It has been suggested that you can charge sealed lead acid batteries with a normal power supply.
On the other hand, chargers are available for purchase, but cost almost $100.
Is there a reason to go with the store bought battery charger?
If so, I have six 6V lead acid batteries that I need to charge. The maximum allowed charge current is 1.5A. Many chargers (unlike the one I linked above) only put 2A or more. Is there a way to make that sort of charger easily work?
And do I really need to spend almost $600 on chargers if I want to be able to charge all of my batteries at once? Or can I hook them up in parallel. I have been reading pretty extensively on this over the last couple of days, but am finding conflicting information everywhere. The Battery University source seems good, but it also isn't immediately clear to me what to purchase. I don't want to screw up and end up buying an expensive charger that doesn't work, but I also don't want to spend days figuring out how these work, when this is just a small component of an experiment that I need to have working ASAP. (Therefore, I will go with whatever is easiest!)
Best Answer
The Amp hour (Ah) rating of your batteries will make a difference on what size charger you should use to charge your cells. Any charger providing a current with a value of more than (Ah/4) is considered a fast charging unit for that battery. If you need your batteries to last, you should not use this method.
The method of parallel charging is acceptable, but will slow down the charge rate, essentially splitting your current by the number of batteries in parallel. This method, combined with the knowledge above could bring down the current from a 'fast charging' unit to an acceptable charging range.
The biggest problem with using a regular power supply to charge your batteries is that the charging will have to be very closely monitored. If the batteries become over-charged, electrolysis of the water in the cells will start to degrade the batteries. A battery charger will have the necessary circuitry to maintain a constant voltage, limiting the possibility of over-charging.