12VoltInstalls
life passes by too quickly to not live in freedom
A fun little experiment I did.
Information and setting first, questions at bottom.
In a slightly hijacked conversation we were having
Having covid put those experiments on hold a month. Am better and got to it today.
First was the adjustable battery charger. (pic #1) A brand I’d never heard of and I cobbled it backfeeding my bluesea 12V breaker box before I had gotten really sick- and thankfully so as I needed the supplement charge badly.
This has held me at 12.8 - 13.2V overnights and cloudy days depending on how I set it. The fan is variable speed depending on load but has that quiet yet annoying battery charger fan sound.
While it bothers my head to use a 8” wide battery charger for a power supply it’s performed very well for me. Not one issue, never gets hot, and it won’t boil batteries because it’s continuously variable adjustable for both volts and amps.
Today I wired up the second test power supply: a small 15A RV converter labeled as a “smart charger.” I was most interested in hearing the fan as I was confident in the output based on the little battery charger’s performance. And it certainly will power my loads and charge the batteries. (pic #2)
While it is labeled 15A it’s way past that. I’m 8ga from the batteries but as is typical of me I fused less lower. Since the 12V fuse box will never see over 15A I had it fused with a 20A. I used a 30A for the backfeed wire from the converter. It promptly blew the 20A, replaced with 30A and blew both of those. 40A did fine…
As I sit here the Thor has been chugging away at about 28A for a half hour while the temporary 12ga thhn I used to test are not too hot to touch but extremely warm- at 28A they would be!
I’m not impressed. I liked the idea of a more robust power supply / charger but this thing is not trustworthy if it’s cranking out twice the rated amps. What else isn’t right?!
I overwire stuff so it was going to get 8ga welding cable. However, I was going to switch it through a lo/hi relay voltage controller rated for 10A/125VAC and I really don’t feel comfortable with it being higher output than its rating. 15A woukd have been fine with me!
1) which would you choose for a permanent solution?
2) am I being to worried over using that battery charger as a switched, permanent solution (that probably won’t even be needed by like March or April)
3) is the automatic smart charging feature of the Thor converter at 14.6V max really any better than the adjustable battery charger? (that can go to 18V if I want)
. . Thanks
Information and setting first, questions at bottom.
In a slightly hijacked conversation we were having
about atypical backup power using a fairly long run distance but reasonably low amperage I mentioned a thing I was going to try. Applicable to this subforum I think.
Having covid put those experiments on hold a month. Am better and got to it today.
First was the adjustable battery charger. (pic #1) A brand I’d never heard of and I cobbled it backfeeding my bluesea 12V breaker box before I had gotten really sick- and thankfully so as I needed the supplement charge badly.
This has held me at 12.8 - 13.2V overnights and cloudy days depending on how I set it. The fan is variable speed depending on load but has that quiet yet annoying battery charger fan sound.
While it bothers my head to use a 8” wide battery charger for a power supply it’s performed very well for me. Not one issue, never gets hot, and it won’t boil batteries because it’s continuously variable adjustable for both volts and amps.
Today I wired up the second test power supply: a small 15A RV converter labeled as a “smart charger.” I was most interested in hearing the fan as I was confident in the output based on the little battery charger’s performance. And it certainly will power my loads and charge the batteries. (pic #2)
While it is labeled 15A it’s way past that. I’m 8ga from the batteries but as is typical of me I fused less lower. Since the 12V fuse box will never see over 15A I had it fused with a 20A. I used a 30A for the backfeed wire from the converter. It promptly blew the 20A, replaced with 30A and blew both of those. 40A did fine…
As I sit here the Thor has been chugging away at about 28A for a half hour while the temporary 12ga thhn I used to test are not too hot to touch but extremely warm- at 28A they would be!
I’m not impressed. I liked the idea of a more robust power supply / charger but this thing is not trustworthy if it’s cranking out twice the rated amps. What else isn’t right?!
I overwire stuff so it was going to get 8ga welding cable. However, I was going to switch it through a lo/hi relay voltage controller rated for 10A/125VAC and I really don’t feel comfortable with it being higher output than its rating. 15A woukd have been fine with me!
1) which would you choose for a permanent solution?
2) am I being to worried over using that battery charger as a switched, permanent solution (that probably won’t even be needed by like March or April)
3) is the automatic smart charging feature of the Thor converter at 14.6V max really any better than the adjustable battery charger? (that can go to 18V if I want)
. . Thanks
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