. The bad news is that this will ruin your lead-acid batteries (regardless of type) in a distressingly short time due to sulphation.

The Solution

But there is an answer to this problem: regular equalization, a process where you deliberately overcharge your batteries for a specified time and voltage to remove the sulphation.

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Meet the Author

John

John was born and brought up in Bermuda and started sailing as a child, racing locally and offshore before turning to cruising. He has sailed over 100,000 miles, most of it on his McCurdy & Rhodes 56, Morgan's Cloud, including eight ocean races to Bermuda, culminating in winning his class twice in the Newport Bermuda Race. He has skippered a series of voyages in the North Atlantic, the majority of which have been to the high latitudes. John has been helping others go voyaging by sharing his experience for twenty years, first in yachting magazines and, for the last 12 years, as co-editor/publisher of AAC.

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