The key three: What really matters when it comes to charging

A few weeks ago, we worked a very large and very busy trade show where we had thousands of conversations with industry professionals about the different product categories and vehicle service applications we address. Often, our show experiences start and end with jump starters. After all, Booster PAC and Jump-N-Carry are industry stalwarts and often are our calling cards at shows. As in, “I really love that ES5000…it is great,” or, “That blue unit has saved my bacon more times than I can count.” But at our recent show, the discussions mostly centered on battery chargers and battery charging. We left the show with many takeaways, but in this article, we’re going to distill our insights into the three key takeaways from those customer conversations in the hopes that they can help you as you navigate the ever-changing world of vehicle battery charging.

Table stakes: Important but we want more

There are many features or capabilities that can cause a charger to legitimately be called “smart,” or as we prefer to refer to it, “intelligent.” The most obvious is that its charge routine is microprocessor controlled. Generally, this means that the charger has the ability to modify its charging routine based on the type of battery it is being asked to service and that the charger is going to execute a multi-phase charge routine, which is mandatory when servicing everything but flooded batteries (AGM, Spiral Wound, Gel Cell, EFB, LiFePO4 batteries and more). Obviously, with our PRO-LOGIX and CHARGE IT! charging products, we are huge proponents of the necessity of intelligent charging when it comes to servicing modern vehicles.

Separately, a charger’s ability to properly manage the different battery types encountered by today’s shop or in a vehicle owner’s garage is a critical component of smart charging. This charging versatility is paramount and, with microprocessor-driven charging logic, is both a natural feature of a modern charger and a good insurance that your charging investment will provide dividends for years to come. For a service garage, you want to know that no matter what the make or model of the next vehicle that pulls into your bay, you are ready to tackle it. Similarly, for a vehicle owner, you want to be sure that if you trade up to a new vehicle next year, your charger can handle your new ride.

Finally, to be considered a smart charger, we’d argue that the charger needs to not only be able to execute a multi-phase charge routine across a wide variety of battery types, but it should also be able to properly manage that battery for extended periods, whether it is connected to the charger for 10 hours, two weeks, or two months. This essentially makes every smart charger also a smart maintainer and makes every smart maintainer a smart charger. The reality of microprocessor-driven charging technology is that when you buy a smart charger, you’re actually getting a smart charger and smart maintainer (or at least you should if it actually is smart and not just labeled as such) in a single package – they are now a matched pair.

The reality is that, while the above features and capabilities are essential and beneficial, they are really table stakes. Whereas, when we first introduced our PRO-LOGIX products just over 10 years ago, these features were somewhat advanced and differentiating, they are now so necessary that anything without them (or some variant of them) isn’t worth the investment. While we have made numerous improvements to our charging products over the years, what we heard at our most recent, very busy show was that there are three capabilities that drive usefulness and value for our professional customers:

• Temperature compensation
• Battery repair/desulfation
• Charging severely discharged batteries 

In conversation after conversation, we kept coming back to these three capabilities. So, we thought we’d share the details of those conversations, knowing that, if these topics were important in nearly every discussion we had for three straight days, they’d likely be important to our wider readership.

Temperature compensation

We have been talking about temperature compensation for what feels like forever, stressing its importance in delivering a truly beneficial charge. To recap, batteries accept charging energy differently under different temperature conditions. This means that a charger without temperature compensation risks overcharging a battery in hot conditions and risks undercharging a battery in cold conditions. This makes temperature compensation a key factor in delivering an optimized charge. 

For years, to be honest, when we were crying from the top of the mountain about the benefits of temperature compensation, it fell largely on deaf ears. It is only recently that this feature/capability has been recognized as especially important and worthy of note in a charging product. This probably stems from a variety of reasons. First, it’s hard to ignore the extreme temperatures we have experienced over the past several years – even in places generally perceived to have moderate climates, temperature extremes are more common these days. This likely makes equipment users more sensitive to this topic. 

More importantly, we are about 10 years into the evolution of dynamic PCM or, more generally, module-controlled battery charging in today’s vehicle designs. We have written about this evolution frequently, but in essence, today’s vehicle charging systems use a dynamic charging approach based on a multitude of factors, including battery state of charge, battery health, total system demand, and temperature, among other factors. We would suggest that this change in OEM charging system design has highlighted the critical factor temperature plays in charge acceptance and optimization. This is driving a heightened interest in temperature compensation when aftermarket service professionals choose their charging equipment.

Battery repair/desulfation

This was, by far, the hottest charging topic of our busy weekend. Like temperature compensation, this one has been a long time coming. It’s a topic we have covered many times and one we tout when presenting all of our charging products, but it seems to be a hotter topic now than at any time over the last 15 years. To recap this one in very simplified terms, lead acid batteries, over time, undergo a chemical process where lead sulfate will accumulate on the plates, and this lead sulfate essentially saps the battery’s ability to accept a charge, resulting in reduced reserve capacity for that battery. Every single lead acid battery experiences sulfation over time, but there are many conditions that can cause this detrimental process to accelerate, resulting in a battery reaching a very poor state of health far earlier than normal. These include many different conditions or situations, but the most common are allowing a battery to sit in a discharge state for an extended period, exposing a battery to a significant parasitic drain, or exposing a battery to extreme temperatures for extended periods.

By far, the best safeguard against sulfation is regular charging using a quality smart charger (like PRO-LOGIX) that incorporates an effective battery repair/desulfation routine. To be honest, there is a lot of justifiable skepticism when it comes to this capability. Over the last 20 years, this has been the “snake oil” feature of battery charging, with many unscrupulous manufacturers making questionable claims in this area. The harsh reality is that every battery reaches a point where even the best desulfation routine is not going to recover it – its plates are so badly sulfated and the chemical process has advanced so far that nothing in the world will bring it back (not even our old Christie Dudbuster – the best desulfating charger we have ever seen with a price to match that claim). But, as our many conversations at our recent trade show attest, PRO-LOGIX has a very effective battery repair mode that can significantly improve the health of a sulfated battery. Plus, this feature is totally automatic. If the charger detects signs of battery sulfation, it automatically engages the repair routine and then automatically reverts to normal charging when the battery starts accepting power in a more normal manner.

Similar to temperature compensation, there are many reasons why battery repair/desulfation is now in the spotlight. The first is the extremely high cost of batteries today. A typical replacement battery costs as much as two times what it cost just 10 years ago. In addition, the prevalence of advanced batteries (AGM, Spiral Wound, etc.) in today’s vehicles also drives replacement costs up considerably, as these batteries are typically much more expensive than a traditional flooded battery. The other important factor is the fact that today’s vehicle batteries do so much more than they have ever done before. The demands on late-model vehicle batteries while the vehicle is in operation are massively greater than batteries installed in vehicles from 20 years ago. This increased demand results in greater stress and higher rates of deterioration for today’s batteries. The result of all of this is that extending the useful life of a vehicle battery is both necessary, given the stresses they experience, and cost-critical. We believe these factors are driving the importance of having a charging solution that delivers a proper desulfation routine that restores battery capacity and extends battery life.

Effective charging with totally dead batteries

This is another big one, but unlike the previous two, it has been a big deal since we introduced it with the current generation of PRO-LOGIX and CHARGE IT! products. That said, it was still a very hot topic at our recent show. That’s because professional technicians and vehicle owners (and everyone in between) encounter totally dead (0.0V) batteries far more often than you’d expect. It could be because a vehicle load was left on by accident (a dome light, for example) or because a piece of agricultural equipment was left sitting in a barn with a severe parasitic drain. Regardless of the cause, users everywhere have learned to be wary of smart chargers in these situations because a smart charger typically requires a minimum level of voltage in the battery to allow them to sense the battery’s polarity, which is a prerequisite for engaging with that battery.

We call this issue “The Dead Battery Dilemma.” As in, “I bought a charger to manage my or my customer’s problem batteries, but the charger won’t turn on because the batteries are so problematic that they are completely or almost completely dead.” I personally had hundreds of conversations around this very issue at our event and have had thousands of conversations related to it in the last 10 years. It’s a very real pain point and one that we address effectively with our charging solutions. Once the operator has checked that they are properly connected to the battery/vehicle and that their only issue is that the battery is totally dead, they can hold the charge/go button down for a specific sequence to force the charger to start charging. It’s super simple and super quick.

Comprehensive battery service – With PRO-LOGIX, we’ve got you covered

Our PRO-LOGIX battery charging and maintaining offering effectively addresses the above issue to provide comprehensive, complete battery service for professional technicians and vehicle owners. And, when we say comprehensive, we mean it:

• Fully automatic, multi-phase, microprocessor-driven charging process
• The ability to properly and beneficially charge virtually any vehicle battery type, including LiFePO4 lithium
• The ability to provide a steady power supply mode to maintain a vehicle electrical system at a specific voltage level for a variety of diagnostic, repair, and maintenance applications
• The ability to manage severely discharged batteries, with soft start modes to avoid battery damage
• The ability to engage a totally dead battery (0.0V) as outlined above
• The ability to engage a battery repair mode to reverse sulfation as outlined above
• Temperature compensation for an optimized charge every time as outlined above
• The ability to beneficially maintain a battery in a long-term charging situation, running an enhanced maintenance mode that improves reserve capacity and lengthens battery life

In a nutshell, PRO-LOGIX gives each battery serviced exactly what it needs, adapting its approach based on numerous factors to ensure every engagement results in a beneficial service. In a shop, this means that you are delivering a quality charge to your customers’ vehicles and providing them with a beneficial service. In a home garage, it means that the time and effort you invest in preventive maintenance charging is worthwhile, as you improve your battery’s general health and extend its service life.