ARRID Twincharge

Wok It may sound dumb but what is it.

All the best
Eric

No sorry I cant help you.

All the best
Eric

Hi Wok,

I know of at least one forum member who uses and swears by his. He uses it to charge his camper trailer battery.

It's a 20A device whereby the input voltage is not critical (down to about 10-11V) as it increases the output voltage to 14+V.

I have a similar thing on my trailer but it's a 10A charger from Engel. No complaints whetever.

Wok, Mike would be talking about me we have one it's brilliant so far does what it is supposed to and does it well we have our second battery in the camper next to the Arrid charger connected to the main battery via an anderson plug on the tow bar to the ignition so it is only on when the car is going, as Mike has said it pushes a large amount of amps first of to allow for any voltage drop because of the distance from main batt to the second batt in the camper it is designed for this purpose, (ie) campers, caravans and they are very good value for money as well i would reccomend them and anyone else who has one would too, ring the guy at All About 12Volt in Sydney or the 12volt shop in WA.

Baz.

Thank you all........looks like I will be saving some $ for a while...should be a good longterm investment.

rgds

ps : Found a useful site
Baintech

The Arrid Twin Charge device is technically a dc-dc converter.

It is a box that sits next to the trailer battery and converts whatever (within reason) is coming down the line - to 14.4 volts.

It is effective in that it overcomes the voltage drop that is otherwise inevitable unless the system uses adequately heavy cable. Do note though that the device cannot and will not counteract problems such as corrosion in trailer connectors, poor earths etc.

Further, as it requires well over 14.4 volts to fully charge a conventional lead acid battery, this device is thus still limited to charging a trailer-situated battery to about 70% or so. But this may of course be twice what you had before!.

A very effective alternative is to use a gel cell battery in the trailer. These charge speedily and to close 100% charge from as little as 13.8 volts, and very effectively indeed from 14.0-14.1 volts. They are damaged by voltage over 14.4 volts - but there's diddly-squat chance of that from the end of several metres of trailer wiring.

With respect to Arrid, I personally feel the gel cell battery is a better approach as you will be able to access almost all the amp/hours you paid for - and at not that much higher cost than the Arrid device. But that is not intended as a put down on the latter.
Collyn Rivers

Penguin

I'm always for adding solar!

What you can do is this:

Any good solar regulator has a program specifically for gel cell batteries - so that fixes the first issue.

A solar regulator does not know the difference between a solar module and a battery charger (and does care either) so you can feed the input from the charger through the solar regulator and thus use it as a smart charger.

Regulator makers rarely spell this out in as many words, but some (such as Plasmatronics) state that the regulator will accept suitable dc input from a range of sources.

Good solution.
Trust this helps
Collyn Rivers

Re gel cell and AGM.

Personally still prefer gel cell as am concerned about ongoing reports of premature failure in AGMs in hot areas - such as up here where we live (north of Broome). Whilst reports are anecdotal there seem to be a fair number of them.

I'd prefer to wait for a bit before unconditionally recommending AGMs for use in hot places.

Will recheck re Arrid Twin Charge but my understanding is that the output is that of a typical constant voltage charger.
Collyn Rivers

Wok

Recommend Plasmatronics PL 20 (up to 20 amps) or PL 40 (up to 40 amps).

I like them as they are so versatile and have every monitoring facility that you will ever need.

Make absolutely sure you follow the makers wiring instructions to the letter. Many are wrongly installed even by professionals.

MUST be wired solar plus to battery plus - and a second light lead from battery plus BACK to the regulator Batt +.

Many people try to outguess the maker and wire it solar plus to regulator Batt + and then to battery plus. This results in the regulator getting wrong info and cutting back the charge.
Trust this helps
Collyn Rivers

Wok

PL regs are series regulators and switch the negative line via pulse width modulation. Shunt regs are used nowadays mostly with wind generators.

Input voltage is settable at 12, 24 and 48 volts.

Smart regulator on the OKA is a TWC unit that was sold for a time by Hella. Adverc make a vaguely similar unit - there's a link to them via my website.

More or less Yes to the last query - but my magazine was ETI (I founded it in 1971).
Collyn Rivers

Wok,
I have had two vans in which I have installed Arid twin charge systems and it worked a treat in both. I have found that approx 4hrs running is required to bring a low battery up to scratch.
Yes I agree with Collyn that solar power is the way to go however there are times when old sol just does not show his face enough.