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Electrical pontifications on a rainy day

J

jclays

Regular Contributor
I posted the following the oth

I posted the following the other day on another board. I wanted to run this by you guys for your input.

I dont know if this the right forum...but here goes. Its raining. Im sitting in my boats cabin with toooo much time on my hands and a thought comes to me. I have a 2000watt inverter that turns 12v battery power to 120v. My battery charger uses 12amps (roughly 1400watts.). If when disconnecting from shore power I plug my battery charger into my inverter(now 120v) and my connected load on my inverter doesnt exceed its maximum rating will my inverter even though powering my battery charger continue to keep my batteries up indefinitely almost in a continuous cycle like some sort of perpetual machine??? What happens to the charging that my alternator is doing when im also under power? Does the regulator in the alternator see the voltage being supplied by the battery charger as my battery already charged? Told you I had a lot of time on my hands with the rain.
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"Well, pardner, THIS board kno

"Well, pardner, THIS board knows something about efficiency and losses. That's why THIS board knows your batteries would quickly run down. (A battery is about 40 % efficient--that's why electric cars work lousy.)

Keep thinking! You might come up with something yet.

Jeff"
 
Wow. That's some pretty d

Wow. That's some pretty deep thinking. (Hope the rain stops soon.) To add to Jeffs opst. Chargers are typically 85% efficient at best and most have circuitry to shut down when the engine is started so that the shore powered charger doesn't fry the alternator. Inverters have efficiencies of 80-90%. With these efficiencies you have nothing left to power your microwave for sure.
 
If you are running the engine

If you are running the engine you would be supplying charge back to the batteries that the inverter uses.

Why use the inverter to charge the batteries when you have a alternator to do the job? The chargers rated current as well as the alternator output current will drop off as the batteries become fully charged also.
 
"My Inverter/charger is used t

"My Inverter/charger is used to charge my batteries in the event of discharge from any 12V uses that occur when the vessel is unattended. On some occasions, this could be 3 weeks or so."
 
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