Recent content by fratermus

starter battery -> inverter -> wall adapter -> power station like you describe is a fairly common workaround for the issue. As Dave points out having a 1500w wall charger does not guarantee your alternator will be happy to provide another 1500w (plus inverter losses). 180w of solar lying...

There are at least two Renogy apps. IIRC the old one (Renogy BT app) does not have that requirement.

Let's say you need to see 0.02C at Abs voltage to terminate, so 4A for a 200Ah lead bank. You set the controller to watch for 4A trailing amps to trigger the end of Absorption and the beginning of Float. At 6A it's still Absorping because 6A > the 4A setpoint. Things are going according to...

It is a VSR, which the original post mentioned: "Note #3: The big difference between this and the fancy setups (other than the cool battery gauge things) is those will usually use a voltage-sensing time-delayed-opening solenoid-type dohickey". Prices have come down since 2012. There are...

IMO the reach and maintain approaches require different levels of heat reach is seen with self-heating batteries that wait for charging to do their work. The batts are allowed to freeze (overnight, typically) then are heated when charging power becomes available. If we want to start actual...

Agreed, if the controller is maxxed at 15A for a nontrivial amount of the time. If they aren't hitting 15A regularly then >15A is makes no difference. The website for the camper shows shrouded fans on both ends of the solar array. My guess is the mfg predicts the raised shrouds will shade...

Since there will already be one Orion provided it's not a crazy idea to parallel another one. If we were starting from a blank sheet the discussion might go off in different directions. 30A into 400Ah is a 0.075C charge rate, quite mild. The max recommended charge rate for 400Ah of BB would...

That would be highly unusual. Providing power to the starter side causes weird behavior unless charging power is greater than the DC-DC's rated output: solar charges starter batt at 10A starter batt voltage rises to DC-DC cut-in DC-DC starts charging house bank at 30A starter battery voltage...

Yes. with a couple edge-case caveats: * if the controllers don't talk to each other AND you are relying on trailing amps to terminate Absorption you could get premature termination * with monster installs it could be possible to end up with more Bulk charging current than one intends. On the...

AFAIK the Kisae doesn't do the "trickle charge starter battery from house battery" thing. It also doesn't do low temp charge cutoff natively, but can be tricked into it. The manual says the DCC50S maintains "the starter battery via solar panels if the service battery is fully charged". It's...

The Isc number (current, short circuit) in the specs is the max amp output. Imp is current at max power. Because of cell temp derating and other factors, the observed current from the panels will likely be lower than Imp. Extracting maximal power power from the array is one of MPPT's defining...

They do the same thing but {operate and are installed differentl}, affecting how we direct-charge lithium. IMO the solenoid is easier to work with here since it can be manually disabled by disrupting the control circuit (IGN, D+, whatever) and does not have to be removed if you install DC-DC...

Motor yachts have traditionally used dead-simple alternators with external regulation. Balmar, etc.

The lead batts probably needed DC-DC staged charging more than the lithium does. Lithium does fine with "charge and stop". The stop part is problematic with actual isolators (diode or FET-based); due to how they are wired in there is no easy way to stop them. If the isolator is a...

How will it be charged? If by alternator I'd probably go AGM and if solar maybe gel, due to their current/voltage requirements. I don't know of any sealed (maintenance-free) flooded that are actually deep cycle. A self-heated 50Ah lithium might be cheaper Wh/$ in the long run under those...