Charge Wizard needed?
Does anyone know if I need a Charge Wizard for a 'Progressive Dynamics InteliPower 9130' converter? I occasionally stay plugged into shore power for days or weeks at a time. I don't want to over...
Forum Discussion
Harvey51 wrote:
Wizard? I would expect a battery monitor with a microprocessor to be counting amp hours in and out so it knows the state of charge and sets the voltage accordingly until it knows the battery is 100% charged. We all know the voltage is a poor indication of state of charge during charging.
Are there any converters or chargers that have Wizards worthy of the name?
The charge wizard isn't a battery monitor, per se, at least not in the sense that a Trimetric is. It doesn't attempt to figure out the state of charge of the battery, but only has the somewhat simpler task of trying to figure out when the battery has reached a fully charged (or nearly fully charged) state so it can change from "charge quickly" to "maintain battery" modes. Monitoring voltage is probably about the best way to do this, in fact; a TriMetric monitor even resets it's idea of "battery at full charge" based on voltage, so as to prevent excessive drift over time from tracking current in and out.
The PD charge wizard is rather crude in a theoretical sense, more than just by lacking battery current measurement. It doesn't have remote voltage sense lines for the battery (which would be a real help in less than ideal DC power distribution setups) or temperature compensation, among other things. Despite these, in actual practice it works quite well for its intended purpose while requiring little tinkering or technical expertise on the part of the user.
Some solar controllers are more sophisticated, and possibly some high-end inverter/chargers also have more sophisticated or at least more configurable charging profiles. I'm not aware of any of them that work by counting amp-hours while charging.
(Current sensing would have to be at the battery to be any significant use, and so require additional work in wiring. Sensing current at the converter would not help with determining state of charge since some of the power may be powering house loads rather than charging the battery, and since it would miss any energy put into the battery by solar or other means.)
