Wednesday, Dec 29, 2010 at 10:51
Adey
Lots of replies I see. I think the answer on this one lies in someone actually using it for the same purpose as yourself and how they did it. Experimenting with this one could be costly in may ways.
My only reservation from what you have found would be the purpose and "smartness" of the regulator. Solar regulators as far as I know have some "smarts" in them to control battery charging (primarily to prevent overcooking the battery). Not sure this unit would have that smart a regulator in it.
But at the same time as a top up for the batteries it could still work - at least it would bring the batteries back up to some higher level of charge as long as it's output was higher than the battery voltage.
More questions though - is it protected from reverse current (ie when battery voltage is higher than the output of the generator) if connected directly to batteries?? Given the dynamics of charging batteries these days, if it can and does push 4Amp into your batteries (at any voltage) will this be harmful to your specific batteries??
Out of curiosity I might drop into Jaycar and see what I can find out for future reference.
Being the ultimate sceptic, I am very wary of what most "sales people" tell you these days because if they cannot read it off the box the product comes in they have no idea. I guess this is a legacy of stores selling a wide range of products some of which do need specialist knowledge.
As Bungarra said, very few people trying to sell you something have actually used the product at all let alone in the specific application you are trying to use it for.
We all learn a lot by making some "not so good" decisions at times, even after trying to research something
well, but sometimes there is no other way than to try it and see, unless you really do get lucky and find someone that actually knows and / or has used the product for what you are trying to do. It makes it costly though on expensive items like this to "try it and see" if it doesn't work, although according to Consumer Affairs you do have come back if it does not do the job you are told, or it claims, it will do. For this reason most (not all) manufacturers will list some applications on the box.
The really disappointing thing to me (as Bungarra also stated) is when you get bad advice from someone that should know (like his local auto sparky). We see this all the time in our industry from both the "box movers" and "professionals that should know better". Not to say we are perfect - no one is - but we support everything we do so we need to get it right or we will forever be fixing up our own mistakes at our cost. I think that makes a big difference to the advice you get.
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