Of Chargers and Batteries...

Saw that Cafe Electric, maker of the zilla controller, is offering Soneil chargers. These are small chargers that are usually used for a bike or scooter. The idea is have to use one per battery so no equalization is needed. Comes out to be less to get 13 of these than one PFC-20. Hmmmm.

So, I sent of a message to find out more and got some incredibly infomative resposes from Otmar himself.
===================
>>I have some questions on the Soneil chargers. I was planning on using
>>Manazanita Micro's PFC-20, but this option looks interesting. My conversion
>>will be 156 volt - 13 Optimas
>>- What amp rating will be needed for the 240 VAC input to power 13 Soneils?
>>- What would be the expected charge time at 50% DOD?
>>
>>Thanks.
>>=Pat

Hello Pat,I don't recommend using the Soneil as your only charge source since I've been told that AGMs need regular high current charges to maintain capacity. I'm sure there are many opinions on the matter. I suggest them for equalization and occasional backup charging.Charge rate depends on your capacity, which depends on your rate. But if you get 34 Amp hours out of an Optima at a 1 hour rate (with quality problems that they now have, I think that would be lucky) then 17 Amp hours is 50%, and the 3 Amp charge rate would take 5 hours to bulk charge plus equalization time. Equalization time depends much on battery age but should be less than 1 hour.For power draw we'll have to calculate from the output since there is no input specification on the data sheet.Start with a maximum of 14.7 Volts output at 3 Amps. That's 44 Watts.Assume worst case of 75% efficiency and we have a input of 58.8 Watts.At 120 Volts input that is 0.49 Amps and at 240 Volt it's 0.245 Amps per charger.For thirteen of them you end up at 6.37 Amps at 120 Volts input and 3.185 Amps at 240 Volts.
I hope this helps,--
-OtmarA message from SupportMailto:Support@CafeElectric.com

>Thanks for the quick and detailed response.
>So I guess you would recommend Orbitals over Yellow Tops?
>I was thinking Yellow Tops would provided better range, but maybe
>that isn't an accurate assumption.
>Thanks again for your help.
>= Pat

Hi Pat,These days I have more faith in Hawkers, or whatever they are called today. If they would fit in my racks I would switch to them.Optimas have more lead so may go farther, and yet have reliability problems, but so do Orbitals sometimes. It's not a easy choice. Hawkers cost more, but I've only seen good service from them. Plus you can get them in a 60 lb size and get some decent range out of that. 13 Optimas need to be in a pretty efficient car to go anywhere much.
-Otmar