Battery charging

I'm confused.  It seems you think the onboard converter isn't powerful enough; I guess that's a matter of opinion, and you may be right for your purposes.  But If I understand, you want a more powerful battery charger (you're use of the word "genny" is one thing that's throwing me), I guess so you can charge depleted batteries more quickly.

You have to have shore power for your B&D thing to work, as you do with the onboard converter.  As a practical matter, if you have shore power, you usually have it long enough to top up your battery with the onboard converter.  You're probably hooked up overnight.

Now, I don't think this is clear, but it could be you are talking about times you don't have shore power but you do have a generator; likely an inverter generator, plus a battery charger to charge batteries faster.  Maybe that makes sense.  For those situations when you have to charge your Pod battery quickly, some stout jumper cables hooked up to your tow vehicle might work though.

If you're boondocking and want to charge your battery indirectly with your generator I'd skip the B&D charger and just run the generator a little longer.

We dry camp just about all the time.  I have a generator though, and, when I can use them, solar panels.  We're gone most of the day usually, but we use 12v and 120v relatively intensely in the morning and at night, and we never have an issue with battery power.  Maybe I run my generator more than you want to run yours though.  Where I usually camp there are quiet hours when the generator is not allowed.  For dispersed camping, you can run your generator all night if you want.

I get your frustration with generators starting with 12v, inverting to 120v, and then if you want to charge your battery, you need to convert that back to 12v, but for what it's worth, my Yamaha 2400iSCH has a 12v outlet for directly charging the battery.   I've never used it, because, well, why bother, and because the wires from the generator to the battery are so small, it would be more efficient to use jumper cables from the vehicle.

So... I could be totally misunderstanding you, but my thoughts boil down to, it seems like you may be contemplating worst case scenarios, whereas for most practical matters you may be overthinking things.

TT

One question to ask is whether the 12V outlet on the generator is actually 12V, or something more intended to actually "charge" batteries. You need quite a bit more than 12V to actually charge a 12V battery. The absorption voltage for a lead acid battery is going to be "about" 14.6 - 14.8 volts. The float voltage for a 12V battery is going to be "about" 13.5 volts.

So if that 12V output is not going to between 13.5 and 14.6 volts, it won't really charge a battery.

This is why you need an actual charger that can deal with this.

Originally posted by Olddawgsrule When I refer to Genny it's short for generator. Yes, the Yamaha I'm looking at also has a DC connect and cables to charge direct, but only at 6amps and not controlled.

Originally posted by WillThrill The Pod's onboard converter/charger is indeed a 3 stage computer controlled charger.  I cannot recall what the maximum amperage is (it's here in the forum somewhere, perhaps in the 'manual for R-Pod' thread), but I think it's around 15 amps, which is fine for one or two batteries.

The WFCO charger is a 55 amp charger. Pretty hefty by many standards.

http://wfcoelectronics.com/product/wf-8955-55-amp/

Originally posted by GlueGuy One question to ask is whether the 12V outlet on the generator is actually 12V, or something more intended to actually "charge" batteries. You need quite a bit more than 12V to actually charge a 12V battery. The absorption voltage for a lead acid battery is going to be "about" 14.6 - 14.8 volts. The float voltage for a 12V battery is going to be "about" 13.5 volts. So if that 12V output is not going to between 13.5 and 14.6 volts, it won't really charge a battery. This is why you need an actual charger that can deal with this.

It's meant for charging batteries; not as a source for 12v power.  But I've never cared to use it so I haven't actually checked the voltage.  And as far as I know, it's not controlled.  Whatever it does, I think it does it all the time.

TT