I have a bit of bounce but have never wired the house wiring on a campervan.
My van runs a dual battery system. It also has a smart 8 stage charger for when 240v is connected. Finally we are adding a 250w portable solar panel set.
My question is are these chargers going to interfere with each other? Do they need some isolation to stop current flowing the wrong way?
Cheers paul
In my limited experience I would say probably not. The battery end of each usually has a diode type of output to prevent the current flowing backwards so that will be OK.
The regulated voltage supplied from each may play games sometimes but is usually OK.
Who knows what an 8 stage charger does with all those stages ??
I would try them together and monitor the system for a while and see if it is good and doing what is expected.
Ditto To Jaahn's reply.
All will work happily together while in bulk charge mode , but one may override the other in float mode & or shut down,as that will depend on how close the individual units change settings are.
The chargers themselves ,as rectifiers ,block the battery discharging back into them.
But cannot protect against Wrong [reverse]polarity connections
Even during the bulk charging stage, MPPT type controllers will clash resulting in a reduced total output from combined multiple units. In just about all cases, the strongest wins and the others simply fall into line behind it or simply take their bat and ball and go home and won't play with any other charging system.
So, it depends on what control system your chargers use, all PWM type controllers are too dumb to see any other charger doing the same thing as they are doing. PWM controllers do not need samples of the target battery voltage without their input to determine the best charging regime, they simply look at the target voltage and aim to not exceed that voltage. MPPT chargers are constantly monitoring the target battery voltage without their input current. They simply don't understand there could be other input current involved that they do not control so they make a calculation based on an incorrect assumption and this results in a less than optimal charging current.
T1 Terry
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