Well, I finally improved my charging setup for my generator for boondocking. I'm not a fan of bothering the neighbors with the hum of a generator, even though I have a quiet Honda EU2200i, so I thought I might work at charging faster so the noise is done quicker. Is that like ripping off a band-aid?
My rig has two Battleborn LiFePO4 batteries for a total of 200Ah, and I had already replaced the Micro-Minnie WFCO charger with a PD4655LIV 55A charger that is specifically designed for lithium batteries (see
https://www.winnieowners.com/forums/...iv-359008.html). The "problem" is that I can only get a max in the mid-30A range due to the long 6AWG cables from this converter to my battery bank, and this quickly tapers below 30A.
One solution is to replace those cables. But ick. Another, suggested by someone on this forum, was to get a "portable charger" and charge directly with short cables. And that's what I did by adding a PD9160ALV 60A charger. It isn't really rain-proof, but will live in the storage bay on top of my battery bank as seen here:
On thing that occurred to me was that the battery could be charged by BOTH chargers simultaneously because they have the same charge profile (also include the solar charger you see in that photo)! Here's what I got as seen from my Victron battery monitor:
Holy moly...85.79A! And this is fine for my battery bank which can take 100A in (dual battery) according to Battleborn.
Here's a picture of my Honda, running on propane via the Hutch Mountain mod, with a kill-a-watt meter showing the power draw.
The 1323 watt draw is easy-peasy for my generator, but does make it work for it. For you geeks out there, here's a graph of charging over a 30 minute period. I packed a lot in this graph, but it may answer a lot of questions. Note that the SOC rate wasn't really flattening out as my time elapse along the bottom isn't perfectly spaced. I snapped a screenshot of my battery monitors at approx 5 min intervals.
Note that I put 20% SOC (40Ah) into the batteries in this 30 minute period. That's a bit under what we typically use per day when "camping." I think 45 minutes will fully cover our use, and this is only if solar didn't provide anything for the day.
One last thing, the new charger didn't get hot at all. It got a little warm and the fan cycled on and off, but I lost worries about a fire hazard pretty quickly. I'll probably have the storage bay door open when I do this anyway since that is where the power cord comes from.
Linear Mode
