Blue Sea P12 Battery Charger with Xantrex Echo Chargers

[RitSim]

After 3 years, I am working my way down the project list and have a question about my battery charging system. We have a B411 with a Gp31 start battery, a Gp 31 Bow Thruster battery and a Gp 4D House battery. There is a Blue Sea P12 battery charger in the aft lazarette and two Xantrex Echo Chargers - one for the house battery and one for the bow thruster.

Looking at the Blue sea P12 manual, it seems like this device would handle thethree batteries by itself.

Any comments / suggestions?.

 

[Davidasailor26]

Even though the P12 may have isolated outputs, your alternator (and any other future charge like solar) won’t, so it’s still good to have a way to charge the multiple batteries from a single source. The echo chargers do provide that. So would something like an ACR.

 

[RitSim]

So should the Echo Chargers be in series with the charge line from the P12? Or should they be on a line that comes from the alternator? Properly fused of course.

 

[Davidasailor26]

The output of the P12 to the main bank, output of the alternator, and battery terminal should all be electrically equivalent. The echo chargers input just need to be connected to any of those to work. The best option is probably to connect to a bus from the main bank, so it’s just another load on that bank. That assumes that the alternator charges the main bank.

 

[RitSim]

OK, I'll check that out next trip to the boat. Thanks

 

[RitSim]

In checking, I found that he Blue Sea charger had been set to AGM - i changed it to match my batteries. Also found that I had two Xantrax echo chargers connected to the same bow thruster battery. Looking in to running a cable from the Blue Sea charger to the bow thruster battery since the charger has three taps. Thanks for the help.