alternative charging methods

[stevieb]

i have been wondering if there is any alternative methods for charging my 36 v battery
can it be recharged from a vehicle whilst on holiday with no access to a 240v supply.?
i know my van is 12volts and the battery is 36volts but you can get invertors for low powered 240v appliances.
is the standard charger for my batterry too much for one of these?
also on a more quirky note , my wife uses an indoor trainer for her bike quite a lot and i see it as a lot of energy going nowhere.
can this energy be hooked up to recharge my battery?
a bit like a larger version of the chap that hooked up his hamsters exercise wheel to recharge his mobile phone.
although i don,t think my wife would like to think of herself as a giant hamster. lol

 

[Geebee]

As long as the inverter is rated at a higher Wattage than the battery charger needs it should work ok, so on your charger input amps times input voltage = wattage plus a bit of reserve.
A few camper van owners on here so someone may be able to recommend a particular inverter.

And yes on the trainer but I doubt it would be worth the effort unless you are into tinkering as a pastime.

Now going out into left field if you are into electronics there are some very efficient up converters that would allow for a much more efficient charger than the inverter and charger, but you need to know what you are doing to not destroy your battery / set fire to your camper / and worry yourself sick

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Remember that 10ah at 36v is 30ah at 12v. You'll have an efficiency loss in charging, so call it 40ah. You shouldn't discharge a lead battery past 50%, so you need a 100% healthy fully charged battery of at least 80ah to charge a 10ah ebike battery.

 

[flecc]

And it's a good idea to have the vehicle engine running during the early charging stage of a discharged battery to get some alternator input as well. That will take some of the load from the battery during the period of highest charge current.

 

[stevieb]

thanks everyone
will do the maths on my charger
i have a van with large healthy battery and would only charge whilst on the move.
any campervan owners recommendations for inverters would be most welcome
thanks

 

[stevieb]

i,ve taken a bit longer than hoped to get round to this but funds are now available for an inverter.
details of my charger are as follows; phylion battery, li-ion battery charger
model ;sslco84v42x
input ; ac100v-240v~,1.8[max] 47-63 hz
output; dc42. 0v -2.0 A
so from this can i assume that to allow for a margin of saftey that a 12v / 600watt inverter from maplin (£65 )
would do the job with my engine running?
my maths for this being 240v x 2.0 amps =480 watts.
thanks