Winching may seem simple, but you need to ensure you have all the right information before you get to work. Like, the toll it may take on your battery life. The last thing you would want is to destroy your own battery while pulling another car.
Therefore, let’s look at the factors in increasing the longevity of winch battery. A winch can run a battery for a few minutes only, depending on the average amp rate per hour of battery life.
A lot of factors are associated with winches running on batteries. Due to the sheer amount of electricity, it draws, it's imperative that we achieve effective winching while still maintaining the battery's life.
We’ll go more into details here.
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Battery Dependency
The battery's longevity, as well as how many winches are being worked at the same time, will determine how long a winch runs. A single winch uses approximately 3kWh per day. As a result, the greater the number of winches operated on a single battery, the shorter a single winch's operational time will be.
How To Increase the Running Time?
There are several factors that we can focus on if you want to extend the running time of a winch on a battery. The factors are:
Maintenance of Batteries
Keeping your batteries in proper condition is imperative if you want to run a winch for a longer time on a battery. Therefore, make sure proper maintenance is being done on them.
For example, ensuring maintenance when you charge the batteries during standby conditions, or in the off state as well as after stopping the motor. This will re-energize batteries properly without having to strain them. Besides, it will ensure longevity and hence will aid your winches to run longer.
Proper Charging
If you want optimum performance from the battery, you need to ensure a proper charge.
Make sure that the ‘ON’ switch is indicated in the voltage meter. And stop charging only when the charging current value shows a ‘FULL’ status.
Put it on service mode and away from salt water before using it again once charging is complete.
Battery Capacity
There will be issues in increasing range when you have to support more weight on your winch as more amps are required for the lifting. In such cases, standard batteries will not suffice due to their lower capacity.
Therefore, for a longer operational time and extra power, it’s crucial to use larger and better-quality deep cycle batteries with a higher capacity.
Calculate the Run time!
It’s hard giving an approximate running time for winches on batteries. You can easily find out the figures with a simple calculation. All you need is the amperage of the battery, the amperage draws of the winch, and the reserve capacity minutes of the battery.
With these 3 figures, you can use this formula and find the maximum run time of a winch on a battery. The formula is:
Max winching time = {(Amp of Battery)/(Amp draw of the winch)} ×Reserve Capacity minutes
Conclusion
Many factors define on the longevity of running a winch on a battery. Based on the factors, you can increase the operating time. It’s wise to keep in mind that winching can drain batteries fast, and hence battery maintenance is also crucial in this case.
However, with a simple formula, you can easily find the maximum winching time depending on the battery and the winch being used.