I have been advised against charging the on board leisure battery via an EHU cable direct from a generator due to spikes that can occur in the electrical current. Is it possible that it could damage the on board battery charger and has anybody had to replace their on board charger due to this reason?
i did read one time of a newish caravan had all the electrics blown with a generator.they can also spoil your tv.there are things you can buy to prevent this. unless its a meet you will not be to popular with the noise of a generator and it can interfere with peoples tvs too.
Post last edited on 24/02/2011 21:39:45
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It depends very much on the quality of the generator one of the more expensive Honda types are usually fine it is more the budget end that can cause problems see attached info.
------------- Never argue with an idiot, they will bring you down to their level then beat you on experience.
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Just to add that the generator that I use is a portable Honda EX650 suitcase generator which is designed especially for camping & caravanning needs. Maybe damage has been done to some on board chargers by connecting cheap imports like jaysere03 has said. I would have thought that all Honda generators would have been okay for charging direct to to the caravan which I have used in the past 4 years without any problem. That was on a 1992 caravan but I now have a 1999 caravan and didn't know if the chargers were more sensitive or not from direct generator input.
Imho it is better to use a gennie that has a dedicated charging outlet if you want to charge the caravan battery and that way you stand less risk of blowing the caravan system and it is also more efficient. The reason the cheapie gennies are so cheap is they don't have the clean output that a quality one has. I borrowed a gennie a couple of years back for my office when we had a prolonged power cut and even running it through a commercial UPS unit that will normally cope with most variations that the National Grid can throw at it the alarm was constantly sounding to indicate that the supply was beyond the tolerance that the UPS could handle. If you are going to get a gennie make sure it is one rated for use with computers etc.
I'm still of the opinion that it is better to run what you can off 12v caravan supply where ever possible rather than rely on inverters or gennies to give 240v. Saying that if anyone has got a nice new hydrogen fuel cell system that they would like me to long term test I would be happy to do so lol!
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even my ex (dies last year) cheepie had a 12V outlet on it, this was reasonably stable, 12.6-14.4V averaged around 13.5V so ok for charging wont give a full charge, but ok.
that gave up, so i got a cheap old style battery charger with a transformer in it, that seemed to do ok, output pretty stable.
the "240" on the cheap gennies is lousy, there is no regulator in most of them, so if the revs dip (ie under load) the voltage drops, then when it revs to compensate, it can spike quite highly, whislt this would be no problem for les sensative equipment, any electronic equipment is likly to be affected, if not damaged by the high spikes, which are designed to work on the
uks 230V -6% +10%
honda and similar gennies have a voltage regulator the should keep the output within tolerances.
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Topic: Charging Battery On Site
