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
Here's preliminary results. The bank was 460 AH four 6 volt Sam's Club 230AH batteries by Deka East Penn. They were fully charged, then discharged for 11 hours at 19-20 amps. I've got before and after SG measurements, but not with me.
Then the PD9280 was turned on. It's connected with 3' of 1/0 welding cable. I just captured the TriMetric stream. Initially it wasn't spitting out any time data. I'd zero'd it out and later realized it had to go through a charge cycle so it could spit out "Days since Charge" and "Days since Equalization". I can't be certain about the time scale, but I think it's close. I'll do better on another run. Remember, this is preliminary testing. I wouldn't normally post this, but I thought it's worth getting comments.
Note there are two things going on. One is the PD9280, which makes decisions about output voltage, etc. (and remember, I hit the manual override at the start to set it to "Boost" 14.6 volt nominal (actually closer to 14.55).
The other thing affecting the data is the TriMetric, which makes decisions about when the bank is "charged." The first is what's really happening, the second is just a change in the baseline of the output numbers. The TriMetric doesn't talk to the converter and can't tell the PD9280 to make any changes to voltage or current.
I don't have numbers for the voltage at the converter output - just numbers that the Trimetric is spitting out. I tweaked the time scale by 15-20 minutes to make it come out at 4 hours, so it's not clear if that scale is correct. I multiplied voltage by ten to show it better.
I hit the manual Bulk charge button as it started. By the manual and the patents, that sets an internal 4 hour timer.
At the four hour mark you see the voltage drop out of boost to normal charge. I think that triggered the TriMetric onto thinking the battery was "charged" and it zero'd out the amp hours etc.
The patents say that hitting the Boost button manually causes a maximum of 4 hours of Boost, while if it enters it on its own, it goes for a maximum of 8 hours. I may have slowed the later charge rate by hitting the button.
I see the 3 hour mark shows a decrease in charge rate. I can't be certain of the time scale, but something is clearly happening before the voltage drop at the nominal 4 hour mark. The 3 hour mark is roughly at 14.5 volts and 180 AH returned of the initial roughly 210 AH hours drained, so presumably the falling charge rate is due to the fact that the battery voltage is nearly the same as the converter output voltage.
My first impression is that this is pretty much what I expected to see. I'd get slightly better performance if the converter wasn't connected to 100' of extension cord that's also carrying power to the RV (at 115 VAC) or if I was running on the gen at 120+ VAC.
BTW, I captured over 150,000 data points during the charge/discharge cycle. There's other data in the stream that was less interesting - filtered voltages, filtered amps and watts. It's all abbreviated, so I had to guess at what some of it meant, like DSC and DSE.
Then the PD9280 was turned on. It's connected with 3' of 1/0 welding cable. I just captured the TriMetric stream. Initially it wasn't spitting out any time data. I'd zero'd it out and later realized it had to go through a charge cycle so it could spit out "Days since Charge" and "Days since Equalization". I can't be certain about the time scale, but I think it's close. I'll do better on another run. Remember, this is preliminary testing. I wouldn't normally post this, but I thought it's worth getting comments.
Note there are two things going on. One is the PD9280, which makes decisions about output voltage, etc. (and remember, I hit the manual override at the start to set it to "Boost" 14.6 volt nominal (actually closer to 14.55).
The other thing affecting the data is the TriMetric, which makes decisions about when the bank is "charged." The first is what's really happening, the second is just a change in the baseline of the output numbers. The TriMetric doesn't talk to the converter and can't tell the PD9280 to make any changes to voltage or current.
I don't have numbers for the voltage at the converter output - just numbers that the Trimetric is spitting out. I tweaked the time scale by 15-20 minutes to make it come out at 4 hours, so it's not clear if that scale is correct. I multiplied voltage by ten to show it better.
I hit the manual Bulk charge button as it started. By the manual and the patents, that sets an internal 4 hour timer.
At the four hour mark you see the voltage drop out of boost to normal charge. I think that triggered the TriMetric onto thinking the battery was "charged" and it zero'd out the amp hours etc.
The patents say that hitting the Boost button manually causes a maximum of 4 hours of Boost, while if it enters it on its own, it goes for a maximum of 8 hours. I may have slowed the later charge rate by hitting the button.
I see the 3 hour mark shows a decrease in charge rate. I can't be certain of the time scale, but something is clearly happening before the voltage drop at the nominal 4 hour mark. The 3 hour mark is roughly at 14.5 volts and 180 AH returned of the initial roughly 210 AH hours drained, so presumably the falling charge rate is due to the fact that the battery voltage is nearly the same as the converter output voltage.
My first impression is that this is pretty much what I expected to see. I'd get slightly better performance if the converter wasn't connected to 100' of extension cord that's also carrying power to the RV (at 115 VAC) or if I was running on the gen at 120+ VAC.
BTW, I captured over 150,000 data points during the charge/discharge cycle. There's other data in the stream that was less interesting - filtered voltages, filtered amps and watts. It's all abbreviated, so I had to guess at what some of it meant, like DSC and DSE.
