Charge a 24volt battery with two 12 volt chargers???

10 Posts
Nov 29, 2006 06:34 pm
Charge a 24volt battery with two 12 volt chargers???

Might be a stupid question.Can two 12 volt chargers be hooked in series to charge a 24 volt battery. Or for that matter four 12 volt chargers for a 48 volt battery? Tried two chargers and measured 24 volts on my multimeter. Thanks
 
578 Posts
Nov 30, 2006 11:33 am
Re: Charge a 24volt battery with two 12 volt chargers???

I am pretty sure that is a no, but for curiosity, what charge controllers?

If I know what you are using, I will dig into it further.

I think it wont work because each charge controller will be looking for a battery voltage to base how it regalates incoming voltage/current.  It will be expecting a 12v system and would not be able to work in tandem with another controller or do the switching necessary if the voltage was over the expected parameters.

If it were me, I would get a proper 24v controller and not risk breaking two 12v controllers, and potentially some batteries too.  I am pretty boring though.

james- Alt-E staff


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351 Posts
Nov 30, 2006 01:55 pm
Re: Charge a 24volt battery with two 12 volt chargers???

I don't know of anyway to do it automatically.

If you are manually charging the batteries, you can kill all the loads, break the series connection between the batteries, charge what are now two 12 volt batteries, and the re-establish the series connection after charging is complete.

This should be an "emergency" type practice rather than a regular thing. Your battery life is better if you charge the whole bank as one unit rather than as two seperate units.

 
10 Posts
Dec 1, 2006 07:22 am
Re: Charge a 24volt battery with two 12 volt chargers???

James, not using a charge controller, but a manual battery charger running off a gas generator, for emergency backup.
Ken, yes I know I could break into two 12's
Can anyone give me a valid technical reason why it won't work. Thanks
 
351 Posts
Dec 1, 2006 06:50 pm
Re: Charge a 24volt battery with two 12 volt chargers???

"Can anyone give me a valid technical reason why it won't work."

What do you mean by it ? 

If you mean connecting the chargers in series, you run a risk of the control circuits not working properly. The batteries may not charge at all. You could also end up with uneven charging of the batteries, or frying the batteries. There is also a good risk of pushing to much amperage through the control circuits, which could fry your chargers. There are a lot of different logic circuits used in battery chargers, different ones will react differently.

If you meant splitting the batteries, the risk is that if the two chargers charge at slightly different rates, you end up with the batteries eqaulizing the charge between them, the first time you put a load on them. This gives you a high discharge rate (and an energy loss). Repeated cycles of this higher than normal discharge rate shortens battery life.

If you are careful to charge the batteries as evenly as possible, this shortening of life may be minor. But as an example, suppose you only get 54 months instead of 60 months of life out of them. Is it worth the risk ? 
As long as your willing to accept the risk, and live with the no loads during charging, there is no technical reason to prevent it.

I think if it were my system, I would spring for the 24V charger. But, if I was trying to get by with the two 12 volts, I would probably install a knife switch in the series connection.   
 
10 Posts
Dec 3, 2006 08:03 pm
Re: Charge a 24volt battery with two 12 volt chargers???

Thank You Ken, now I understand.
 

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