Does ACR exist to charge start battery bank only if the volts drop below 12.45?

[sdowney717]

What are you talking about? Only 19 people out of 740 on Amazon rated it below 4 stars. That means 97.4% of the people who rated it gave it four stars or above. The average is 4.8 out of 5. It doesn’t get much better than that…

And what is the big deal about using it for a power supply? I thought you were trying to maintain your batteries and stop cooking them into oblivion?

This is a big negatory comment about these chargers, they shut down.
I read the Victron starts over on the charge cycle when power is turned off then back on, it is supposed to detect SOC, and shorten charging phases as appropriate. So what will happen, I unplug from dock, turn on gen, it will start over. Gen off then gen on, it will start over. etc... I have been wondering how does it handle house loads, so if it is finished a charge cycle, and your using a lot of house power, say run the inverter to run a microwave, plugged into dock but using battery power not dock power for the inverter, will it adapt sensing the extra power and come out of storage mode.

Most of the time, boats sits at dock charging on shore power, so I dont think it will make any difference what it does, most of the battery damage happens at the slip when boat is not used.
And all my appliances are AC powered, I have no DC fridge, nothing is DC except some lights, radio, typical low amp stuff.

Says not suitable.
1.0 out of 5 stars Not suitable for house bank in marine, R/V, or off grid
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2021
Verified Purchase
I purchased this charger to replace an existing 2 bank battery charger, and based on the reviews I had very high hopes, but after working through the NOCO support team I've determined this battery charger is not suitable for situations where you have batteries that get continues use - such as house batteries for boats, R/V, or off grid. I have a very basic battery configuration for a boat - 1 starter battery, and 2 house batteries. I have minimal load on the batteries during the day (1.6Ahrs) and even less at night (1.0 Ahrs). After installing the charger I allowed it to fully charge the starter and house bank and go into maintenance mode - it actually sat for 2 weeks and seemed to maintain the batteries. The problems started when we started using the boat and the house bank of batteries. After a period of 2 or 3 days the charger would shut down and allowed the batteries to completely drain. I sent this information to the NOCO customer support team and after a number of email exchanges I was told the following:

""Noco chargers are not intended to indefinitely provide charge to the batteries. Our chargers expect to fully charge the batteries at some point. If the customer does let the charger finish its work due he is constantly draining the batteries the charger will eventually timeout. On the customer application it seems he is not letting the charger to finish maintenance mode. While the charger is in maintenance mode the customer started to use his refrigerator and his stereo. Maintenance mode uses a very small amount of current to top off the batteries. If while the charger is on this low current mode the customer turns the fridge on and stereo on, it won't allow the charger to top off the batteries and eventually it is going to timeout and show bad battery indication. The actual issue is not really the amount of load, the issue is the customer not letting the charger finish. If the charger completes the charge, the customer can use his stereo and fridge with no problem."

Once the load is applied and the charger kicks back in to top the batteries off again, that 41-hour time-out comes back into play, and if the load continues beyond this 41 hours (meaning the batteries aren't able to reach a full charge due to the load), the charger will time out and show the error again."

This type of operation is not suitable for house batteries.

 

[sdowney717]

If it's wired correctly. turning off the battery switch will not prevent the charger from charging the batteries. Not supposed to be set up that way. And the bilge pump should go directly to the batteries also.

Wired that way by factory or whoever installed the charger decades ago. That Raritan charger is also a power supply. Has 8 gauge wires running to the buss, one buss for each engine under the helm. The bilge pumps are on the battery lug of the rotary switch and cant be turned off. Not planning to rearrange the connections. I dont turn off the battery switches generally, I have 2 switches. AND, it has been a while since I looked into how it was done, so I could be totally wrong, it may be wired direct to batteries.


I can see an advantage to having charger connected direct to batteries, as if battery switches are set to off, the charger can still charge. If it is not too much effort, I may mod the system. I suppose I could connect direct to the wires that come off the switch that are on all the time that power bilge pumps, it is a big 8 gauge wire that runs from switch to some breaker under the helm for both banks. Each bank has a bilge pump I think, boat has 5 bilge pumps.