Battery voltage while Explorer sleeps

[Exit32]

We've had a lot of salt and slop on the roads here lately, so I decided to keep my 2016 Platinum indoors and drive my ol' Buick Rainier until conditions improve. While my Explorer slept, I was curious to know how much the battery would discharge during a week of inactivity, so I connected a portable recording voltmeter (LASCAR EL-USB-3 Voltage Data Logger) directly to the battery.

Before I connected the recording voltmeter, I fully charged the battery using a quality automatic charger. The Explorer was kept inside an unheated attached garage with temperature ranging between 35 and 45 degrees Farenheit during this experiment.

As you can see on the graph below, battery voltage gradually decreased from 12.65 volts to 12.35 volts over a period of eight days. Considering the small but constant drain from the Explorer's on-board computers, I think a 0.3-volt drop in battery voltage is reasonable.

 

[matt88]

Thanks Exit32.

It looks as though the curve actually flattens around day 5. This may correlate to a power saving mode timer or voltage cutoff threshold. What might also be interesting to know is: What is the slope of the voltage after that point around 5 days. Then one could determine the long-run voltage for long-term storage. Perhaps an ammeter inline would be interesting as well