Battery charger - converter for powering house and charging

[sdowney717]

I have an old, very old working Raritan converter - charger that maxes output at 30 amps with 3 bank charging.
When you read about battery chargers with functions of various charge profiles, do any of them also supply power to the DC ship functions?
Or is the idea of converter deprecated today?

In some future day, if I replaced mine, I would not want to get a charger only that will cause some problem if its not also a converter.

Anyone know what I am talking about?

[Sailmonkey]

A converter will supply power in the absence of batteries.

Why do you require this? Normally you’re charging batteries and using the power from them, sometimes concurrently.

I’ve yet to see an old ferroresonant converter/charger that is capable of its rated output with a fully charged battery. Usually the voltage drops off, once the battery is at a sad state of charge the charger is able to supply its full current.

[smac999]

The only reason you would need a converter is if you disconnected the battery. And ran power direct from the charger to the dc panel. Nobody would do that.

Otherwise power comes from battery to dc panel. And charger charges battery while this is happening.

Buy a new multi stage charger. The old constant volt chargers should not be still in use.

[john61ct]

The old converters were very crude, horrible as chargers.

A quality modern marine charger does everything any converter can do, some can operate in power supply mode without a battery, but given a $20 sealed lead battery is fine as a buffer I would not bother with that as a selection criterion.

There are some fine modern converters made today that have all the features of quality modern marine chargers as well, so at that level, basically

the distinctions between the two terms have disappeared, other than for marketing purposes, the USian RV market is too accustomed to the converter label for them to drop it.

For me, the ability to user-custom adjust the charge profile - not just canned choices - is critical for future proofing.

Many owners like the combi approach, aka inverter-chargers.

[sdowney717]

I already have a separate 3000 watt inverter wired into the entire house system with somewhat of an automated yet still selectable way of choosing shore, generator then inverter through the use of 2 gange 4PDT 35 amp power relays and it works great as is.

True never really would not have a battery as a load for a charger, so the old idea was a charger - converter could power house loads with zero batteries it seems.

I had talked to Vic at Raritan Engineering before he retired, and my charger precedes the ferroresonant chargers, and I was specifically told it was not a ferroresonant charger. It has been very good charger since 1970, so its about 50 yrs old now and still humming along. It is electronic switching circuit use a SCR, quite sophisticated for its day, but I agree it does not do multi profile timed charging.

Its one of those it works ok, so dont fix what isn't broken things to me. Vic was real surprised there was still one working in a boat, I gave him the serial number, and he said he had built it when he was young!

[waterman46]

We run an AC generator at anchor, and our batteries require all 100A output from our newer 3 stage charger for more than a few minutes. At same time we want to use generator to provide power for 12V reefer, 30A for 1.5 hours.

So I use a 50A, 12V DC power supply connected to the reefer only during this time. You may have a similar use for your old converter. Keep it on board as a backup, in any case.