Lead-Acid temperature compensation in charging

Temp compensation is important if you are charging it at high or low temp. The other thing that makes a difference is how much current you are using to charge the battery as this inreases the batery temp, also if its wet or gell type makes a difference.

Aceptance charge for gell type and wet type differ as does float charge. At room temp say 25 deg C a wet cells float charge is about 13.5 Volts and a gell cell is about 13.8 Volts.

Both aceptance charge is about 14.4 Volts for both but this reduces with increase in temp. So unless your charging with a lot of current or at elevated or reduced temperatures then you could switch it off. But if it a setting as part of the charger then it makes sense to switch it on, I would.
Adam

Edit: The above voltages are for a 12 Volt battery.

 

Depending on the local ambient temperature it may be very important to have the temperature compensation installed correctly.
When the ambient temperture is increasing, the nominal charge voltage is decreasing. Geting an over voltage charge over time, will increase the internal temperature ov the battery, start gas production, and in worst case ruin it permanently.
When the ambient tempareture is colder than 25C the nominal charge voltage is increasing, and you need to charge at a higher voltage to top your battery all the time, or you'll loose capacity when running on battery.

if you have your battery out in the cold in the winter, you will have a lower capacity on the battery anyway, and a too low charge voltage will not make the problem better.

 

Find out what the optimal float charge is for your batteries. Check them periodically with temp swings and adjust float voltage to compensate.