I have a truck camper and am planning to swap the aging led batteries for lithium. My current charging system is pretty traditional with an ACR that ties the house and starter batteries together while driving along with a solar panel on the roof with a Victron mppt and a 110v Victron charger to use when the truck is parked at home for extended periods. I realize that I'll need to ditch the ACR for a dc-dc converter (probably a victron Orion Smart) when I switch to lithium but there is one feature that I'm really going to miss. Currently when the truck/camper is parked at home in the winter and I leave it plugged in the ACR closes and keeps the truck batteries topped off as well. Likewise if I'm camped somewhere with plenty of solar. Obviously none of that is going to work with the dc-dc converter in the way. What I'm thinking of doing is connecting the outputs of the 110v charger and solar charger to the truck battery (ie the input to the dc-dc charger) and have only the dc-dc charger tied to the house batteries. Is there any good reason not to do it this way? I realize I may struggle to find settings for the dc-dc charger that work under all conditions but is there anything beyond that that is going to bite me in the ...
Is my planned unusual configuration a bad idea?
- Thread starter Rayinaz
- Start date
sunshine_eggo
Happy Breffast!
Connect both chargers to the coach battery.
Get a wide input 8-40V to 13.8V DC-DC converter for about $20-30. Connect input to coach battery and output to starter battery. Install an on/off switch. This will basically "float" the starter battery with the coach battery with both solar and DC-DC supplying input to the coach battery, where you are likely to consume far more juice.
Get a wide input 8-40V to 13.8V DC-DC converter for about $20-30. Connect input to coach battery and output to starter battery. Install an on/off switch. This will basically "float" the starter battery with the coach battery with both solar and DC-DC supplying input to the coach battery, where you are likely to consume far more juice.
That's probably a good approach. I may even have a spare buck/boost converter laying around from another project.
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