Hey mancha what type of 12volt battery are you charging

Electrolysis is a different ballgame ,you can get electrolysis at under 1.23volt but it has to be cyclical bursts of charge or slow-rate continuous charge also due to nernstian changes at electrodes surfaces

Ah yes I see you know these secrets too.reminds me of those guys who recently announced usage of ions (silicotungstate) to undergo oxidation state change inplace direct gaseous evolution.

After gave up from loosing anode in my  1 V electrolysis project, I tried to change approach. I said to my self "why not lose solution instead loosing  anode ?"  Then I made my first big mistake in my research work. I was thinking that hydrogen peroxide is  answer for that, just unstable. I spent  too many working hours to make it stable without making  gas detection. I was upset by myself when I have found that there is no hydrogen at all. Just decomposition into oxygen and water vapor
So..we have to have that kind of mistake.
All The Best,
Milan

Mancha,

I think you are making a mistake with the 10.5 VAC transformer charging the battery. You generally can charge a battery
which has a voltage below it's maximum but the charging voltage always must be above the batteries current voltage. If you
hook a lower voltage source up to higher voltage battery you will force reverse current backward through the lower voltage supply
either blowing fuses, burning it out or folding it back.

The reason you are seeing some charging with the configuration of the 10.5VAC rectified supply is that a transformer is measured
in AC RMS voltage which is de-rated  .707 * volts(peak to peak) from the peak AC voltage so that means that the voltage
in total is about 14.8VACpk-pk = 10.5VAC RMS.  The diode blocks the lower AC voltages of the AC from being overridden by
the battery so that there is no backwards discharge flow (see above). So the battery is only conducting (recharge current) near
the peak = hence the altered AC power factor. These repetitive pulses are what is called PWM pulse width modulation so you have
only a small percentage of full current flowing that the AC line would be capable of for a short sub cycle period. This is what is
causing the slowing down of charging. Since you are being billed for less current by your utility meter is costing you less per unit
time but more units time should cause you to pay the *same* for this type of charging as the faster type.

I recommend the you get an oscilloscope and AC variac and you can see what the conduction charging pulse looks like at the transformer
as it begins to charge the battery as you slowly turn the voltage up.

To prove to yourself that the efficiency is the same at both charge rates you should set up a dummy load (headlamp) to
discharge the battery for the same amount of time then use your kilowatt meter

:S: MarkSCoffman

.I agree with markscoffman that when a non-gaseous (solid) faraday deposition is happening eg lead or zinc then how are you gonna jump over the counter-emf to get up to full capacity,solids cannot dissipate like gases or liquids do so I don't see chance for nernst manipulation? Only way I see to get round chemical counter-emf is via manipulation of voltage-peaks as markscoffman say but this will apply only to solids chemistry.a solid has a nernst-value of unity (1)

Okay @mancha I've given this some thought.atomic hydrogen is a very powerful reducer,much more powerful than dihydrogen.if your atomic hydrogen in its very brief lifetime is reducing PbSO4 back to lead I can understand. However,if the atomic hydrogen is forming PbH4 then decomposing into Pb and H2 you have a problem,residual H2 gas.residual H2 gas is going to float straight over to your PbO2 cathode and burnup on it and consume it giving a hidden cost.sacrifice of PbO2 for liberation of Pb...mmff!?