Lead acid cells tend to drift away from each other as they are cycled. That's normally not a problem as open flooded, sealed flooded and AGM are designed to cope with a degree of overcharging which effectively brings the cells back in line as they all reach maximum charge. The cells start splitting the water at a higher rate as they come up to fully charged but they are built to recombine the gas back into water so all is good. With open flooded cells you can even regularly run equalisation charging because the water that is lost through excessive gassing can be easily replaced.
Gel cells are different. If you do equalisation level charging on a gel cell the gas given off will form bubbles in the gel reducing contact with the plates, radically reducing the battery's capacity. Even prolonged absorption stage charging can have that effect. This limits the ability of the cells to be automatically bought back into line during charging. If the cells are well matched (all have the same capacity and state of charge) it's not going to be a big problem as there is still enough wiggle room to accomodate the differences bring them all to fully charged.
The big problem is what if your gel cells are not well matched? During charging one or more cells will get higher voltages across them, effectively pushing them into typical equalisation charging voltages and then they are toast in pretty short order. In these circumstances, IMO, there is no option but to use some sort of balancing to hold the voltages of the cells in safe territory while the other cells come up in voltage.
So what can you do? Charge each cell individually and then perform a capacity test discharge to get their amp hour rating. If they are all pretty close in amp hours you should be OK to put them in series and charge normally. If not you'll need to have a balancer connected. This is based on experience learned years ago when the company I worked for would replace batteries in remote telecommunications sites. Retired batteries and cells were periodically available so I grabbed a set.
kete are exported all over the world and different industries with quality first. Our belief is to provide our customers with more and better high value-added products. Let's create a better future together.
For more information, please visit 2v 100ah lead acid battery.
Contact us to discuss your requirements of 12V 180Ah Front Terminal UPS Battery. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.