I m trying to figure out the run time for the little gen set to charge the battery bank when it has to when the sun is not shinning enough to make enough power to recharge the battery off grid system It has to charge a 1.5kw battery bank that I have now Any ideas
You need to know: Voltage of the Battery Bank.... How many AMPs the Battery Bank takes when you first start to reCharge it. How many Hours it takes to bring the Battery Bank Genset, with NO Load, per hour. How efficient your Battery Charger is at converting 120Vac, to your Battery Bank Voltage. you need to plot the BaseLine Electrical Power Output Watts, to Gallons of Fuel Used to generate those Watts, Excluding the No Load Fuel it takes to just turn the engine over. with the above information, it will be possible to calculate the Runtime, and the Amount of Fuel Used to complete a recharge..... OR..... You can just recharge the Bank, a few times, and average the Time, and Fueled Used.... Typically, by the TIME you get good Data, for the first set of reference Points, you will have spent more hours, than just going ahead with the latter option, and even doing it a few times, and then do the averaging.... Folks pay "Engineers" a lot of money, to figure out "Stuff" that they can find out themselves, with a little common Sense.....
In an ideal world, it would only take a couple hours...however, there are several variables. 1) What is the chemistry of the battery bank (puts different limits on the charge rate) 2) Are you using the 12 volt charging port on the generator or a separate battery charger (10 amps, 50, 100?) 3) How far down is the battery bank before you recharge (self explanatory) 4) How much power is being drawn when you are charging (if you're pulling out 10 amps and only charging @ 12 amps, it's going to be a long time) It's all in the numbers, my friend ETA: and what BTPost said!
You can get as technical as you want with chemistry formulas, researching amp loads and futzing with multi-meters or you can just do as BT recommends; Personally I'd go with the "OR" option. Opinions vary.
Thanks for the info .i was thinking out loud and wondering something's about it .i got the unit from a guy in flagstaff he was broke down and needed money to get home.so I give home the cash I had on me and he never came back for the unit.so it became part of the cabin power system set up . I regularly use a diesel gen set and know how it going to work but I was in a thinking about it as a back up to the bigger unit when the monsoon hits here
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