AGM Battery charging

[Wortho]

Derek Uzzell - 2020-10-31 7:55 PM

I can’t find anything to suggest that the latest diesel-fuelled Ducatos might have it (If it had, Fiat would have been only to keen to advertise this!) I don’t know what the Ducato smart alternator does during braking.

 

Thanks for the links Derek, Interesting stuff. I might ask one of the new owners to go for a drive with a voltmeter connected to the start battery to confirm if they are using the regen under braking ;-)

 

My 2017 Adria Twin came with a DC/DC charger installed but I have tested and the voltage is always 14.4v so no smart alternator in my case. I believe the German dealer installed the DC/DC rather than Adria however as the van was a few months old when we purchased and the dealer must have been leasing them out for the first few months and advertised them with a "Ladebooster" (DC/DC) fitted.

[mikefitz]

Peugeot Boxer, Citroen Relay( Jumper) , Fiat Ducato, from build date late 2019, have a smart alternator with start stop fitted to the engine. The Ducato introduced AdBlue SCR at the same time. So unless your Ducato has the AdBlue fill point by the fuel filler it wont have a smart alternator.

 

As pointed out. it will take a long time to fully charge a lead acid battery once around 70 to 80% of capacity has been replaced. The lower than optimum absorption voltage and absorption time of many charging systems makes things worse, resulting in the batteries often never reaching full capacity.

 

The only way to ensure a lead acid AGM battery is fully charged, is the stop the absorption stage at the recommended charging voltage, when the current into the battery falls to less that 1% of capacity. (1 amp per 100Ah).

 

Mike

 

 

 

 

 

 

[weldted]

Possible result and may be of interest to members. As I stated previously this is our first Burstner with the Schaudt electronics.

We have the control panel with the rotary dial to select various controls. Following a conversation with our suppling dealers service manager I carried out the following.

 

On the control panel turn the rotary knob to the leisure batteries, it first shows the voltage, press once it shows the amps in or out, second press it shows the % of charge. If you then press and hold the dial in after a few seconds it shows or should show the battery capacity in my case it would be 190 amps. Because this van was supplied with only one 95 amp battery I added a second one. But was unaware that you have to tell the system that you now have more capacity. So I then turned the dial from 95 to 190 held it in until it told me it had registered the increased capacity. As we run a Dometic cf35 freezer box the battery drain is quite a lot left the mains off overnight. On powering up today charging voltage went up to 14.8 and 13.3 amps just been out to check the dial shows 97% of charge and 14.7 volts. So hopefully cracked it. Many thanks to all who contributed. Our van does not have adblue or a smart alternator. Although sold to me as a recent arrival in stock and new at Sept 2019 this van was made Aug 2018.