upgrading power converter
My power converter has apparently bit the dust, lights flickering for past couple of years now no charge to batteries... Anyhoo, we do a lot of dry camping, where we need to daily boost the batteries...
Forum Discussion
I guess you are just using a single battery that came with the trailer. This may be a good time to upgrade a couple of things if this is the case.
Most folks that camp off the power grid like to have at least around 220AHs of battery capacity to be able to run a few things on-board and make it thru the night. Converting your incandescent lights to LED LIGHTS goes along way to saving BATTERY energy... A couple hundred AHs capacity will allow you to run a 300WATT Pure Sine Wave Inverter to operate your home entertainment electronic items for a few hours each day/night but you must re-charge your batteries the next morning to do it all over again for the next day/night run off of the batteries.
The two 6VDC golf cart batteries connected in series for 12VDC will give you over 200Ahs of capacity and will have a RESERVE CAPACITY of around 3 hours of producing 25AMPs of DC current. These only cost $80 each from COSTCO...
What alot of folks do is go ahead with the 4AWG cables from the converter/charger unit to the battery bank just in case you ever want to increase the number of batteries for camping off the power grid.
Since you already have the 2KW EU2000i Honda Generators what I would do is figure out what all you would want to operate in your trailer when camping off the power grid and plan it out to run down your batteries to around their 50% state of charge by 8AM the next morning. Then connect your trailer shore power cable to the generator to allow your on-board converter/charger to re-charge your batteries as quick as you can which in this case will be a three hour generator run time.
If you are not interested in any of this extended camping off the power grid then I would just replace the present failed 55AMP converter/charger chassis with the PD9260C 60AMP smart mode converter and there is no need to do anything else. You are only increasing the battery charging capacity by 5AMPS.
Most of us just like to change things for doing something different than the original provided trailer was designed to do and when something major like the converter/charger fails this is a grand opportunity to think outside of the box a little and increase the experience of camping off the power grid if that is what you like to do.
Since we made Battery Systems changes here it is all second nature now about not worrying if we will make it through the night or not. We just go and do it now...
My setup also provides my house backup power when the lights go out. I can just run extension cords to where-ever I need some 120VAC running off the batteries.
Here on the East side of the US we are all tied down with NOISE PROBLEMS at most all of the available camp grounds here. Generator restrictions everywhere. The way out is develop bigger battery setups so you can do the things you want to do after hours and not have to run the generator. I only run my generator now for three hours after 8AM in the mornings during breakfast and this fits in just fine with all the generator run time restriction here.
Now I want to add some solar power to even more reduce the time I need to run my generator each day. My 2008 age batteries are just now getting to the end of their useful life so this is exactly what I am doing now, planning for the next better power upgrade.
Roy Ken
Most folks that camp off the power grid like to have at least around 220AHs of battery capacity to be able to run a few things on-board and make it thru the night. Converting your incandescent lights to LED LIGHTS goes along way to saving BATTERY energy... A couple hundred AHs capacity will allow you to run a 300WATT Pure Sine Wave Inverter to operate your home entertainment electronic items for a few hours each day/night but you must re-charge your batteries the next morning to do it all over again for the next day/night run off of the batteries.
The two 6VDC golf cart batteries connected in series for 12VDC will give you over 200Ahs of capacity and will have a RESERVE CAPACITY of around 3 hours of producing 25AMPs of DC current. These only cost $80 each from COSTCO...
What alot of folks do is go ahead with the 4AWG cables from the converter/charger unit to the battery bank just in case you ever want to increase the number of batteries for camping off the power grid.
Since you already have the 2KW EU2000i Honda Generators what I would do is figure out what all you would want to operate in your trailer when camping off the power grid and plan it out to run down your batteries to around their 50% state of charge by 8AM the next morning. Then connect your trailer shore power cable to the generator to allow your on-board converter/charger to re-charge your batteries as quick as you can which in this case will be a three hour generator run time.
If you are not interested in any of this extended camping off the power grid then I would just replace the present failed 55AMP converter/charger chassis with the PD9260C 60AMP smart mode converter and there is no need to do anything else. You are only increasing the battery charging capacity by 5AMPS.
Most of us just like to change things for doing something different than the original provided trailer was designed to do and when something major like the converter/charger fails this is a grand opportunity to think outside of the box a little and increase the experience of camping off the power grid if that is what you like to do.
Since we made Battery Systems changes here it is all second nature now about not worrying if we will make it through the night or not. We just go and do it now...
My setup also provides my house backup power when the lights go out. I can just run extension cords to where-ever I need some 120VAC running off the batteries.
Here on the East side of the US we are all tied down with NOISE PROBLEMS at most all of the available camp grounds here. Generator restrictions everywhere. The way out is develop bigger battery setups so you can do the things you want to do after hours and not have to run the generator. I only run my generator now for three hours after 8AM in the mornings during breakfast and this fits in just fine with all the generator run time restriction here.
Now I want to add some solar power to even more reduce the time I need to run my generator each day. My 2008 age batteries are just now getting to the end of their useful life so this is exactly what I am doing now, planning for the next better power upgrade.
Roy Ken
