Voltage Regulator
The main thing is, that when the engine is warm (actually the VR which is temp vs voltage sensitive), and when the battery gets "up" and normalized, that the needle predominately runs near center. If it favors "always charging" a little bit, either the voltage is high (I've posted hundreds of times on voltage drop and grounding) or else the battery is sulfated. On cars that sit a lot with the battery "partly down" this can be an issue.