Dan Baker via EV wrote:
Hello EVDL group! I purchased a couple Sevcon 48V DC Battery Charger 622/42202 850W 17A chargers last year on ebay at a great price, for about $50 US each. They work great, they aren't fan cooled but have large heat sinks that one can put a fan on to keep them cool. I can't seem to find any manuals on them anymore- I remember finding something from Sevcon last year but that has all but disappeared from their site. Anyone happen to have a manual for these? I was also wondering if I could parallel the two of them on the same pack - effectively get 34 amps of charge. From what I read it could work or they could quickly go up in smoke, really don't want the latter :-) My pack is 4 x 12v 170 lead amp/hr batteries so they can take a steep charge. My snowpig has been running great, so good that demand has increased from helping others out with clearing their driveways that now exceeds my pack capacity. I even resorted to swapping the 600lb pack a couple weeks ago so I could do more clearing, couldn't wait 8 hours to get back out!
Sevcon makes good stuff. I doubt that you can hurt a well-designed charger by using two at once on the same battery.
But, it might hurt the batteries. Chargers have some mechanism for detecting when the battery is full, so they can cut back the charge rate or turn off. With two chargers, you may get twice the finishing current; so it might tend to overcharge.
Or, it might be that as soon as one charger sees "full", it turns off. That in turn triggers the other one to turn off. So they might wind up under-charging.
My advice would be to just try it. Watch what happens to the battery voltage and current. If you are happy with what they do to your batteries, go for it! :-)
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