Supplement battery charging

[Top Hat]

My Sargent unit ehu battery charger is only 150w and I have 300a/h of batteries, all of my trips will be in the summer months mostly abroad so will rely on my 220w solar a lot off grid, which got me thinking if I needed ehu with no solar being produced is there any reason why I could not help the battery charging with my Ring 8amp battery charger straight to the leisure batterys from the vans 230v side.

 

[grahammay2]

If my Sargent is also that low it would help explain why I've been very unhappy with the charging.
Ec480 & ec500 fitted to Auto-sleeper Broadway 2013. Anyone else have issues?
Graham May

 

[DBK]

Your 150W will be more than enough as it will run 24 hours a day. You won't get anything like 220W from your solar apart from a few hours around midday.

Whether you can cope on solar alone depends entirely on how much power you need. Unless you have an inverter fitted and plan on running things like microwaves for longish periods I would think you will be fine. I suggest see how you get on but by all means take the charger but I don't think you'll need it.

 

[tonka]

If my Sargent is also that low it would help explain why I've been very unhappy with the charging.
Ec480 & ec500 fitted to Auto-sleeper Broadway 2013. Anyone else have issues?
Graham May

300watts on the EC500 Just read it on the Sargent website.
No issue on mine (2012 Apache 700) seems to charge fine.. 2 x 110amp leisure.

 

[grahammay2]

Does anyone know how many watts from the alternator as a comparison.

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[Phill D]

extract from "mr google"!

Quote!!
at a charging voltage of around 14 Volts that yields in 560 to 770 Watts. In modern cars alternators have outputs between 70 and 180 Amps! especially when catalytic converter systems with heating elements etc are used.

 

[tonka]

Taken from elsewhere ref a query on a 2008 Ducato motorhome..
"The alternator for this vehicle is part number 504057813 for the 140A model. There are 110, 140, 150 and 180A versions listed."

 

[Top Hat]

Thanks @DBK, Yeah thats my gut feeling to, It's getting on for 8 year's since my last trip abroad and trying to cover all bases.