Battery Isolator Not Working
I just installed a new pair of 6V batteries and rewired everything pretty much the same way, except for wiring them in series. Everything's working great except for the isolator that is supposed to gi...
Forum Discussion
pNuker wrote:
I was looking at the perfect switch, but it looks like it's pretty expensive. I'm leaning towards this one:
Sure Power 1314 200 Amp Battery Separator
It's unidirectional, but if I'm not mistaken that's what I actually want for my setup. If I'm understanding things correctly, the bi-directional isolator would charge the cabin batteries when the alternator is on, and then charge the engine battery when the solar is coming in.
I want to completely maximize the amount of charge from the solar to the cabin batteries and don't want any of it getting sucked up by the engine battery. I drive around quite often and never have any issues with it starting, so I don't really see any benefit to bi-directional.
I'm also looking for a method to divert the charge from the isolator to my extra backup battery (damaged agm battery discussed over here) when it needs. I was thinking about getting one of those marine battery switchers to manually switch to it when my main cabin batteries are already charged up. Something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000K2MCR2/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?ie=UTF8&smid=A1UNWS4MSNTF2A
It looks like the perfect switch dual rectifier would accomplish this, but like I said it's way too pricey...
Unidirectional is good for what you want. bidirectional will help your vehicle battery live longer as most vehicles don't fully charge their batteries, typically. It also lets you charge your vehicle battery when plugged into shore power. So you save gas running the alternator, but you use a little extra gas when powering the RV from a genset.
Jim
