Forum Discussion

ron_dittmer's avatar
ron_dittmer
Explorer III
Oct 13, 2014

Batteries: Two-6V In Series, or Two-12V In Parallel ???

Before spring I will be replacing our two 12V Walmart coach batteries. Our 7 year old rig has it's original Tripplite 2000 watt inverter/charger similar to THIS ONE. I was thinking of replacing the ...
Class C
DiploStrat's avatar
DiploStrat
Explorer
May 02, 2015
It means that the PD charger will provide:

-- Bulk Charge: 14.4v, battery spec is 14.5v. Close enough.

-- Absorb Charge: 13.6v, battery spec is 14.5v, about one volt too low. Recharge will be safe, but much longer.

-- Float Charge: 13.2. A bit low, but with the periodic "equalization" charges, should be fine.

To be fair, the PD Charge Wizard is aimed at folks who plug in regularly and remain plugged in at least over night. Those of us who don't plug in very often will need to look elsewhere for our battery charge.

See: Charge Wizard

N.B. All of this assumes properly sized wiring and relay. For a 100A alternator with batteries 10 to 20 feet from the alternator, this would call for wiring of a minimum of 50mm2, call it 0 AWG. Sadly, many RV's come equipped with much, much smaller wiring and thus never achieve high charge rates. Hence all of the posts in this forum which state that "engine alternators are poor battery chargers." The problem is more likely to be your wiring than your alternator.

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