WFCO 8735 AD and lithium battery banks over 120aH and charging strategies.

rcarey

Just got back from a month long trip form my home state of California to Tennessee. In general I am a boon docker, and traveling to this part of the country during August was not ideal, but I ended up combining a family wedding and a kayaking trip on the Ocoee together. My Tab 320 currently has an Sok 206aH battery. In my western trips, I have always relied on solar and an Ecoflow delta 2 (1024 wH) along with the ecoflow alternator/charger to keep topped off. The heat, humidity and tree cover back east destroyed my usual energy plan as the frig was running constantly and to survive I had to leave the fantastic fan on 24/7. Topping off with the ecoflow all the time was too time consuming as it would take the vehicle about 1.5 hours to charge it up and another two hours for it to charge the trailer batteries and only provide a 40aH bump due to inefficiency. I finally broke down and bought a harbor freight generator while I was out there. In general my WFCO 8735 AD is on lithium (blue light) charging and occasionally lead acid (green) charging. One of the problems I found was generator charging seemed to take longer than it should. Due to overhead from other devices, the most it would charge was 25 amps in an hour. On my return home I discovered that the WFCO has another limitation besides the smallish and fussy charging function; It times out after 4 hours. Per the manual:

"Charge Mode will be maintained until the current draw drops to approximately five Amps, or until the timer reaches four hours (whichever happens first)"

I verified with WFCO. They said you could cycle the power center to reset the timer. I guess WFCO must be worried about heat build up?

Anyway at this point, I plan increasing my battery bank to 600 aH and adding two or three 30 amp Victron IP 22s in parallel, networked and connected to shore power receptacles. I like to use a generator as little as possible. Also a dc-dc charger will be in the works. For anyone that has added Victron IP 22s, any reason to disconnect the leads from the WFCO convertor on the ac side? Would it increase charging additively if connected? I know if I disconnect the ac lines to the WFCO convertor, if no battery is present there would be no d/c side, where as if hooked to shore power and the leads are connected on the WFCO, the d/c side is still functional without a battery.