Deterioration of Battery Chargers

Possibly the most common reason for premature cyclic battery failure is a failing or aging charger.

There is a view that because a battery charger has no moving parts it can not possibly wear out. Sadly this is not the case!
Just as other devices fail - for example a Television gradually looses its quality of sound and vision - so a battery charger’s control circuits loose their quality of control. This will lead to incorrect charging and battery failure.

The rate at which a charger ages, is affected by the conditions in which it has to work. If it is in a hot or damp, or very dusty location then it will deteriorate quicker than it would in a cool dry dust free position. These poorer conditions affect the electrical components in different ways:

1 Heat – this causes the silicon in the ICs (integrated circuits) and other components to gradually break down. This leads to the control circuits losing control of the voltage and therefore the battery will be damaged.
2 Moisture – this causes short circuits across the ICs and causes them to be inaccurate or to fail.
3 Dust – this causes components to over heat and deteriorates quickly. Some types of dust are electrically conductive and cause short circuits with inevitable inaccuracy of the charger, or burning of the circuit board which leads to failure.

The frequency of use that the charger is subject to, will also obviously affect the life of the charger; golf batteries may be charged once or twice a week, or possibly five to six times a week.

The more you use a charger the faster it ages. This is often not taken in to consideration by people when they say a charger is “only three years old”.
A charger that is used every day for two years is getting old quickly and needs to be checked out thoroughly for charge voltage and cycle control. As this costs money it may be more economic to replace it, rather than have it checked.

The challenge for us as golf battery and golf charger vendors is convincing the customer that we are not just out to sell a new charger but that the benefits of better charging and also avoidance of ruined batteries are worth that new investment.
So in the case of battery chargers, education and understanding ensures longer battery life and allows us to provide a better quality of service and level of customer satisfaction.