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Old 07-16-2012, 01:51 AM   #3
Edelweiss
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City: PNW
Vessel Model: 1976 Californian Tricabin LRC
Join Date: May 2011
Posts: 1,860
Quote:
Originally Posted by baldpaul View Post
I need some help. When off the power grid, my generator does not seem to be charging my batteries very well. I have an 8 golf cart bank for my house with a xantrex inverter, 12.5kw Westerbeke generator and a battery charger. When on my battery bank, I have 920 Amp hours and go through about 20 per hour. But, when I run my generator to recharge for a few hours a day, it seems to put about 110 a/h into the system for about 10 minutes according to my inverter monitor, but then drops to 10-12. So, over the course of a few days my batteries slowly die. When I plug into shore power my inverter reads 110 a/h until the batteries get back to full charge. So, my question is do I have a problem? If so, what is the likely culprit....charger, inverter, batteries,generator? When running, my generator powers my boat with no problems.

Any comments welcomed.
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Did this just start? How old is your generator?

I had something similar happen a long time ago, where my battery charger did not like the A/C output of my generator.

I have a 36 year old Onan 7.5 kw and the governor was not holding the generator at a constant speed. The generator was running too slow when under load, which caused the A/C to be much less than the 60 cycles it should have been putting out and the voltage was also low. The trouble began when I installed a new smart battery charger. It would run for a while on generator, then it would sense the low cycle rate in the A/C and go into a standby mode. Once the load came off the generator and it sped up a little or you plugged into dock power the battery charger would come back on line. The governer on the generator was replaced, speed adjusted and haven't had a problem since.

Some of the smart chargers are a little more touchy about the A\C line power you feed them than the old ones used to be. It may not be what's causing your problem, but just something else to look at.

Larry B
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