Battery Charger for Battery Bank

Please go to the nearest electrical market dealing with electrical machinery and tell them to supply you one. In India battery dealers have dealership of battery charger also.

When fleets need to charge, or maintain multiple batteries, usually a charging rack is made. What I have seen has been a pair of copper bars about 3/4" tall, and 1/4" thick, mounted to a wood plank, on a wall. The batteries are set on a wooden or metal bench below the wood plank. The battery charger was connected to the copper bars by heavy cables, appropriate for the output of the charger. Red and black jumper wires with alligator clamps on both ends were used to connect the batteries to the copper bars always connected positive to positive, negative to negative. As long as all batteries are the same voltage as the charger, this works well. When 6 volt batteries needed charging, two were hooked up in series to achieve 12 volts, then that battery pack was connected to the charging bars.

The charging rate of your charger will depend on how much current is being used from your batteries, and how fast you must recharge them. A 1 amp solar charger could be used if you only need to maintain them in a charged state while storing them. If current is being used, you will need higher charging rates.

Two caution notes to be aware of.

If you are using only one charger to charge all 6 batteries, they will be effectively connected together in a parallel circuit. All batteries will share all of the loads. If one battery develops a dead cell, it will drain all of the batteries. You will need to regularly check for this. If you use diodes to isolate the batteries, the voltage will be .7 volts lower in the batteries than the charger output.

Charging batteries produces dangerous gasses. The gasses are explosive, poisonous, ans very corrosive. You MUST charge the batteries in a well ventilated area, preferably out of doors. Look where these gasses can collect. Sulfuric acid is very dangerous. Please be careful.

Is this for an Electric Vehicle?

Zivan has a good reputation. I assume your batteries are in series, so you'd need a 96 volt model.

For no particular reason, I had assumed they were separate. Now I wonder

Can you help me find a rich woman with a bad reputation?

Hi Assuming these are At a professional level, that is to say you are going to be charging these regularly, you need to get a charger that is fully automatic if you want a good life for your batteries. If you are deep cycling them, i.e. using >30% of the declared Ah then a three stage charger is best. Go see www.mastervolt.com and www.victronenergy.com. You may get cheaper chargers there in India(?) but they should have the same charge characteristic.

If they are in standby mode, like a UPS, then a cheaper permanent float unit will be ok. this should still be automatic but be careful, many cheap chargers say they are automatic when in reality they are nothing more than a transformer and a rectifier. these will overcharge your batteries and ruin them....I earn a lot of money from boats who try to save money on a cheap charger! In both cases it is wise to have a unit that has temperature compensated charge levels. A 24V battery has 0.6V difference in the charge levels between 25ºC and 35ºC. It doesn't seem like much but I assure you it makes a big difference.

we can help more if we know more about the voltage and application of your accumulators.

regards

Chas

Hi Capblanc,

" You may get cheaper chargers in India?"

In India there are hundreds of battery charger manufacturers ( Some are highly reputed manufacturers having products with latest technology and competent engineers) provide high quality chargers depending on the customer's requirement . The cost depends on the quality and type of requirement. The battery chargers used by automobile battery charging shops need not be such sophisticated design compared to to a battery charger required for a UPS of telephone exchange or a UPS of computer installation or aircraft battery charging bay or space technology center and any other sophisticated requirement.

Dear Friend

We manufacture battery chargers. Pls. inform application & send offline enquiry to uni_insta@dataone. in or ashoktoshniwal@yahoo.com

Thanks

Ashok Toshniwal, Bangalore, India

Mayaranjith are you the " guest" who requested information on battery chargers for marine propulsion in the next forum thread. In that request th e battery bank is 24V at 600 A-H which is same as 8 X 12V @ 150 Amp hour.

You should be aware that propulsion use is deep cycle and this is a somewhat different application that what a lot of so called marine chargers are intended for.

My recommendation would be for Victron brand. the product is manufactured in India even though th ecorporate HQ is in Holland. I have been using these for marine applications of deep cycle bank in the 600 - 1200 amp hour suizes for five years now. These can be used on either 50 or 60hz mains at either 120V or 230V If you are using AGM type batteries you can use multiple chargers in parallel for faster recovery. These units are rugged enough to stand up to Coast Guard patrol boat use. I have 124 systems in use right now and so far zero failures. They were installed in 2004 - 2005.

Hi Elnav

Nice plug for Mr Vader's product, but we shouldn't be pushing our agencies so overtly. I personally prefer Mastervolt, and I can come up with even larger numbers, but that is not the point.

regards

Chas (Electromarine Balear)