Charging with TV alternator... Mod with pics...

[lawrosa]

Finally finished my charging cable mod from TV alt/battery direct to camper batterys for dry camping...

I did a small charge today and checked voltages only. My clamp on amp meter was not working... I will post back with amps and how long it takes to recharge from 12 volts to fully charged...

These are the anderson like connectors I got cheap on amazon. total about $40 bucks. I had to cut the ends and solder on a 3/8" ring to connect to battery. The other side was fine. I connected the other to a 50 amp resettable breaker..

These are 6 gauge.

Also note my truck has a 105 amp alt. I want to limit the amps out why I used 50 amp breakers. Truck runs alone at about 20 amps. So it should not do more then 70 when charging.

I may change the breakers to 40 or 30 amperes...




New battery studs/side mount with 3/8" extension. 50 amp breaker on pos side with bracket. Got these breakers from e trailer...






50 amp breaker with bracket.






Keep it rolled up in a void near firewall..





Camper side. 8ft rolls up nice and stores in left side box.. Note 50 amp breaker on this end too on pos side right batt.... Dont need no short or fires...





Connected to TV.....







This is the voltage I am getting at my home made meter. I tied into 12v wires that are in the wall for the tank/battery monitor. so its not right from the convertor.

Notice 14.32 volts. I gave a charge when batterys were down to 12.4.

So the truck puts out over 14 volts.




And this is at the batterys.. 14.47 volts from my alternator... Cant get any better then this.. IMO I should be able to recharge my batterys when boondocking in a few hours...




Any one what to share what I can do better or criticism let me know please...

Hope this helps others that may want to try this mod...

Again I will get amp readings soon...

[lawrosa]

Basically the last two hours were similar as 5 amps at 8 pm and 2.7 amps at 9 pm when I stopped..





14.3 volts... One thing I guess I can do is know the batts are charged when I reach this voltage...




I had trouble with the hydrometer readings through out the testing. Dont know why.

Here is a final..

[lawrosa]

Instead of posting the whole times and pics Ill just post the one hour marks.

I have 5 and 7 pm below.

Here is 6pm.

Temp never got higher then this really..



Up to 14 volts after one hour.




down to 13 amps..

[tll]

I have a similar system to keep an auxiliary battery charged when dry camping. As soon as I get the trailer out of storage I will post a bunch of pics.

[lawrosa]

ill post more of the pics tomorrow... Im a bit tired... sry noy feeling well

[lawrosa]

Her is after 2 hours




Only 5 amps???





Alt never got past 185 really...

[time2roll]

Looks like it will work great for what you need. 🙂
Carry a spare circuit breaker as those thermal units could get weak if it starts to trip when running over the rating.
Maybe go with a battery terminal fuse like this one for 80 amps just to protect a dead short.

Blue Sea 5191

[lawrosa]

...................................

[lawrosa]

Evey 20 minutes I tested ..

Here is 20 minutes after... started at 5pm ended 9 pm










volts

[pianotuna]

Hi,

So what was the amperage going into the battery bank after 2 hours?

[lawrosa]

Ok I did the test today and all was great... I am pretty sure I fully charges two 75 ah batts in 4 hours of idle time on truck....

I will post this in sections I guess...

So batts were down to 12.4 or so... took a long time to discharge amd I could not wait. I had all lights on, heat, fans,,,,etc. batteries would not die....LOL/...

So start of test here..

148 f alt... cool ( see red laser dot on windings?) Never got above 180 ever..



Batts down to 12.35... thatswhen I started/.. This is beginning volts.... Nothing hooked up...





57 amps to start
... 50 amp breakers not working???? IDK... This is what I got when I plugged in...

Almost 60 amps not bad huh?



And here is volts

[BarneyS]

Folks,
The OP specifically requested no more wind discussion. Let's try to honor that request. He has no iterest in that solution.
Thank you.
Barney

[Gdetrailer]

quasi wrote:
GD ~ Some of your assumptions are a little dated.
1. The turbine mounts 4-8 feet above the roof, in my case that would be 17-21 feet high.
2. Modern windchargers have inverter technology so the start producing power at any revolution speed.
3. These are considered trickle type chargers which run 24-7 and make up for lower charge energy with extended charging time.
I agree that the forest would be a deal breaker. I'm thinking of adding a windcharger to augment my genset so that I can eliminate or reduce the total runtime on the generator.
I'll be adding solar as well since I think it's the best bang for the buck but at $400, I may add the windmill cause I'm a gadget freak . . .
Jim

My "assumptions" are spot on.

If you take a real hard look at the SPECIFICATIONS that your link mentions the wind speed RANGE IS 8-30 MPH.

The reason for the 8 MPH min is there IS NO REAL POWER to be harvested at 7 MPH or less. That IS A WELL KNOWN FACT of wind power.

Just because the rotor might spin, it DOES NOT MEAN IT IS GENERATING POWER.

That wind gen also has very small rotor diamater, it is a WELL KNOWN FACT that if you want to extract energy from the wind BIGGER ROTOR DIAMETER will extract more energy than a smaller rotor.

A small diameter rotor as in the link you gave would STALL easily at 8 MPH if you attempt to extract 400W from it..

That website you linked is stretching the truth in order to get gullible folks to bite.. There are a lot of folks cashing in on these schemes..

Getting any more than a few milliamps out of the wind turbine at 8 MPH is basically what is know as OVER UNITY, it breaks a lot of rules of physics and therefore not true.. Buyer "Be Aware".

It is a WELL KNOWN FACT that in order to be able to get a wind turbine to track the wind IT MUST BE ABOVE ANY AND ALL OBSTRUCTIONS. IT WILL NOT WORK BELOW TREE LINE.

I KNOW that as a fact, I have a anemometer at my home, I have trees located 60ft away from my house which are well over 75ft tall. The anemometer is mounted 25 ft above the garage roof. The trees can and do often sway very hard and the anemometer may only be registering a measly 4-5 MPH.

The wind direction indicator also gets very confused on top of that.

It is due to turbulence from the nearby trees..

I bought the anemometer so I could get an idea if wind power might work for my location.. From what I have gathered over the last four years I would be wasting time and money on windpower..

Before you waste your money on that wind turbine I would recommend you take some time and check out the following website.

FIELDLINES

The folks there are AVID RE folks with a lot of knowledge on the subject of wind and solar power..

[pianotuna]

Hi,

You are not idling a car. You are idling a truck. Big difference.

Four hours may get you from 50% to 90%. Most of the generator charging folks stop at 85%. Some of them (gasp) even end up using solar.

lawrosa wrote:
Also back to fuel usage, The Ohio Air Quality Development Authority found that the average idle car consumes about 0.156 gallons of gas per hour.

Thats .62 gallons in 4 hours...

@ 1.95 per gallon in NJ it will cost me 1.20 in fuel...

[westend]

lawrosa wrote:
This is getting off topic gents. My post was about charging with an alternator.. Maybe you can continue you wind converssation in a general chats area?

Thanks for your support 🙂



Also back to fuel usage, The Ohio Air Quality Development Authority found that the average idle car consumes about 0.156 gallons of gas per hour.

Thats .62 gallons in 4 hours...

@ 1.95 per gallon in NJ it will cost me 1.20 in fuel...

I dunno', alternatives to the vehicle generation scheme should be on topic and small wind may be one.

Have you given any thought to incorporating a separate rectifier for your vehicle based generation? Forum member Mexwanderer has posted about them and the benefits, having an outboard rectifier does have some benefits.

[Blacklane]

The Ohio Air Quality Development Authority numbers have certainly been questioned and it's not clear what conditions or vehicle were used for the measurement.

The 2011 Ford F-150 with EcoBoost consumes 0.45 GpH at idle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIJH8bnPi_Q
Your 1996 will surely be less efficient than this vehicle with a similar size engine, plus you have to add the loss from the loaded-up alternator. I would estimate your fuel consumption while charging at 0.7 to 0.8 GpH.