Quote:
Originally Posted by orangeminnie
Charge current dropping before the battery voltage approaches about 13.9V (at least), can be a sign that the charger is overheating and folding back to protect itself. I've seen it often. The popular DC to DC chargers all seem to run really hot.
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I wonder if there are any DC-DC chargers that do not suffer from this issue. I saw a post where someone was complaining that their Victron 30 amp DC-DC charger was overheating.
In this case it is a Renogy 40 amp DC-DC charger and it had been running hot enough for it to completely shut down. You can see this in the Victron Trends display that I have attached to this post.
I tried to take care of this by mounting an external fan to constantly blow cooler air on the charger and keep it from shutting down. That worked, but the charging voltage jittered all over the place, constantly changing and slowly dropping down in charge. I have removed the charger and Renogy support says that they will send me a shipping label for them to test the unit and see if it is faulty. In the meantime I have purchased a second smaller unit and will see if it, at only 20 amps, suffers from the same issue.
This is a pain but I need something to charge the Lithium batteries while driving and I don't know what else I can do except use a DC-DC charger. I don't want to have to run the generator since it is an LP generator and I don't want to have to go searching for propane every second day.