What you should know before starting to use a battery charger

When you purchase a new battery charger, it is very important to take certain things into account before plugging it into the socket. If an incorrect action is performed, your new battery charger could fail. What exactly do you need to pay attention to? Let's give you a summary.

Check the input voltage of the battery charger

Before starting to use your new battery charger, it is important to check the input voltage. This is especially needed in case of a conventional charger, a high-frequency battery charger will adjust to this.

Why do I need to check the input voltage of my battery charger?

If you don't do this, there is a chance that you will damage the charger. A common problem is that the contactor inside the charger fails as a result of an excessive voltage.

How do I check the input voltage?

• Measure the voltage on the socket by means of a multimeter (actiefoto met multimeter toevoegen)
• Open the battery charger
• Set the charger so that you can connect it correctly

E.g. if the input voltage is 230 V, you can set it accordingly and correctly connect it to 230 V.

High-frequency chargers adjust to this automatically. As a result, you don't need to check the input voltage before you start working with this type of chargers.

What are the consequences if you don't check the input voltage?

Components inside the battery charger can be damaged. So a brief check of the input voltage is of great importance and will save you a lot of time and money afterwards.

Check the battery

If the machine has been standing still for too long and the battery has discharged too deeply, the battery voltage may be too low and it is possible that some chargers will not start up.
The voltage with which the charger start up, depends on the brand and type.

So always check the battery voltage before initiating the charging process.

Check what type of battery the charger has been set to

In most cases, high-frequency chargers don't recognise by themselves whether the battery to be charged is a lead-acid, gel or AGM battery.

So it is important that you set the battery charger correctly before you start the charging process. If it is set incorrectly, it could damage the battery.

This only applies to high-frequency chargers or multi-voltage chargers. A conventional charger doesn't have this problem as it can only charge lead-acid batteries.

How do I check the settings of my battery charger?

Technologies improve and chargers change. That is why you always need to read the manual included with the charger and follow the instructions stated within. This is all too often forgotten.

Do you want to find out how you can charge traction batteries correctly? We gathered some tips for you here.

For more detailed info about battery chargers, we gladly refer you to the Energic Plus website.

Annelies, TVH-blogger