Battery boomdocking dlemma.

Artum Snowbird wrote:
With a Honda 2K generator you would likely be able to run it for one hour a day and your battery would charge to 80%, then drop to 50% overnight. Remember, your battery charger that is built in is very capable of providing 30 to 45 amps in one hour, and your battery is capable of taking that.

the battery charger in a trailer is capable of 40 amps, however if it is a WFCO panel, the likelyhood of every getting more than 10 maybe 15 amps is very close to Zero. Been there, done that, about the only way it occurs is if you have a large battery bank, 4 batteries or more, the charger within a foot or so of the bank, and connected with #0 or larger wire, and a bank discharged below 50 percent.

Otherwise by it's design it will rarely if ever go into bulk mode charging, and be stuck with a 13.6V output giving around 10 amps. WFCO even admits that. the design looks at voltage at the converter AFTER it tries to put 40A into the bank. in virtually all cases the voltage then is high enough to tell it to drop into maintain mode.

PD Iota and others look at battery voltage BEFORE applying power and if it low, they go into boost mode. Much better for boondockers.

Every time we boondock with other campers around someone is running the honda generator most of the day and has a still discharged battery. they ask how we do it. I walk over with a clamp on ammeter, look at the panel, it's a WFCO, and I show them they are only getting 10A or so not the 50 claimed. I say we will check in the morning with a dead battery. same thing, around 10 maybe 15 amps max, and within an hour or so, down below 10A. Takes forever to charge that way. Once educated, they put a PD drop in replacement on the "to do list".

If you don't boondock, nothing wrong with the WFCO converter, quite, reliable etc. just not a good choice for boondocking