At 08:10 PM 11/10/2010 -0800, Mark L. Hineline wrote: >Is the shorter-but-still-measurable-in-years story right? It all depends on how deeply you discharge it. True deep-cycle batteries are good for about a thousand cycles if you only discharge to 50%; maybe 200 if you discharge to 80%. Starting batteries aren't *meant* to be deeply discharged ever. They're optimized for delivering huge current for brief intervals, but mostly operating in what's called float service -- no significant drains, charging voltage 13.9 or so. If starting takes 200 amps for five seconds, that's about one-third of an amp-hour. Optima makes a fancy one that they rate for fifty deep discharges to 80% (i.e. 20% charge remaining) -- normal starting batteries wouldn't survive that. Yours, David |
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