I recently installed a 75 amp Iota converter/charger in the Clasco to take advantage of the AGM battery ability to support a faster charge. I did not expect the unit and the battery to ever draw anything near 75 amps in normal use and also was not concerned about the wires running from the battery to where the converter/charger is located being too small to support that much current because those wires are protected by a 50 amp rated (62.5 amp actual trip) circuit breaker in this installation. Wellllllll, do something dumb like forgetting to plug in shore power when we got home and leaving the inverter turned on will eventually drain the AGM to the point the low voltage alarm on the inverter will wake one up in the middle of the night! I went down in my undies, plugged it in and the circuit breaker immediately tripped as the amp draw the batteries were willing to take and the converter/charger was happy to supply rose past that 62.5 amp trip point. Now what?

I couldn't recharge using shore power or the generator as both go through the converter/charger so I had to start the engine and let the 100 amp combiner do its job to do the initial heavy in rush charging via the 100 amp alternator. After enough loss of sleep time I was able to reconnect the shore power when the battery decided it would receive just 50 amps or less to complete the charge.

Next day I ordered the 55 amp Iota and replaced the 75 amp unit to prevent this from happening again. The nearly new 75 amp Iota is therefore available to anyone who wants the gold standard for 4 stage (you will need to buy the little plug in unit that controls all four stages as I reused mine) converter/chargers for $230 including shipping west of the Mississippi and $240 east. The lowest price I found for them when I purchased this one was $310 plus shipping. Great unit if you have heavy enough wire from your battery bank to this unit to support 75 amps.

Jerry
Jerry Work
The Dovetail Joint
Fine furniture designed and hand crafted in the 1907 former Masonic Temple building in historic Kerby, OR

glwork@mac.com
http://jerrywork.com








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