Paralleling Power Supply Units Made Easy ???

BFL13 wrote:
Just all baffling to me. Diodes and such? Having one charger set to 0.1v above the other? Master charger and slave charger? Wow!

I have used multiple chargers on the same bank many times with no issues. It doesn't matter what kind of chargers- whether solar, portable , or converter. It is so simple. They all add their amps to some degree depending on their own voltage wrt the battery voltage.

It is all about the spread between the two voltages with each charger. Where each charger has its own voltage, the one with the lowest voltage will get its spread shrunken first as battery voltage rises to the point that its amps start to taper (note --this is before the two voltages are equal and that charger stops contributing amps)

Depending on the relative spreads, you can get each charger doing something even if not its full-rated amps, and you still get added amps.

Eventually all but the charger with the highest voltage will "drop out" completely after some tampering first, leaving that charger and its shrinking spread to finish the job. As that one's spread reaches a certain point , its amps will taper too and go to zip in the normal way.

The other aspect is that the battery has a limit on its acceptance rate, so you can have as many chargers as you want on there adding their amps, but the total amps cannot exceed the acceptance rate.

So if the acceptance rate is 90 amps you can put two 40 ampers on and get 80 amps for a while, then 70, then 60, 50, 40, etc. At those times each charger will be doing approx 35, 30, 25, 20 amps, etc.

So when total amps get down to 40 and each is doing 20, you can yank one charger and the other will jump back to 40 and continue on down from there.

What's with all these weird diodes and such?

EDIT--since every charger, even the same "size" of the same Brand has a slightly different "charger voltage" (like my three Vector 35s did) does that mean you already get that difference in charger voltage that Mex specifies? Except it is by accident/natural and you don't have to create it?

BFL13, your comments have changed the operating space of the power supply.

A battery charger, or battery type load connected to a power supply, is much different than a power supply driving a primarily active electronic load.

Battery loads respond very slowly to the power supply's driving point output and its feedback loop, while active analog and digital loads create impulse dynamics that are much faster and therefore have a more pronounced effect on the feedback loop.

The confusion appears to be in application and terminology...