I received one of these good questions the other day and thought there would be many other RVers who would like to hear the answer. Just when I thought we thoroughly covered the topic I get another good question about RV electrical systems that I failed to discuss in the previous articles. I received so many questions and comments from readers that the next month’s article was a follow up with additional information on RV electrical systems. This will lead to shorter life expectancy.Some time ago I wrote an article about basic RV electricity. Most RV converter chargers combine 3 stage battery charging into a dual stage hybrid process. This same voltage setting will give an extra 1.05 volts at 90 degrees F and dramatically shorten the lifespan of the battery. You can see from Lifeline’s chart above, the only way to fully charge their battery at 30 degrees F is with 15.1 volts. I am sure you can imagine the temperature swing on an average day in the sun when a battery is in the black box of death (on the tongue of your trailer). To correctly charge any deep cycle battery there needs to be some form of temperature compensation. Lifeline Charging Voltage at Different Temperatures for a 12 Volt Battery* Temp ☏ There are many converters that only put out 13.6 volts! All deep cycle battery manufactures require 14.2-14.8 volts to charge a battery. I have found where my charger my 28′ FB is putting out 13.8 volts and the battery was only getting 13.3 volts at 18 amps with factory 8 gauge wiring. This will give you voltage loss that needs to be accounted for. Many RVs come with a thin gauge wire between the charger and the battery. There needs to be a way to adjust the Absorption and Float voltages independently for your battery’s requirements and adjust for wire size. Converter chargers (what comes with most RV’s) do not have the ability to change voltages or provide temperature compensation to the charging voltage. The second most common is overcharging the battery. The most common reason for short battery life is not charging the battery to 100%. This unit will put out ~35A of charging into the battery/trailer useage. I don’t feel warm and fuzzy with auto mode myself. If you manual push mode and hold mode button the converter will stay in that mode for 2 hours before switching to auto mode, the unit will self determine the ‘correct’ mode. Boost mode is 14.4v – steady green light, Normal mode 13.6v – fast flash and Storage mode 13.2v – very slow flash. This converter has the Charge Wizard which will automatically switch between 3 modes. Above is the standard (not Lithium) version. Our ATC trailers have the Progressive Dynamic Intel-power 4500 Series power center in them. If that is true one would believe it will take 150 hours to charge 230AH battery bank, that is over 6 days! The problem is that no battery manufacturers tell us to charge a battery for 80-150 hours to achieve a full charge. From Progressive Dynamics website – A typical 125-AH RV or Marine battery will take approximately 80 hours to recharge at 13.6 volts. Most people believe that the RV converter will completely charge your RV batteries, this is simply not true. The quick answer is no, even high end RV’s come with inadequate converters that can not charge your battery correctly!
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