Fill ‘er Up

Have you ever filled a long-neck bottle using your kitchen faucet? The typical pattern for doing that is to turn the water on fast to fill most of the bottle then to slow the water down so it won’t overflow as you finish filling it. If you then wanted to maintain that level of water you could set the faucet to a slow drip to compensate for evaporation.

Charging your batteries from your generator with a three stage charger works the same. The first stage is called “bulk” charging and it puts in lots of power very quickly until the battery is about 75% full. Stage two is called “absorb” and it puts in power more slowly until the other 25% is reached which can take up to 12 hours. Stage three is called “float” and it keeps a trickle of power going in to keep them level without overcharging them before you turn the generator off.

Then you turn the generator off, turn the inverter on, and keep right on using power from your batteries until the next time you decide to fill them up again.

We have a problem with our charging system. But we don’t know if it is the charger or the monitor that is the problem. Our system charges quickly but the monitor says the batteries are not full.

Oh, goody! Another puzzle to solve!  🙁

TTYL,

Linda

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