Should I Change My WFCO Converter?
Opinions have often been expressed, both on this and other RV forums, that most stock RV converters are inadequate to properly charge and maintain batteries and are often of poor quality. It is frequ...
Forum Discussion
Hi Mike,
So use two of them.
It really depends on the size of the battery bank.
A scenario:
232 amp-hours of battery bank taken down by 116 amp-hours. (50%)
How many hours to get back to 85% of charge? (at 85% acceptance rate is only going to be 34 amps max).
197.2 - 116 = 81.2 amps that can be replaced at a high current
81.2 /38 = 2.13 hours of run time. Likely 3 hours would get you to 90%.
As it probably takes 3 to 4 hours more run time to get from 90% to nearly 100%, no one in their right mind would deliberately run the generator to do so. Opportunity charging (i.e. while running the air conditioner) is another matter altogether.
I'm not sure that doubling up on the amps is going to be worth the extra trouble of connecting two Megawatt units.
I spent 4 years maintaining 875 amp-hours with a 40 amp PD converter to which I added a wizard. I never EVER saw the converter maxing out to 40 amps. Most of my charging was done with solar.
Now I tend to use the magnum inverter/charger. I have seen it do 125 amps @ 15.5 volts in cold weather. (-15 c, 5 F). It doesn't stay at that rate long because my battery bank is getting old and tired (4 @ 10 years old, and 3 @ 5 years old).
So use two of them.
It really depends on the size of the battery bank.
A scenario:
232 amp-hours of battery bank taken down by 116 amp-hours. (50%)
How many hours to get back to 85% of charge? (at 85% acceptance rate is only going to be 34 amps max).
197.2 - 116 = 81.2 amps that can be replaced at a high current
81.2 /38 = 2.13 hours of run time. Likely 3 hours would get you to 90%.
As it probably takes 3 to 4 hours more run time to get from 90% to nearly 100%, no one in their right mind would deliberately run the generator to do so. Opportunity charging (i.e. while running the air conditioner) is another matter altogether.
I'm not sure that doubling up on the amps is going to be worth the extra trouble of connecting two Megawatt units.
I spent 4 years maintaining 875 amp-hours with a 40 amp PD converter to which I added a wizard. I never EVER saw the converter maxing out to 40 amps. Most of my charging was done with solar.
Now I tend to use the magnum inverter/charger. I have seen it do 125 amps @ 15.5 volts in cold weather. (-15 c, 5 F). It doesn't stay at that rate long because my battery bank is getting old and tired (4 @ 10 years old, and 3 @ 5 years old).
liketoride2 wrote:
Megawatt makes one that will do 15.5 and costs only $60 but it's only 38 amps. Since about half of my time camping I'm off the grid and have to recharge with a generator I doubt that anything around 38 amps is adequate, but could well be wrong.
Mike
