It was just last week when someone asked us how long to charge a car battery at a specific amperage. Then today, someone asked us the same thing but with a different number of amperage. My friend sat down and asked, “How long to charge a car battery at 50 amps?”
At first again, I didn’t know how to answer. Then I remember that I have discussed it before that charging a car battery at a specific amperage depends on what battery charger you are going to use and what is the status of the car battery.
Whether it is flat dead, or just not fully charged. Also, 50 amps are high enough to get the car running in an hour or less if you are going to use a charger that is compatible with 12 V car battery.
Charging A Car Battery At 50 Amps
According to some experts and car owners, it is an average of an hour and a maximum of 5 hours to charge a car battery at 50 amps. Again, it will depend if the battery charger is compatible with the battery itself and if there is no defect underlying the battery.
Batteries and battery chargers are like people; they need to be compatible with each other for them to function tremendous and in sync. Car batteries have their manual user sheets, and you will find there which battery charger is compatible working with the battery that you have bought.
It is essential to put this battery charger always on the trunk of your car just in case you are traveling from coast to coast or on longer distances – so you can use it at time of emergencies so you can go back on the road after charging.
The only downside of these battery chargers is that they are fast charging. You need to look out for it and set a time when it will stop charging so you can prevent it from being overcharged. Overcharging the battery can cause a car battery explosion, and the sulfuric acid that will be emitted is not good for both the car engine and the environment.
Aside from the compatibility of the battery charger and the car battery itself, we need to determine the status of the battery. If the battery is below 12.2 V upon charging, we could expect the battery to get fully-charged at around a maximum of 12 hours especially if you are using a trickle charger as it is designed to charge in a slow pace.
Keep in mind that these trickle chargers come in two types: the manual and the automatic.
How To Determine How Long A Car Battery Would Charge
For us to know how long will it take a car battery to recharge (from a flat dead battery or even 10.1 V to 12.3 V). We need to check the specification of our car battery, specifically the reserve capacity.
To measure the number of amperage and the hours for how long you can charge a car battery, we need to multiply the RC by 0.6. Reserve capacity is being measured by minutes, and if ever you got a reserve capacity of 150, you need to multiply it by 0.6.
The result that you will get from this formula would be the length of the charging time that your car battery needs per hour.
Conclusion
Now, we already know how long does it take to charge a car battery at 50 amps and what are the things that we need to consider on how we can find the best charger that is compatible to our car batteries.
Since car batteries differ from types of car engines, we also need to be mindful of the car battery charger that we are using as these chargers can damage the car battery health if they are not compatible with each other or if they go overcharged.
There are different car battery chargers. You can use a standard battery charger or a trickle charger of your choice.
A trickle charger comes in two types: the manual, which is most likely the same as standard batteries and the automatic, which has an advanced feature of turning on and off if the battery needs to be recharged or already full.
Also, there’s a method that we can use to determine the charging time depending on the car battery type and the battery charger that we are going to use.
You need to check the manufacturer specification on the user manual of the car battery to see the reserve capacity value. It then needs to be multiplied by 0.6. The result that you will get from this is the charging time per amp-hours.
