220V to 24V battery charger

[Asnarby]

Hey,

I will soon be operating a barge that has 3 x 10,000lb high speed 24V Sherpa winches on it and need a way to charge the 400amp battery bank (4x 200amp 12V agm deep cycle batteries).

We will have a 110/220V gas generator on the barge and I’m trying to find a charger that will put out enough amps that we don’t have to run the generator for prolonged periods when working and trying to communicate.

I’m the future, we’ll likely add a couple solar panels to top up/maintain the charge on the battery, but for now I really need to solve the generator charging problem.

Barge will be fresh water only but in humid environments at times.

Can anyone help suggest a charger? I’ve read a lot about the charge eaters from signature solar but I don’t think they have a 24V option that can flow 50-80 amps like I’m looking for.

Thanks for the help!
Andreas

 

[Vigo]

Here's 50a right here for $80: power supply

Could buy two or more smaller ones instead and just wire them in parallel to have some redundancy.

A fixed voltage power supply is not ideal for doing 'proper' multi-stage charging, but you CAN feed it through a sufficiently large PWM solar controller (with the power supply as the 'solar') to get your adjustable voltage setpoints. Plus a configurable load port to do some other trickery you may come up with. I've done that routine multiple times at this point and never had an issue killing batteries, controllers, or power supplies.. it just works.

Example controllers:
A
B
C (its PWM dont believe the MPPT line)

Some even have configurable current limits so you can choose not to run your power supplies at max capacity (if you care) by limiting the current setting in the solar controller. I own one of these and have personally verified that that current limiting does work. For a while I had 4x 30a 12v power supplies in parallel running through the 80a model of that thing, charging ~460ah of mismatched lifepo4s and it worked fine.

 

[Asnarby]

Here's 50a right here for $80: power supply

Could buy two or more smaller ones instead and just wire them in parallel to have some redundancy.

A fixed voltage power supply is not ideal for doing 'proper' multi-stage charging, but you CAN feed it through a sufficiently large PWM solar controller (with the power supply as the 'solar') to get your adjustable voltage setpoints. Plus a configurable load port to do some other trickery you may come up with. I've done that routine multiple times at this point and never had an issue killing batteries, controllers, or power supplies.. it just works.

Example controllers:
A
B
C (its PWM dont believe the MPPT line)

Some even have configurable current limits so you can choose not to run your power supplies at max capacity (if you care) by limiting the current setting in the solar controller. I own one of these and have personally verified that that current limiting does work. For a while I had 4x 30a 12v power supplies in parallel running through the 80a model of that thing, charging ~460ah of mismatched lifepo4s and it worked fine.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Do you think if I built a housing around that charger that it would hold up with some moisture in the air? I looked at the Victron units but they’re all 5x plus the price of this unit.

I think I’d go with 2 of them and dial them back to 40amps each.

I assume this is a pretty simple charger, no absorbtion, float, etc. this would be ok I think because we’ll be watching the voltage on the batteries and likely operate from 60-90% charge or something.

 

[efficientPV]

You have to make sure the supply is adjustable up to 29Vor 58V in order to charge. One supply "24v" for every two batteries may equalize better. But then you would be responsible for making those two sets match. A good old 48V transformer charger may be better.

 

[Asnarby]

You have to make sure the supply is adjustable up to 29Vor 58V in order to charge. One supply "24v" for every two batteries may equalize better. But then you would be responsible for making those two sets match. A good old 48V transformer charger may be better.

I was thinking one 24V supply for each bank of 2 batteries as well. How would I make a 48V transformer work? I’m not familiar.

 

[efficientPV]

I was thinking one 24V supply for each bank of 2 batteries as well. How would I make a 48V transformer work? I’m not familiar.

You ought to be able to find an old used forklift charger. That is your basic transformer rectifier charger.

 

[Asnarby]

You have to make sure the supply is adjustable up to 29Vor 58V in order to charge. One supply "24v" for every two batteries may equalize better. But then you would be responsible for making those two sets match. A good old 48V transformer charger may be better.

I was thinking one 24V supply for each bank of 2 batteries as well. How would I make a 48V transformer work? I’m not familiar

 

[Asnarby]

You ought to be able to find an old used forklift charger. That is your basic transformer rectifier charger

So if I had a 48V forklift charger, would I go from the generator 220V to 48V and then to 24V to charge the batteries? I’m hoping there’s a more straight forward way with a 24V

 

[efficientPV]

Many forklifts are 48V

 

[Asnarby]

Many forklifts are 48V

Yes for sure, but I am goign from 220 or 110 to charge 24V batteries which run 24V winches. I would think 48V coming into play would complicate things