Can You Charge An 18v Battery With A 12v Charger-Voltage and Charging Methods

There is always this confusion of which charger to be adopted for a battery with specific voltage value. Users have always gotten this whole thing mixed up. Likewise, if you have a battery and you want to buy yourself a charger, you may also be faced with this challenge.

You always want to know what charger would be best for your battery. To that effect, this post will be explaining certain things you need to know regarding batteries and their appropriate chargers. After reading through, you should be able to decide what charger will be perfect for your battery. Highlighted below is everything you should know.

What voltage should you charge your 18V battery?

This sounds like a ridiculous question, right? I mean, you might be saying – this is an 18V battery, so it has to be charged accordingly. Well, I am sorry to inform you that things do not always work like that in the world of batteries! Having gotten that out of the way, now let us go ahead to reveal the expected voltage value of an 18V battery.

Perhaps, the best way to answer this is by illustrating with a variable battery charger. If that is what you are using, then go ahead and do the necessary connections. When you are done with that, you just go ahead and set the regulator to read the required voltage. In this case the voltage will be 18V.

You don’t need to deliberately set the voltage at a higher value compared to what you are charging. Allow the charger to take care of that aspect. Doing it yourself can cause damage to the battery.

When your settings have been achieved and the charging commences, by the time everything is done, the voltage value of the battery will be slightly higher than 18V. Slightly! And that is what shows that the battery is still in good shape.

So, it is important to note that every time you charge your battery to its highest value, in this case it will be slightly higher than 18V, just realize that you are making the battery to perform optimally. But if after charging and you find out it is reading lower than 18V, then that is an indication that the battery performance is weakening.

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Can you charge a battery with a lower voltage charger?

It is 100% possible for you to do that! So can you do it? Yes. Should you always do it? The resounding answer is NO! Therefore, you can decide to do it, but you should always know that there will be consequences. People who do it and get away with it will not come back and tell you what damage they had caused their device(s) in the process.

It is always recommended that a charging voltage be the same with the input voltage of whatever you are charging. A charger with lower voltage will certainly negatively impact the device it is charging. It might not happen all of a sudden. It may occur over a period of time. But it is definitely going to happen.

You also need to consider the amperage of both the charger and the battery. If the charger’s amperage and that of the battery are not the same that could also give rise to affect the performance of the battery. It is either the battery will not be able to charge up to the required value or something else.

It’s more dangerous when the electric current supplied by the charger is higher than what the battery requires. The battery deteriorates faster. The higher the difference between the amperage of the battery and the charger, the more dangerous it is.

Just because others are doing it doesn’t mean you should do same. Look for a charger that has the same voltage and amperage as what you have in your battery. The amperage is just as important as the voltage.

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Can you charge a car battery with a 12V power supply?

Theoretically, you can charge your car battery with a 12V power supply. But the real question is, will this be enough? For a car battery to be good enough for use, it will need to read at least 13.8V.

So if you are charging it with a 12V power supply, you can only get as much as 12V in the battery. It won’t charge it higher than 12V. In other words, the 12V power supply will not serve the purpose.

That means, you need to look for a charger that can deliver that same voltage value. Let us clear up another misconception here. While the 12V charger may not be able to do the work, you don’t have to go in search of a charger that reads like 16V. That is intolerable for a 12V battery. In fact, that will bring about a negative effect on a battery.

The only condition you are allowed to use a 16V charger on a car battery is when you build some sort of regulator that will bring the voltage value down to 13.8V. That way, the battery will work fine.

Therefore, the direct answer to the question above is that, it’s not technically correct. But if you still wish to go ahead, then it is up to you.

Conclusion

The voltage and amperage of whatever choice of charger you have chosen is important for charging your car battery. Using something that has a lower value, is not going to give you the best of results. The voltage must tally with that of the car battery. For optimal results, it may need to be slightly higher. For instance, a car battery will charge better with a 13.8V charger. A 12V supply can raise the battery from where it is to 12V, and no more.