Opportunity charging is the act of charging a battery during break time, lunch time, or any opportunity that presents
itself during the work day.
Detrimental Effects
- Opportunity charging adds abnormal heat during the discharge cycle and one more cycle to the battery,
reducing its life without producing any appreciable increase in run time. - Each time a battery is charged, whether for one minute or eight hours, constitutes a cycle. The battery
has a built in death, by design, of 1500 cycles. This effectively decreases the battery life to less than
two years. - Opportunity charging not only increases the cycles on the battery life, but the heat added while charging
causes additional damage to the plates further accelerating the battery death, reducing the expected
cycles from 1500 to as low as 1100 or less.
Proper charging with one cycle per 24 hour period is all that is necessary. If the work can’t get done with a normal
cycle you will have to consider purchasing a larger battery for the job or purchasing additional batteries for change out.