Take Control of your Out-of-control Charger with 1 of these?

[jrnymn7]

http://www.prodctodc.com/1500w-dc-motor-40a-speed-control-switch-pwm-stepless-adjustable-plc-governor

Myself and others have portable chargers (Peak, Schumacher, etc) that like to shoot up well over 15 volts while Abs charging. The unit I posted is a speed controller, not a Buck converter, so I'm wondering if it would enable one to take control of their otherwise out-of-control portable charger???

I'm assuming both the volts and amps (i.e; total wattage) would be reduced, not just the voltage. But it would at least make these renegade chargers safer and more useful if it did work.

[jrnymn7]

Thanks Drew, I thought maybe it was a long shot.

[DrewE]

I don't think it would be great for this application, and may not work at all in the way you want. The output (as Tom said) is very likely to be the same voltage as the input. If you have a charger with too high of a voltage output, you'd basically be just cutting down on the current capability of the charger but still having the output voltage you don't want. You may even have a bit higher output because the load would be less overall. Inherently by design, a PWM controller is a lot closer to an average current control than a peak voltage control.

You would likely also get a lot of electrical noise in your DC system. 16 kHz is about the same frequency as the whine of old TVs and can be quite annoying to younger ears.

Both of these could probably be helped, at least to some extent, with an appropriate filter on the output. Still, on the whole, I don't really think this device is a good fit for the application.

[jrnymn7]

Thanks Tom.

Both input and out voltage are 9-60vdc... the bottom right pic shows the labeled connections.

Could one easily compensate for the peaks by lowering the output even more, or would that possibly make things even worse?

(I think maybe the battery bank's enormous load being well over 40a, when at low soc, would also come into play? If so, I guess that would not be an issue on a not so discharged bank?)

thanks

[Tom_M1]

Your link didn't work for me so I did a search on their web site and found the following:

1500W DC Motor 40A Speed Control Switch PWM Stepless Adjustable PLC Governor

I foresee a couple of issues.

The controller probably needs a smooth DC input. A battery charger most likely is an unfiltered DC output.

The specs don't mention an output voltage. The output is PWM (Pulse Width Modulated), which means it's a square wave output and most likely with peaks equal to the input voltage. If this is the case, your battery would charge up to the peak voltage which would be the same as the output voltage of the charger.