Battery Questions
We bought a camper last year, mainly for winter, boondock camping at Mt Bachelor in Oregon. After a scary experience, where the batteries died at 3 am when it was 10 deg F outside, I wanted to get a ...
Forum Discussion
My golden rule is to never ever let my battery bank drop below 12.0VDC which is pretty close to the 50% charge state when camping off the power grid. Have enough batteries in the bank to make it until the next morning at 8AM where you are allowed to run a generator to run your PD4600 smart mode charger to get back up to the 90% charge state before you use the batteries again. I use a PD9260C smart mode charger to charge my 255AH battery bank.
If you need to re-charge the batteries in a short three hour time frame then you will need to get 14.4VDC from your Converter/charger unit with enough capacity to give you 17-20AMPS DC CURRENT for each battery in the bank. My 255AHs setup will draw around 55AMPS when first hit with 14.4VDC and then start tapering back from there as they start taking on charge. this senerial will take around three hours charge time to get my 255AH 50% depleted battery bank back up to their 90% charge state. It will take a good 12 hours to get the battery bank up to its 100% charge state. I can do this 50% to 90% charge state cycle for around 12-14 times and not do any harm to my batteries. I will however have to charge them to a full 100% charge state right away after doing this otherwise I will start doing damage to the batteries.
As stated above in other posts your PD4635 is going to be a bit small to re-charge a couple of high AH rated batteries if you need to do them within a short three time frame due to generator run time restrictions. For me I have to always start my day/night run off my batteries at the 90% charge state if I want them to not drop below the 50% charge state by 8AM the next morning.
Works for me doing this...
Roy Ken
If you need to re-charge the batteries in a short three hour time frame then you will need to get 14.4VDC from your Converter/charger unit with enough capacity to give you 17-20AMPS DC CURRENT for each battery in the bank. My 255AHs setup will draw around 55AMPS when first hit with 14.4VDC and then start tapering back from there as they start taking on charge. this senerial will take around three hours charge time to get my 255AH 50% depleted battery bank back up to their 90% charge state. It will take a good 12 hours to get the battery bank up to its 100% charge state. I can do this 50% to 90% charge state cycle for around 12-14 times and not do any harm to my batteries. I will however have to charge them to a full 100% charge state right away after doing this otherwise I will start doing damage to the batteries.
As stated above in other posts your PD4635 is going to be a bit small to re-charge a couple of high AH rated batteries if you need to do them within a short three time frame due to generator run time restrictions. For me I have to always start my day/night run off my batteries at the 90% charge state if I want them to not drop below the 50% charge state by 8AM the next morning.
Works for me doing this...
Roy Ken
