Trickle Charging Leisure Batteries.

[Mtbcol]

Good evening all.
I've just purchased a Noco Genius 2D to keep my new starter battery trickle charged during low usage as I understand this unit can be kept attached to the battery when starting/ driving ( of course it will need to be unplugged from the mains) this now leaves my Aldi Auto XS charger spare. The question is, can I use this to charge/ trickle charge my two 110ah leisure batteries to also keep them topped up? They are charged up somewhat during winter by our 330w solar panel controlled by a Victron charger/ controller and during driving by a VSR, but would like to keep them topped up when the vehicle is not in use , as sometimes we run the diesel heater to keep the van from getting too cold inside etc. Obviously I'd need to disconnect it from the batteries (and mains) when starting driving. Looking forward to people's thoughts.
Thank you.
Colin.

 

[trevskoda]

Not sure about the trickle charge, better with a smart maintenance charger, normal would be 10amps for 100ah battery, once you go down too low the small charger is on full 24/7 rather than top of and go into a float, then pulse before going through the cycle again.
Wildbus is your man on this stuff.

 

[Mtbcol]

Hi Trev. Yeah both the Noco and Aldi units are advertised as maintenance chargers.

 

[Robmac]

I have the Noco charger and it's fine for trickle charging.

 

[trevskoda]

Hi Trev. Yeah both the Noco and Aldi units are advertised as maintenance chargers.

Should be just the job, may take a little longer if output is low, better than nothing for sure.

 

[wildebus]

Good evening all.
I've just purchased a Noco Genius 2D to keep my new starter battery trickle charged during low usage as I understand this unit can be kept attached to the battery when starting/ driving ( of course it will need to be unplugged from the mains) this now leaves my Aldi Auto XS charger spare. The question is, can I use this to charge/ trickle charge my two 110ah leisure batteries to also keep them topped up? They are charged up somewhat during winter by our 330w solar panel controlled by a Victron charger/ controller and during driving by a VSR, but would like to keep them topped up when the vehicle is not in use , as sometimes we run the diesel heater to keep the van from getting too cold inside etc. Obviously I'd need to disconnect it from the batteries (and mains) when starting driving. Looking forward to people's thoughts.
Thank you.
Colin.

If your have a VSR which is of typical design, that gets enabled when the voltage rises above the threshold (around 13.8V) on EITHER of the two +VE connections i.e. it is bi-directional. So if you are charging the Leisure Battery from your regular mains charger (I assume you are if you are plugging into EHU), then your Starter Battery will actually get charged anyway without you needing to fit a specific Starter Battery charger.

There are some VSRs that are actually uni-directional, and a couple that are activated by vibration (so a kind of "engine running" detection!). If you have either of those types, ignore the first paragraph, but they are the exception rather than the norm.

 

[Mtbcol]

Thanks Wildebus. Without getting my meter out, I'm thinking my vsr is of typical design as I've noticed the red activation light comes on when the solar is good and we have plenty in our leisure batteries. Unfortunately we had two dead cells in our starter battery so we had to bin in and get a new one. So my understanding is that if I permanently attach the Noco Genius 2d to the starter battery, once it gets it up to full it will then top up our leisure batteries until they are "full" via our vsr, then resort to trickle Charging to keep them full? So I don't really need to attach the Aldi one to either starter or leisure batteries, just keep it as a spare? We didn't have a 240v charger attached to either before we had starter battery problems, which may have helped the starter battery but it was at least 6 years old as was put on as a second hand unit by the dealer and we've had the van for 6 years.

Thanks also to everyone else for your input.

 

[wildebus]

Thanks Wildebus. Without getting my meter out, I'm thinking my vsr is of typical design as I've noticed the red activation light comes on when the solar is good and we have plenty in our leisure batteries. Unfortunately we had two dead cells in our starter battery so we had to bin in and get a new one. So my understanding is that if I permanently attach the Noco Genius 2d to the starter battery, once it gets it up to full it will then top up our leisure batteries until they are "full" via our vsr, then resort to trickle Charging to keep them full? So I don't really need to attach the Aldi one to either starter or leisure batteries, just keep it as a spare? We didn't have a 240v charger attached to either before we had starter battery problems, which may have helped the starter battery but it was at least 6 years old as was put on as a second hand unit by the dealer and we've had the van for 6 years.

Thanks also to everyone else for your input.

With a bi-directionally activated VSR (like is typical and is like you have), you should only have one Mains Charger in the system.
If it is on the Starter Battery, then that gets charged primarily until it reaches the activation voltage, which will activate the VSR and the Leisure Battery starts to charge as you have connected both batteries together.
If on the Leisure Battery, same thing - Leisure Batteries charge up until that voltage is reached, VSR comes on and the Starter battery joins the Charging party
I don't like to say when one battery is full, the VSR comes on and charges the other battery as it is based purely on voltage levels. The voltage at which activation of the VSR happens is maybe around 75% or so of a full Lead Battery? so you will be getting ALL the batteries being charged for a period.
Something to note: When you have a mains charger running, the VSR will activate at some point, but it will NEVER deactivate as the VSR OFF voltage threshold is below the chargers float voltage. So you will be keeping ALL the batteries at a float voltage once charging is finished. I wouldn't overly worry about that but at the same time it wouldn't hurt to pull the EHU sometimes either.

 

[Mtbcol]

Thank Wildebus, that cleared that up for me and put my mind at rest. I'll keep the Aldi unit as a standby spare. And lIf I'm not on shift and at home and it's a bright day, I'll turn off the 240v.