I can tell you from experience with large vehicle fleets that charging systems in vehicles are not all that interested in the best charging profile for the batteries and the use of either solar or regular charging of batteries with a mains charger to make sure that the batteries regularly reach 100% SOC will increase the life of the batteries sometimes by 25%.
This ^
Also acquired from 45+ yrs of owning and operating several classes of vehicles.
I try to do an annual freshening charge right to the max charge V of that class of battery to where you can see the drawn current drop right away to a couple hundred mA or less.
Any cheap SMPS bench PSU with voltage and current metering is perfectly suitable for this.
Another point of reference i have with battery charging in telecommunications dc systems i have is with sites that had unreliable power the batteries would last longer. Getting discharge / charge cycles as opposed to batteries that never or rarely got cycled. Typically the batteries that where discharged to some extent would last 7 years vs 5 years for batteries that where on a float voltage consistently. This obviously is on a curve batteries that where cycled regularly and to deep discharge had a shorter life. We had a policy of not using automated discharge cycles to mitigate the risk of having reduced capacity if a power outage was to happen during that cycle.
Interesting and it makes perfect sense.
Having done a recent solar powered installation for community data provision when setting up the charge controller for a series/parallel bank of four 165 Ahr SLA's there were several options for battery maintenance based on the battery type used.
https://2n1s7w3qw84d2ysnx3ia2bct-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/150V-TS-MPPT-Operators-Manual.pdfP12
It is important to select the battery type that matches the system battery to ensure proper charging and long battery life. Refer to the specifications provided by the battery manufacturer and
choose a setting that best fits the recommended charging profile.DIP
Switches
4 - 5 - 6
Battery Absorp. Float Equalize Equalize
Type Stage (Volts) Stage (Volts) Stage (Volts) Interval (Days)
off-off-off 1 - Gel 14.00 13.70
off-off-on 2 - Sealed* 14.15 13.70 14.40 28
off-on-off 3 - Sealed* 14.30 13.70 14.60 28
off-on-on 4 - AGM/Flooded 14.40 13.70 15.10 28
on-off-off 5 - Flooded 14.60 13.50 15.30 28
on-off-on 6 - Flooded 14.70 13.50 15.40 28
on-on-off 7 - L-16 15.40 13.40 16.00 14
on-on-on 8 - Custom Custom Custom Custom Custom
* “Sealed” battery type includes gel and AGM batteries
Battery Type - The most common battery type associated with the specified charging settings.
Absorption Stage - This stage limits input current so that the Absorption voltage is maintained.
As the battery becomes more charged, the charging current continues to taper down until the battery is fully charged.
Float Stage - When the battery is fully charged, the charging voltage will be reduced to the Float voltage setting.
Equalize Stage - During an equalization cycle, the charging voltage will be held constant at the specified voltage setting.
Equalize Interval - The number of days between equalization charges when the controller is configured for automatic equalizations (settings switch 7).Then in addition there's Equalisation management as follows:
Switch 7: Battery Equalization
Choose between manual and automatic battery equalization charging. In the manual equalization setting, an equalization will only occur when manually started with the push-button or when
requested from the equalize menu on the TriStar meter. Automatic equalization will occur according to the battery program specified by settings switches 4, 5, & 6 in the previous step. In both settings (auto and manual), the push-button can be used to start and stop battery equalization. If the selected battery charging setting does not have an equalization stage an equalization will never occur, even if requested manually.You'd hope it all works as expected as the price of the battery bank was $$$