WFCO Charger/Power Supply

jodeb720 wrote:
My friend has a WFCO WF-8930/50 Power distribution

Questions:
1. Is the output charging power fixed at 13.6 or does it move to 14.4 for bulk charging and taper down?
2. Will the parasitic loads from the 5er "fool" the charging circuit into thinking it needs to continue at bulk or will it think it's in absorption phase of charging when it should be tapering for a finishing charge?
3. Is this only good for charging FLA's or FLA's & AGM's? Li is out of the price range as of today.
4. What is the output for this (I know it'll take either 50amp input or 30 amp input to the 5er - but they are usually rated for output - like 30 amps or 60 amps at 13.6)

Personally, I would advocate purchasing a stand alone good quality 3 stage charger and using that to recharge his battery bank(s) and just leave the WFCO in place.

Thanks in advance for the wisdom!

josh

1. It will do 14.4 automatically if it "sees" the trigger voltage under 13.2 on starting the charge. The key is the combined wiring and battery resistance between charger and battery. R goes up with higher SOC, so the battery has to be low (just under 50% for a wet cell batt).

If the battery is at 12.3 before recharge as soon as you turn on the WFCO it will see maybe 13.3 too high to trigger it. If the battery is at 12.1 then the initial spike could be 13.1 and that will trigger the WFCO to boost.

Many RVs with WFCO have higher R wiring (long and too thin) which adds R and makes the initial spike go aboe 13.2 so the WFCO does not trigger even though the battery is low enough.

2. No, parasitic not enough to make the WFCO see its trigger

3. AGMs have a higher resting voltage than wets so a "low" AGM has a higher voltage and that makes it harder for the WFCO to see under 13.2 on starting.

Li LFP have low R so that would help with the trigger but they have even higher resting voltages per SOC than AGMs and Wets, so that makes it difficult to get under 13.2 but there might be a scenario with a very low SOC and low
R wiring, but doesn't seem likely IMO--but I have no measurements as examples for that.

4. Input is at nominal 120v whether you have a 50 or 30a shore power connection. Output is at nominal 12v DC so don't confuse the output rating with 120v input voltage.

30a indicates a smaller RV so any 30a or higher converter will do. However it is charging the battery, not running the RV you are asking about. In that case, you want a charger or converter that can do about 1/3 the amps of the battery bank's AH capacity, and be within the amps size the portable generator can run. need specifics on his gen size in watts (the "running watts" value not the "name" value--eg a "2000w" name does 1600 running) and the AH size of his battery bank to suggest a charger size in amps.