On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:17:02 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Thu, 4 Jun 2009 15:30:46 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

I looked into battery combiners and found they are not ideal due to
voltage loss. That's why I'm looking at the Blue Sea 7600 which is an
Automatic charging Relay.

You are confusing two different products. Combiners have *no*
voltage loss because they are essentially a switch (relay or
solenoid). The product that introduces voltage loss is usually
referred to as a "battery isolator". It uses diodes to ensure that
one battery can not discharge the other but the diodes have a forward
voltage drop which must be taken into account by the charging system.

http://www.victronenergy.com/battery-isolators/argo-diode-battery-isolators/

The Blue Sea 7600 is a combiner; they just chose to call it something
else.


That whole "Ooo the diodes cause a voltage drop" thing is much over
rated.

I would assume that anyone who goes to the trouble of installing
battery banks and connecting multiple charging devices is going to
have a half serious charging regulator on the chargers. If so, simply
connect the voltage sensing wire to the batteries. The regulators then
sense the actual battery voltage.

Cheers,

Bruce in Bangkok
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)