diy solar

diy solar

Adding shore power to the classic 400 watt solar system

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Nov 15, 2020
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I'm building this system with the sok 12 volt 200amh lithium battery. I need to know what charger to use and how to incorporate it into the system. Also can the charger be used with a internal combustion generator?
 
A typical RV converter can be used with that battery as long as the converter has a LiFePO4 charge profile. A 55 amp charger would provide a ~.25C charge rate which is pretty good. You can go higher than that but the required AC input amps will also go up.

Most generators produce an AC output that works with most converters.

An example converter is the IOTA Engineering DLS-55 with the IQ4-LiFePO4 module. This converter plugs into a standard wall outlet.

I use the above converter and module with my Onan 5500w generator and 560 Ah LiFePO4 battery bank.
 
The ideal for this would be a inverter/charger - it has a internal transfer switch so that if you are on shore power it transfers the loads to the shore power and begins to charge the battery at the same time. It can also handle a genset - some have two inputs so it can handle a shore connection and a generator at the same time - but thats getting spendy.
 
A typical RV converter can be used with that battery as long as the converter has a LiFePO4 charge profile. A 55 amp charger would provide a ~.25C charge rate which is pretty good. You can go higher than that but the required AC input amps will also go up.

Most generators produce an AC output that works with most converters.

An example converter is the IOTA Engineering DLS-55 with the IQ4-LiFePO4 module. This converter plugs into a standard wall outlet.

I use the above converter and module with my Onan 5500w generator and 560 Ah LiFePO4 battery bank.

My experience with the IQ4 Module and IOTA devices is that it drops to float voltages after 120Minutes. This means that it can be difficult to fully charge depleted packs using this converter setup. This was confirmed by the manufacturer by myself and others. Even if you don't need the full 120minute CC charge at 14.7, I believe it also switches to float charging once you hit 13.6V on the pack which slows the final completion even further.

Far from ideal. There is another thread going over some of the challenges with IOTA devices on here.
 
When I wired up my camper, I used the following charger:

Progressive Dynamics PD9145ALV 12V Lithium Ion Battery Converter/Charger - 45 Amp

Additionally, I wired a power transfer switch to my setup which serviced to not only supply the charger when connected to shore power, but switched my AC in the camper to shore power when it was available.

Arterra T-30 WFCO RV Trailer Camper 30 Series 30 Amp Power Transfer Switch

Transfer switch was 45.00 on ebay. Worth its weight in my setup as I'd rather run on shore power when available. Genset power works fine in these examples. No different than any other shore power.


In the end, there are multiple ways to solve for this. The more options you have, the better.
 
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