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AlaskanYankee
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# Posted: 28 Jun 2012 04:56am
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Good Day Everyone,
I am new here, but I did attempt to look for an answer in a prior thread. I am currently living in a friends cabin by myself, but in less than a year I will be building my own. Meanwhile, I am procuring the needed equipment to build a small, but efficient power system. I just got the Honda EU2000 and I want to maybe invest in a Xantrex inverter/charger with associated battery monitor. I see how my neighbor now never knows how low his batteries are and what the status of the recharging is. I see that these inverter/chargers, can recharge upwards of 100 amps. Say that I have a battery bank of 1000ah, and I am at the proverbial 50% depletion, how long would it take to recharge to 100% when utilizing my generator to power the recharter when recharging? This is somewhat hypothetical, because I don't know yet how many amp hours I will need. I just want to know the math behind it. Thank you for your time.
Jeff
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PA_Bound
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# Posted: 28 Jun 2012 08:11am
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I'm going to add one more question to this thread, that is a natural extentsion to AlaskanYankee's questions.
If a charger can charge batteries at 2A, 10A, 20A, 40A or even 100A output current, how do you know what Amp setting to use? Does it matter with smart-chargers like the Xantrex's?
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Dillio187
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# Posted: 28 Jun 2012 12:02pm
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keep in mind that as a battery charges and voltage rises, incoming amperage will taper off. The last 10 or 15% of the charge can often take many hours.
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razmichael
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# Posted: 28 Jun 2012 12:34pm
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Quoting: Dillio187 If a charger can charge batteries at 2A, 10A, 20A, 40A or even 100A output current, how do you know what Amp setting to use? Does it matter with smart-chargers like the Xantrex's?
Since you are considering Xantrex take a look at Xantrex or OperatingTech for some info. Xantrex suggests you use capacity /5 to select the charge rate. Higher may damage the batteries while lower will just take longer. I have often seen/heard capacity/10. As Dillio says, calculating the time is more difficult as the charging is not linear.
I have a Xantrex HF1800 inverter (with smart charger, auto switch, remote monitor integrated) in my system. It can charge at 40 amps but my bank is 220 amp hrs so I set it for 20 amps. The first stage of the charge up to 95% is fast but the last 5% takes ages. Down side to the HF1800 is that it does not equalize.
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AlaskanYankee
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# Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:26pm
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Thank you for the responses, there is a ton of info out there and unfortunately, some of the ones who know the most can not be trusted to have our best interests at heart. I found this guy's site after I posted my question and he has proved very enlightening! His link is below, I hope I did it correctly.
URL
Thank you again,
Jeff
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groingo
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# Posted: 29 Jun 2012 11:15am
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That is an excellent link, he covered everything that has gone wrong with my system (the one I recently sold) and why, the next one will be very different!
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Dillio187
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# Posted: 29 Jun 2012 11:19am - Edited by: Dillio187
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chronically under charging your batteries can damage them too. When correctly charging a flooded lead acid battery, you should hear it bubble. This bubbling breaks sulfate buildup off the lead plates and dissolves it back into the battery fluid. Without this bubbling, the plates will become covered with sulfate and the battery will quickly lose capacity. Be sure to keep the battery topped off with distilled water as well.
For my solar setup, I like to charge my batteries at around 10% of their ah capacity, so for my 440ah 12V bank, I like to see around 44 amps of charging current. I have a 45amp plug-in charger to use from my EU1000i for cloudy days as well.
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creeky
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# Posted: 18 Jul 2012 10:57am
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Why use a charger to top off your batteries? If your generator/charger can get you to 95% quickly, stop there. The final "absorb" stage will use a lot of gas. let your solar system top up and equalize your batteries. Of course I'm assuming you have a solar system.
One thing I'll stress about the above url. Get a MPPT solar charger. I have 48 volts from my panels going into a 12 volt battery system and MPPT is essential.
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