Inverter Questions

Charging deep cycle batteries is a science now - Only a few ways to charge them. Consider this Progressive Dynamics brochure report on how long it takes to charge a deep cycle battery.

"Progressive Dynamics ran this test on the amount of time it took a PD9155 (55-amp) converter/charger set to three different output voltages to recharge a 125 AH (Amp Hour) battery after it was fully discharged to 10.5-volts.

14.4-VOLTS (Boost Mode) – Returned the battery to 90% of full charge in approximately 3-hours. The battery reached full charge in approximately 11 hours.

13.6-VOLTS (Normal Mode) – Required 40-hours to return the battery to 90% of full charge and 78-hours to reach full charge.

13.2-VOLTS (Storage Mode) – Required 60-hours to return the battery to 90% of full charge and 100-hours to reach full charge."

The bottom line here is to re-charge your battery in a quick three hour generator run time you have to use smart mode charging technology listed above. This can be accomplished by using a smart mode converter/charger unit on your trailer or by using a smart mode portable charger such as the Black and Decker VEC1093DBD battery charger. You cannot just charge for a couple of hours using unknown DC charging voltage and expect your deep cycle battery to work as specified.

If you can provide 14.4VDC at around 20AMPS Capacity as indicated above you can re-charge your battery back to its 90% charge state in as little time as three hours. If you try to use more than 14.4VDC then you run the risk of boiling out your battery fluids in this charging times.. As we all know deep cycle batteries will die a quick death when the battery fluids get below the internal cores.

If you are just providing 13.6VDC at around 20AMPS capacity as indicated in the report it will take 12-13 hours to return the deep cycle battery to its 90% charge state.

This is deep cycle battery science - not many other ways around it.

If a deep cycle battery is re-charged to its 90% charge state it will produce it normal specified performance. You can only do this 50% -90% charge cycles for a limited number of times before you have to re-charge the battery to its full 100% charge state as indicated in the brochure report. Otherwise you will start doing unrecoverable damage to the battery.

If your deep cycle battery is not re-charged to at least its 90% charge state then you may think it is going to work but what you will find out it drops to a discharge state is a quick order. Doing this repeatedly will cause damage to your deep cycle battery. Got to always start out with at least a 90% charge state.

I follow these same rules all the the time with my battery bank and it is just now starting to taper off on performance after over five years of this repeated battery charging cycles.

Not just me telling you all of this... You just have to follow the established battery charging rules for the deep cycle batteries to be successful.

Hope this helps

Roy Ken

What are good batteries for my motorhome?

snowman
if I plug it into shore power will it charge, and also should I put a battery charger in them for awhile?

If it's a 1/3, 2/3, full type of indicator panel, with the holding tank monitor, it's useless, sorry to say. If you have any kind of digital voltage meter and use it to check the voltage at the battery terminals, that could shed a lot of light on the situation. They are about ten bucks at Wal mart.

If you are using your built in converter charger to charge, typically that takes hours and hours. If you didn't run it for hours and hours, you are probably undercharging. You might have a better converter though. Can you tell us which converter you have? In any event if the batteries are low, it's going to take a few hours at least to get a decent charge put back. Just recharging from one day's usage will usually take a couple of hours and maybe more. If you are going to dry camp and use your genset for charging, you'll benefit greatly by spending some time to learn about better chargers and/or better wiring for the one you've got.

Do you have the manual for this INVERTER. I downloaded the user manual from on-line and it says the RED LIGHT will blink slowly when the input DC voltage is between 10.5VDC - 10.9VDC

The troubleshooting guide says the same thing.

You can validate this by reading the same info here in this User Manual...

WF600 Inverter

I suggest you measure your input battery DC VOLTAGE and verify it is low with the Inverter fired up.

Hope this helps...

Roy Ken

indicator panel says my batteries are charged. I have been charging them with the generator, is that they correct way?
Do I charge with the inverter on, or does it make no difference?

I am new to all of this.

thank you

Your batteries are getting low. Time to re-charge them before your lights go dim and your TV cuts out!!

Sounds like low voltage.........

Seeing as this is just an inverter what/how are you charging batteries?


Manual for inverter.......LINK


On Edit:
5-2. System Status LEDs. pg.14
Input Status...Red Blink (slow).....10.5-10.9V
Power Status...Red Blinking Slowly....UVP: under voltage

Charge batteries, check battery charge state/load test.....get new batteries

I have that manual, just wondering if someone knew what was going on with it. The manual really don't tell anything about what I want to know.

http://www.bestconverter.com/assets/images/wfco/wf600manual.pdf