PD or Iota for my upgrade?
I'm thinking about a converter and battery upgrade. The batteries will be wet cell lead acid 6 volt Possible T-105s or the 230AH, EGC2 from Sam's club. I'll probably go for four. (Does nayone have...
Forum Discussion
Salvo wrote:
Yes, a resistive load will tell you what the PD can do if you want to heat water in a bucket using a spool of wire as the heating element. It tells us little in regards to charging a battery.
On this we disagree. It's why I said we have to "agree to disagree." The current output of the converter at a specific voltage is what's important. If the converter will send electrons into a wire to heat a bucket, it will send them into a battery to store them there. It doesn't matter if the converter is heating water in a bucket, running the lights in the RV or sending electrons into a battery.
The only thing the converter knows is how much voltage it has to apply to get current to flow. I haven't seen anything posted that would indicate there is a difference between a battery load and a resistive load. If the output voltage and current are truly constant, physics and Ohm's Law,in particular, make it impossible for there to be a difference.
If there is any difference, it would have to arise out of variations of output voltage and current, and while that's possible, I've seen no sign of that type of issue.
As to whether the PD is better or worse than other converters in the real world, I'm keeping an open mind. Certainly issues relating to the input AC power are a legitimate concern and there are several tests that indicate you have to consider the input power waveform before comparing test results.
My point is that it's reasonable and ordinary engineering practice to test the performance capability of any converter or power supply with a resistive load bank, and I think it's a bit of a cheap shot and unfair to criticize those who've gone to the effort to do decent reproducible testing by saying the test is only valid for heating water in a bucket. It's like saying that seat belts are only worthwhile if you want to protect a crash dummy.
Doing decent performance testing is hard and I applaud those who have taken the time to build a resistive load bank and do it right - the way any engineer would do it, and the way that the engineers who build converters and power supplies have done it for many, many years.
