I am blowing into the same trumpet like Ken and Adam. Three years ago, in
Grenada, the marina there provided 120V shore power but the cycle was 50
Hertz.
Our Xantrex SW2512 would not like the 50 Hz and flashed "error". The
charger
part of the Xantrex was of importance, because the 12V house-bank fed
the
freezer compressor. Of course the freezer was stocked fully and we were
planning to leave DD on the dock for a couple of weeks and fly out to Canada.
After some searching I ended up buying a Sterling 20 Amp charger which could
digest any AC voltage from 80 to 300 Volt and 40 to 400 Hertz.
I hardwired
a pigtail cord of 2 ft with a 120V North-American plug to the AC
input side
of the charger. A 100 ft extension cord in construction yellow and
AWG 12
gauge is used for the run to the marina dock post. The original plug I
cut
off and fitted a matching plug to fit the foreign post. By now we have quite
a collection. It doesn't matter if you are the last boat on the dock or the
post
is overcrowded and only spits out 90V or so. The charger needs only 3
Amp and
the voltage up and down is not harming the unit.
Now, 3 years later,
I can say that this charger worked out well. It was left
running for weeks
at times, has an internal cooling fan and is a staged
charger. By staying in
the 2-1/2% bracket of the total battery bank capacity,
even a non staged
charger could not cook the bank. Our battery bank is 900 Amp
wet cell and
2-1/2% equals 22.5 Amp, so the charger is well in range. But this
means
nothing. The Sterling is a high tech charger with 4 stages and any
international charger with multi voltage and multi Hertz input in any Amp
output
will do the job safely. This configuration only keeps the 12V system
up, but it
would not be able to handle the 12V supply to the inverter for
using an
air-conditioner or washer/dryer. With this system we keep the
inverter on 24 hrs
for laptop, coffee machine and short-time use of toaster
or other small
appliance.
As an example: a 15 Amp 120V air-con unit would
require ten times as much 12V
Amps on the supply side of the inverter. This
is 150 Amps.
To supply 150 Amp charging, the charger will be a big mama and
costly and I am
not even thinking about the size for the wiring etc. All
around our South
America trip our small Sterling charger ate bad voltages and
lousy Hertz. When
Marlene had to use the washer/dryer, I fired up the
generator.
Oh well, the air-con was not needed at Cape Horn and our two
Webasto heaters run
on 12V.
Best Regards
Benno and Marlene
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/dieselduck
I am blowing into the same trumpet like Ken and Adam. Three years ago, in
Grenada, the marina there provided 120V shore power but the cycle was 50
Hertz.
Our Xantrex SW2512 would not like the 50 Hz and flashed "error". The
charger
part of the Xantrex was of importance, because the 12V house-bank fed
the
freezer compressor. Of course the freezer was stocked fully and we were
planning to leave DD on the dock for a couple of weeks and fly out to Canada.
After some searching I ended up buying a Sterling 20 Amp charger which could
digest any AC voltage from 80 to 300 Volt and 40 to 400 Hertz.
I hardwired
a pigtail cord of 2 ft with a 120V North-American plug to the AC
input side
of the charger. A 100 ft extension cord in construction yellow and
AWG 12
gauge is used for the run to the marina dock post. The original plug I
cut
off and fitted a matching plug to fit the foreign post. By now we have quite
a collection. It doesn't matter if you are the last boat on the dock or the
post
is overcrowded and only spits out 90V or so. The charger needs only 3
Amp and
the voltage up and down is not harming the unit.
Now, 3 years later,
I can say that this charger worked out well. It was left
running for weeks
at times, has an internal cooling fan and is a staged
charger. By staying in
the 2-1/2% bracket of the total battery bank capacity,
even a non staged
charger could not cook the bank. Our battery bank is 900 Amp
wet cell and
2-1/2% equals 22.5 Amp, so the charger is well in range. But this
means
nothing. The Sterling is a high tech charger with 4 stages and any
international charger with multi voltage and multi Hertz input in any Amp
output
will do the job safely. This configuration only keeps the 12V system
up, but it
would not be able to handle the 12V supply to the inverter for
using an
air-conditioner or washer/dryer. With this system we keep the
inverter on 24 hrs
for laptop, coffee machine and short-time use of toaster
or other small
appliance.
As an example: a 15 Amp 120V air-con unit would
require ten times as much 12V
Amps on the supply side of the inverter. This
is 150 Amps.
To supply 150 Amp charging, the charger will be a big mama and
costly and I am
not even thinking about the size for the wiring etc. All
around our South
America trip our small Sterling charger ate bad voltages and
lousy Hertz. When
Marlene had to use the washer/dryer, I fired up the
generator.
Oh well, the air-con was not needed at Cape Horn and our two
Webasto heaters run
on 12V.
Best Regards
Benno and Marlene
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/dieselduck
