Quote:
Originally Posted by Botchan
DaveB
Is it better to run a trickle charger or plug into shore power? I have my van covered so the solar panels cannot charge the house battery. Any thought of preferences on what's better?
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Some chargers can produce high amps and if a battery shorts you could see the charger ramp up. This rarely happens but if it does it can cause the bad battery to off gas or possibly catch fire. Using a low amp charger is fine unless a battery fails. The bad battery won't get hot but the load will overwhelm the chargers limit. You end up with dead batteries. I'd go with a good maintenance charger and just monitor it from time to time. That's just me. There needs to be enough positive current to keep the separator closed. If using the vehicles jump stud or starting battery, the separator must see a charge voltage and maintain it or it will open. Some separators can be manually locked closed but I wouldn't do that. If the starting battery fails the separator protects the house battery from deep discharge and those are much more expensive than a starting battery. Make sure everything is turned off. If there is no load at all, a AGM battery can sit w/o a charge for a month and hold at 12.8v or more.
I still hit my battery system with a heavy charge on a regular basis. I can tell if the batteries are full by the inverter's control panel.