T-Pain Is On A Boat: Re: [Electric Boats] Wiring issue

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Re: [Electric Boats] Wiring issue

Interesting discussion and one I went through when I put my system together.

When I was planning my installation I had this same discussion with the engineer's at DualPro and Lifeline batteries. Initially the Lifeline response was that I could not do it, Dual Pro we do it all the time. I finally managed to get the two parties to communicate and they agreed that no disconnect was needed. What in part was interesting was that I was talking to two electrical engineers who deal with batteries and charging systems for the livelihood.

I have been operating the system this way for several years now-I leave the charger connected year round when I am not boating - and everything seems to operate flawlessly. I see no noticeable change in my home power consumption either

On Jul 21, 2010, at 5:25 AM, hardy71uk wrote:

Not so . providing the 48 volt line is switched off and the charger output does not share a common earth with the 48 volt pack its quite ok to charge each 12 volt battery one at a time with a single charger without splitting the pack into 12 volt units.
Modern chargers are often fully floating ( earth free) but some may be earthed to the line power plug . In that case be sure that the the 48 volt pack is not earthed back to the line plug earth too.

Chris S

--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, "Eric" <ewdysar@...> wrote:
>

>
> Charging your bank with a single 12V charger requires that you disconnect the bank into 12V sections before charging. Trying to charge pieces of the bank while connected doesn't work well. In this case, the uncharged batteries pull current from the charging battery causing the charger to sense a higher load than the battery that it is hooked to. This causes the charger to continue pushing high current after the target battery is close to full. This leads to higher heat and wear on the target battery.
>
> Let me know if you need any additional info.
>
> Fair winds,
> Eric
> Marina del Rey, CA
>
>
>
> --- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, Samuel Shallard <sshallard@> wrote:
> >
> > I am sure there are folks more knowledgeable that I but I would think
> > you have multiple options.
> > I have 4 12 volts wired in series 48 Volt system and use a single
> > DualPro 4 bank charger. It charges each battery separately even
> > though the batteries remain wired in series. It is probably the Rolls
> > Royce system but operationally is foolproof and all I do is connect
> > the power cord. It pulls around 10 amps max.
> > The cheapest way would be to have a single bank charger and switch
> > from battery to battery as each one charges.
> > On Jul 20, 2010, at 6:17 PM, adamgoforth7701 wrote:
> >
> > > I have a boat that i am looking at that is not charging. It is a 48
> > > volt system. It has two banks of 24volts (4 6v batteries). How to i
> > > charge all batteries off of one charger?
> > >
> > >
> >
>