"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
100A x 14.4V = 1440 watts. Simply amazing it hasn't boiled them over or
melted the plastic cases or melted the internal structures causing an
explosive short in the process.

Are you suggesting that all 1440 of those watts gets converted into heat?

Gosh, I would have expected at least some of it to be stored. After all,
that is the purpose......

How long does it charge at 100A? minutes? hours?

Well, that depends on how deeply the battery was discharged to begin with
and the size of the battery and how much you lose to heat.

If you assume it is a 100 amp-hour gel battery (after all, that was the
assumption at the start of this thread) and it was 100% "dead" then it would
certainly take more than an hour. At that charge rate you would be losing a
considerable amount to heat so I would guess it would take closer to 90
minutes.


You simply CANNOT charge a lead-acid battery in an hour.

It is certainly not a good idea, but you can do it.

To treat the battery kindly you need to divide the charge up into two
phases, BULK and ACCEPTANCE. You could easily get the "bulk" phase
completed in an hour or less. The "acceptance" phase, which accounts for
the last 25%, usually takes a lot longer. If you didn't care how many
cycles your battery would last you could just hit it with enough amps to
saturate it in an hour.

Rod