Quote:
Originally Posted by aljetmet
Alan,
How many miles do you go before you charge your pack? I presume you do not charge every day. Also say that you use your cart a lot which means you have to charge every day. Would that mean that the batteries would last say 500 to 600 days ie the "normal" amount of cycles a battery has?
Seems to me that since we'll be buying south of 466 A, and if I get a sparky, I should definitley get one that has eight 6 volt batteries to max range and to have a set of batteries last at least 4 years...
Your thots please
Allan
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<Caveat reader, These are my experiences and opinions based on owning only three carts and need to be treated as such>
We currently have two 2002 Club Car DS carts, one with 6-8v and one with 8-6v.
I do not think about how many miles I go before charging. I charge a cart any time I use it or if it has sat for more than a couple of weeks. It is not good for batteries to sit without a full charge.
mrdills and
carguys (TOTV) have swung me around to adding BatteryMinders to my arsenal to keep my packs charged. I am looking for a sale
.
As far as cycles, so many things go into it it is hard to know, e.g., how they were maintained, were they left discharged over the summer, etc. IMO making a pack last 4 years is tougher than it sounds, I budget for three years. I have seen two charts that give some insight plotting depth of discharge vs number of cycles.
Code:
Depth Chart 1 Chart 2
Discharge Cycles Cycles
80% 750 500
50% 1350 1000
30% 2000 1900
These charts are telling me the deeper you discharge the pack the fewer cycles you get. Makes sense, so I try to not discharge the pack past 50%. A typical day for me is only about 10 miles which is a very shallow discharge.
I expect my 6-8v pack to be able to handle 30 miles.
I expect my 8-6v pack to be able to handle 40+ miles.
I know they could do more in a pinch, but remember my mileage is based on trying to stay above 50% SOC. I test my expectations and condition of pack periodically by looking at the voltage of the pack after a ride with known mileage before charging. As an example, went 28 miles in the 6-8v cart and ending voltage was 49 volts (60%). This tells me that pack can handle 35+ miles easily.
As far as your particular requirements. Map out a few places you will go using googlemaps.com and get some miles for a typical day. My extreme day would be round trip to Lopez for 18 holes of golf, then Spanish Springs for dinner (34 miles). I can do that with either cart. If I only had 6-8v cart I would quick charge it while at home before I went to SS.