Replacing my Converter/Charger - Help

Steve92004 wrote:

I turned it up all the way and it's at 16.6V
The instructions say it should stay at the set level for a half hour and the decrease and stay at that level for two hours, and then decrease to float level

I thought smart chargers were supposed to work on voltage not timing

Edit.... It dropped to 15.8 after 30 minutes

They can't work on changing voltage while supplying a fixed voltage. All the unit will ever see when set at 16.6 V is 16.6 V (assuming it can supply enough power to maintain that voltage level, of course).

What it could theoretically do is monitor current and drop based on reduced current, but house loads would mess that up unless it sensed the battery current rather than its output current. Alternately, it could turn off the charging momentarily every now and then and see what voltage the system is resting at, which would lead to flickering/flashing lights and probably not be any too accurate due to surface charge on the battery.

Without actual battery instrumentation to more accurately monitor its state of charge based on usage, resting voltage, etc., a timer setup in combination with some rough voltage and current triggers is probably about as good as can be reasonably done by an RV converter.