Convertor question

As some of you may know I installed a Xantrex 2000 watt inverter recently with a supposedly more sophisticated 3 stage charger built in as per the manufactuer.. Yadda,Yadda Yadda..........

Anyway one of my thoughts when I installed the ch/conv. was that I was now going to have 2 chargers , charging my batteries. I do not have the optional charge wizard installed so I wanted to disable the charger part of the built in Intellipower 9160 conv./ch. I called the manufactuer and they said that the Xantrex will charge since the Intellipower will sense a full battery?????????? What if the Xantex senses a full battery and lets the Intell. power charge it?

I was surfin RVNET and one of their members was saying that the converter does not actually power the rig it just converters the AC to DC and the charger actually keeps the battery up to full power therefore suppling 12 volts to the rig. If thats true I should be able to just unplug the Intellipower.

Is this true? It sounds right since I think my converter is only connected directly to the battery, not the 12 volt distribution panel.

tdh,

Hope you get a better answer than mine, but I think you are right, that the house battery(ies) do the actual powering of the 12 VDC system.

A month ago, I would have said different but I have been talking with the techs at Recreational Specialties about doing an inverter system for me and they said I would "not" need the converter. I designed an AC/DC system for a future coach and shared it with them and in my design, I have both the inverter and converter and I have the converter isolated from the batteries.

They said nope - don't need it. I called Xantrex and they said the same. I called Progressive Dynamics and they said sure, you could use both. Of course, they only sell converters.

So I am sticking with "don't need both" if the charging circuit in the inverter is large enough to replenish the battery bank as you need it.

Keep us updated with your install so we can learn more.

Thanks,

Jim

tdh,
Your Xantrex is a very slick little gadget. When we did our install, the first thing I did was to take the converter out, and put it in the extra parts box. I don't recall how many batteries you have, but the Xantrex will put out around 100 amps when needed, depending on how you have it set up. The converter also makes a nice paper weight, or a combination conversation piece/coaster.
I do believe what Jim said is 100% correct.
TimK

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