Dedicated stand alone charger or not?

[Newfiejeff]

Got a 24 volt Xantrex Xc 2000 watt inverter/charger with lead acid batteries.
How efficient is the charger in the inverters over a stand alone charger?
Just wondering.

Jeff

 

[Reed Cole]

What do you mean by efficient?

 

[Newfiejeff]

What does a better job or the same?

 

[MisterSandals]

The Xantrex will be hard to beat for charging a bigger battery.

 

[Reed Cole]

What does a better job or the same?

Normally the battery manufacturer provides a specification sheet or some other such documentation that states what the ideal charge parameters would be, voltage at various charging stages, C rate, temperature, etc. and then you select a charger that can meet those specifications.

Probably your inverter/charger will work just fine. Though I'm sure you could find a "better" stand alone charger if you really wanted to.

The main benefit to an inverter/charger is that it simplifies installation quite a bit and they also will have a built in automatic transfer switch.

The main disadvantage is that if the you may have to replace the whole thing if just the inverter part, or just the charger fails. And some times the idle draw can be higher than a dedicated inverter.