Quote:
Originally Posted by sclifrickson
I don’t understand how these things work or solve the vehicle charging problem. Can someone break it down for me, or point me to an existing explanation suitable for sometimes-dummies?
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As I understand it the Redarc is wired directly to the tow vehicle battery with heavy gauge wire and can send adequate charging amps to the trailer battery regardless of what the tow vehicle alternator may be doing. This may have significant value to those that prefer to run a refrigerator on 12V on the road but have issues depleting the batteries. Santiago added one of these on his system that ran a Nova Kool compressor based fridge.
From the manufacturer/etrailer page:
"This charger connects directly to your battery, rather than pulling power from your vehicle via the trailer connector. This is to ensure that it's able to fully charge your auxiliary battery. A standard 7-way trailer connector is limited to 10 or 15 amps of current, which will not be able to fully restore a battery for use. But this charger can transfer up to 40 amps of current to both charge and maintain your auxiliary battery.
The BCDC1240D is a three-stage, 12V DC-DC battery charger that operates from an alternator input of 12V or 24V and a 12V nominal solar panel input. The
input voltage of the BCDC1240D
can be above, below or equal to the output voltage making it ideal for charging an auxiliary 12V battery where the distance from the main battery may cause a significant voltage drop. The BCDC1240D is also designed to isolate the main battery from the auxiliary battery, to avoid over-discharging the main battery. The Dual Input In-vehicle Battery Chargers also feature a Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) solar regulator. The unit will always take as much power from the solar input as it can before supplementing that power, up to the maximum rated output, from vehicle power input."
The etrailer page linked also has a very good explanation at the bottom of the page.