Sam is is right, there are multiple ways. One way is find a 48V charger and charge the entire bank. Having all the charging current running through a single set of leads makes it easier to measure the inbound current through a state-of-charge meter. Golf cart chargers can often be found on eBay but older models are not very sophisticated and won't treat your batteries as well as a modern "smart" charger. A single 48V charger (even a new one) may also lead to an "unbalanced" pack where the batteries end up with different resting and operational voltages. Unbalanced packs will lead to an early demise of your weakest battery and possibly some other batteries as well.
Another option which manages the unbalanced situation is a 4 bank charger like Dual Pro or ProMariner. The batteries can be left connected in a 48V pack, but each 12V battery (each pair of 6V batteries in your case) gets its own charge and they should all end up very close to each other. This option is usually a little more expensive, but many people consider it moeny well spent.
You can accomplish the same result by usiing four seperate 12V chargers, wired seprately. The pack stays connected together at 48V and all chargers are run at the same time. A couple of people have been able to find new 12V 12A chargers for around $30 each, meaning that the complete charge system could cost between $100 - $150. The low cost also allows for spares to be put away for future problems. Wiring in this scenario can be somewhat messier.
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?
> >
> >
>
No comments:
Post a Comment