Charger: Meanwell 10a or Iota DLS 15?

greenrvgreen wrote:
This is a followup to the thread I posted a couple weeks back. I want a capable portable charger for a 100ah AGM battery bank, mostly fed by solar. The constraint is that my generator is limited to 450 watts output. The max draw of the DLS 15 is 400 watts (3.7a @108v), while the meanwell appears to draw 350 watts. Both are fine in that respect.

My question is, which will give me better charging performance? I can set the meanwell to a high voltage (14.5 or higher), but I am limited to 10a. The dls 15 will go to 14.8 if I let it (14.4 normally), but its internal logic will decide the charging voltage. It appears to charge at 15a throughout, as long as the amps will fit.

The Iota is more than twice the price, but 50% more amps. Will I get 50% better performane, even though the volts will drop down?

Thanks!

IMO, no.

The DLS need the IQ4 to do that 14.8 business. 15a on 100AH is like my ugly graph's 35a plot on 220 for charging time and charging profile, roughly. (See that ugly graph a couple pages ago in the thread about the PowerMax running now.)

Hard to answer in detail without knowing the SOC of the battery at the time of the comparison test. At high SOCs amps are low anyway, so may not matter if one can do 15 and another 10 if the batt will only take 8.

I am leaning towards the Meanwell over the Iota in this application, since you can maintain the voltage higher with that, which will have it delivering as many amps as the Iota at the higher SOC range of the battery. You have no boost button with the IQ4 to jack up the voltage. The IQ4 is not like the Charge Wizard in that respect.

BTW it remains true that a 20a Vector draws 320VA from the gen, so any Vector even the 40a set at 20a will do the same. As previously posted, IMO you might be able to run a 25a Vector with your gen, so why are you looking at 15a and 10a gizmos??? :)