Thanks for the great video! I just finished installing the RSP-750-15 in our Sprinter. The days here in Vancouver are getting shorter, and it took us almost a week of collecting solar to recover back to 100% battery from a 4 day trip we took. It's going to be nice to have the option to grid charge if we need to bring our battery back up faster. "When you need it, you need it!"
Fun stuff! We were looking for a cheap way to charge our 24 V LiFePO4 batteries and came across meanwell too. It's actually quite hard to find a power supply offering 27V with current limit. I read about certain versions of meanwell PSU that you can hack to alter the output voltage. Eventually i found out that meanwell offers a whole series of chargers under their ENC line. These come with preset charge profiles for most of the battery chemicals (lead flow/agm/etc) but also allow you to program your own profiles. They also come at a pretty reasonable price. Only downside might be that they only offer up to 360 W (but I guess you could also just get more than one). We chose the 240 W model and it's outputting full value at 8 A. Doesn't sound much but it charges our battery in a day. Under normal use (lights, fan, laptops) 240 W is plenty enough. Even for running our water heater it's not bad at all. It takes 3 hours to charge back what the heater needed. So if you don't want to invest a lot of time in setting up a regular PSU I think the ENC series is worth a look.
This same 750 watt power supply we used is available in a 24 volt version too... www.meanwell-web.com/en-gb/ac-dc-single-output-enclosed-power-supply-output-rsp--750--24
Thank you for an awesome video! I've already got a RSP-750-15 that we use for charging a small lithium battery. However as it was slightly too vigorous for our smaller battery we had to turn on all of our loads to reduce the amount of charge going into the battery. However now that I've added the 10k potentiometer as per your video I've adjusted it down to 40A charge rate. I cut the jumper wire between pins 7 & 8 and soldered to those. However the ground pins 10 & 11 had nothing in the plug to ground too. Fortunately in the manual it mentions that the ground pins are connected to the -V terminal. So I confirmed it with my multimeter and then crimped a ring terminal onto the ground wire and attached it to the battery negative terminal. Works a treat! Thanks again :)
It just occurred to me, you could wire up the power supply's current control remotely to your system, and then adjust the amps pulled based on time of day. Maybe set it up where at night , when hopefully no one is using power, you pull more than during the day, when people use it the most, or vice a versa. Thanks for the video, I always knew mean well made good stuff, but I didn't realize how good
Great video! I use Meanwell quite a lot, they are at least as reliable as a 'known' brand charger. While not so know in the RV world, but in the industrial world (PLC, automation, led drivers) they are among the top 5 of most used/best rated power supply manufacturers. And they are cheap, especially if you find overstock. While the RSP is not a charger, but a power supply with CC limiting, it works great as a charger. It's only not stopping charge, but provides a continous voltage. With the SBBM this is a clever way to overcome this. I only would set the voltage to 14.4 or so. Still provides (almost) the same full amps, but if for some reason the SBBM is not switching properly, you still remain within the 3.65V / cell limit of the pack (while 15V would overcharge at least 1 cell for sure)
Great Comment and good points. I could turn down the voltage as you say, it couldn't hurt anything, but it's the same SBMS controlling 100-amps of solar, so if it fails, they would get charged up to 20-volts anyway.
That meanwell is a fairly high-end power supply. From the schematic, the output is isolated so theoretically it can handle being connected to the battery even when turned off. But it doesn't explicitly say that it can so it is important to make sure that actually works without anything taking damage or causing other problems. (Most power supplies not explicitly flagged as battery chargers actually short-out the output, aka the battery in this case, when turned off or disconnected from their power source). Other than that, you selected a very nice power supply. Its has PFC circuitry (which basically means it doesn't jerk the AC side around like a regular rectifier would), and it averages 89% efficiency.
I used a meanwell rsp 3.3v 60a unit to charge lifepo4 cell and discovered that the cell will backfeed into the unit if it is switched off. I mistakenly turned off the unit whilst charging a 305ah cell and luckily returned to some smoke and not a fire. The capacitor seemed to take the brunt of the backfeed and spilled its contents .. I’m presuming that its not worth fixing..
Your a man of many talents! That at 41, I'm still working on. But that's why I like watching your videos cause of your great explanation and reasoning behind your decisions.
Someone probably already suggested this considering this video is over a year old but I see that the truck you're driving is a diesel or gas-powered. They make an alternator specifically to charge your batteries as well as performing its regular duties. So you would wire it up to go towards your batteries and every time you ran the truck it would charge your batteries. These alternators are super powerful and can probably charge your entire battery with just 45 minutes of runtime.
Unfortunately not true in our case, charging 11.5 Kw of Lithium from an engine alternator would take 10 to 12 hours assuming the alternator could tolerate a 100 amp load for that long. Secondly, we drive about 20 hours a month... Furthermore, Converting Diesel to Electricity (assuming an engine efficiency of 40%, a belt efficiency of 98%, and an alternator efficiency of 55%) leads to an overall energy conversion efficiency of only 21%. Assuming a fuel cost of $4.00/gal, this leads to an on-board electrical power cost of $0.51/kWh = $5.86 in fuel costs per charge. For that reason, we have not had our alternator connected since Northern Mexico, Early in 2019 - We get all our electrical power from Solar. And while you are commenting on a video about the Grid Charger, We have used it twice since this video, and even then it was an unneeded luxury.
@@Everlanders well yes the stock alternator but I was referring to purchasing a alternator that has a much higher output which is what they use on boats
I use a meanwell on my RV, it is a 13.8v 50A unit and all of my solar controllers, and alternator charger is 13.8v on our lifepo4 setup. the battery will fully charge to 13.8v off any system and the power supply starts at 50A then slowly tapers down as the batteries come closer to 13.8v where I found that a CC/CV controller runs it fully to 13.8V at full amperage before shutting off and transitioning to CV. so with the controller you can get a better charge rates above 80% of charge (in regards to charge goal, not SOC) I do like the trigger control though! one idea, don't use a Pot, but measure some resistors, solder to a rotary switch, and set it for something like 3A, 5A, 10A (or max) from the grid, so you can just set it to what the grid can offer rather than having to do the math each time.
Awesome, watched your video and found a 1000 Watts delta IMA-S1000-24. Ordered it for my build, Now I have a way to charge from 80 to 275 as my Victron Quattro is only 90-140. The PSU has a PMBus so it won't be as easy as a Potentiometer to adjust current but it would also allow of remote managing the input/output once completed. ESP32 should handle the PMBus.
I love all of it, I found two server power supplies a few years ago and now use them as 12v charger/supplies. I was amazed at how small and powerful they are . HP dps 80amp model and you just have to solder here and there to get them to 14.2v . Way better than the cheap $40 power supplies.
@@Everlanders Good point it's not variable like yours, my lifepo headways can charge at pretty high rate and they are 8p4s at the moment. I haven't seen 80amps out of it but I haven't charged them from a really low state. I should rethink that. I use the other pwr supply for my chinese diesel heater and it's been on for three years steady .
@@nomadchad8243 That's exactly the problem, the batteries very low resistance allows them to pull very high currents. If the power supply has no safe limiting functionality, it will overheat or bounce off its hard limit.
@@Everlanders Im also using it as Shore power for my pretty small 100% 12V system, so I should put in a 12v to 12v properly sized charger. I would need a battery disconnect switch before I plug too.
The Meanwell RSP 750 appears to be a TDK-Lambda HWS-series knock-off, with some minor changes to the remote interface. The TDK-Lambda HWS series is a high reliability power supply available in sizes up to 1500 Watts. For example, a HWS1500-24 is a 24VDC, 70A Power Supply at 1.5kW.
have to love those Unused OptoCouplers Always with the best solutions, very smart just feed the controller voltage and it does no care if its coming from Solar, wind or external PSU. pp
Love the content. I am surprised you don’t have a DC to DC charger from your truck’s alternator. Perhaps this is explained in another video. Keep up the great videos.
From Dacian: "You can add a DSSR20 between DC output and battery if you have one ... So then you can use a cheaper DROK constant voltage power supply $40, and there no need to do anything else as the sbms0 already controls the dssr20. Im going to return my Meanwell and just use a cheap Drok, which does 110-220v input, and has variable voltage output up to 27volts at 20 amps.
Great video. I now understand how the 750 works thanks to you. Very limited info on the 750. I really like your idea of adding a potentiometer to regulate the amps. Great idea. Where did you order the cn50 connector and what was the p/n if you don’t mind. I like that idea for another purpose. My plan was to control the 750 with the Dext16 and a resistor but I like your plan of using the ext 105 plan better. Thanks for the great video. I now have a better understanding of the rsp-750. Going to try again to see if I can get the unit to run or wait till Dec 2022 for new inventory. Cheers
The datasheet has the part numbers for the connector that requires wires and the crimping tool, I didn't want to mess with that, so I found the PCB through hole connector, and ordered that along with the Power Supply. Then I could just solder to the pins and heat shrink. www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Hirose-Connector/DF11-14DS-2DSA05?qs=Ux3WWAnHpjDw6ChHAaOFYA%3D%3D Mouser #: 798-DF11-14DS-2DSA05 Mfr. #: DF11-14DS-2DSA(05)
Hello both of you, I follow you on your adventures and remain fascinated by the flow of solutions you expose. It is very impressive. Questions: With which framework do you make your control dash board? Python? Tinkter? do you share resources on a github? Thank you very much for these wonderful shares ! 🤠
More great content! So informative, thank you! :) Do you worry at all about driving through deep water and it flooding that box since it is one of the lowest points on the body of the vehicle?
I'm not really the worrisome type... We've blasted through water deeper than that and it doesn't seem to get in through the doors. Further, the top of these boxes is over a meter from the ground (over 40" 🍌) If we're in water that deep and we stopped or got stuck, (1) The camper box is at risk of floating... (2) if we sit there long enough for it to leak in through the doors, the charger is only a 4 inches below our floor where we'd have other bigger problems. In 100,000km of travel, we haven't found that many water crossings... 🤷
@@Everlanders yep, may go with a Giandel inverter, they seem decent, and someone has figured how to hack the remote with a basic Nano Every setup. Out of interest are you switching your inverter via EXTIO on the sbms 0? apologies if you've covered this elsewhere
@@pfunnell70 No, were switching it via the Pi, this allows us to voice control it, remote control via Blynk and shut it down when not in use. The Pi polls the stats from the SBMS and if the SoC is getting low it shuts everything down, and then shuts itself down... Then if the SBMS EXTIO3 gets shutdown - the Pi is already halted for a clean shutdown.
I have this PS that connects to a TusconEV whip for EV charging in the USA with a J1772 inlet. The trick is not to ground the PS to the chassis for AC side.
Meanwell switched mode power supplies can handle inderdaad wide range of (AC) input voltages (and even accept DC), ISO of output of 15V you coulld also use meanwell output voltage around your solar panels string string voltage and feedthat to your MPPT input (with 2simple diodes so powersupply curre t cannot go to solar panels vice versa. Advantage: your protection setting for battery technologie etc from solar charge controller also contol current from Meanwell power supply. and if sun comes back grid current will reduce (diodes)..and can use thinner cables due to koper current at higher voltage
We've never used it since install... We have 2.5Kw of solar which is far quieter than the loud fans in the power supply. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lcck1ejlXt8.html
@@Everlanders I do have the Victron 30 amp dc dc charger charging 2 200 AH lithium LifeBlue batteries with self heating. That dc charger is putting out 30 amps or close to it. A good workhorse for those shady days and nights.
once again great video & content which is great. I like how you put the video together , it must take you loads of time to prepare all the content & having all the gear ready which i find great. As i am no electronic person i find your video inspiring for me as i am no genius like you. i can't wait for the next part as this is my weakest part i am no programed i wished i was but i am to old to learn it or lazy its probably the second. I have loads of question to ask but for now . can ask this i have RV which is America but was shipped to the UK around 1994 so she a bit old. So i have 2 electric system to deal with 110v @ 60Hz & 2430v @50Hz the appliances are 110v & LPG generator is 110v @ 60 Hz so i need some sort of way of using both . i was thinking of get a step up down voltage transformer which $600 +shipping + customs could be round $900 + but seeing you using the 60Amp Meanwell Power Supply would that be better way of doing it . i would like to travel the USA & Europe but i am still rebuild the engine plus there is loads of work to do so i am just looking for different ideas at the moment .. So thanks
It sounds like most of the RV would be 110v then? and charging the batteries on 230v 50hz is the biggest issue, then yes, this would work nicely. Or am I missing something and there are 230v components in the RV too?
I didn't catch what kind of batteries you have. I am going to assume LiFePO4. LiFePO4 is a bit different from normal lithium-ion in several ways, and one of them is with the BMS's SOC tracking. The other is that when cycled regularly, LiFePO4 batteries can be charged to 100% without taking any damage. LiFePO4 batteries should periodically be charged to 100% (3.55V/cell = 14.2V at a minimum) and held there for 2 hours or so in order to allow the battery's BMS to balance the cells and reset its SOC. The BMS won't balance the cells at lower voltages. BMS's will lose track of the actual SOC when the battery is not charged to full due to the discharge curve of the LiFePO4 battery being so flat. Unfortunately, some BMS's require charging all the way to 3.65V (14.6V) before they will actually reset the SOC tracking to 100%. So if cycling the battery regularly, 100% SOC is generally more reliable for LiFePO4 batteries. If you use 80% as a target, you may notice significant SOC drift, sometimes to the point where the battery is not actually getting charged much.
@@joshpeterson7216 I just checked your datasheet, that's the same voltage trim as mine... so the current will fluctuate with the batteries state of charge/load.
Hey! When you run into outlets with reverse polarity do you walk away or use a homemade pigtail cord or something to correct the hot and neutral polarity (I assume you don’t want to feed the Meanwell reversed polarity input?)? Also, does your Meanwell tolerate an open ground input connection or do you have to use something like an adapter to create a false ground connection from the neutral? FYI - we are down in Argentina now and the Starlink is rock solid.
As usual, creativity in everything you touch , I have an important question if you don't mind asking , Why didn't you think about charging the batteries from the car alternators after changing that to professional which commonly called 6 phase. They produce more output at idle and are more efficient than a conventional alternator, besides that charge the batteries while your car moving is not an issue for a diesel engine with professional alternators , do you agree ?
No I do not agree, extracting electricity from diesel is going to cost about $2/KwH, or $20 to recharge our battery. I'm fact we've disconnected our original alternator and run the chassis from solar too...
Have you a method of dynamically controlling the resistance on the current control via an ESP chip? Mechanically I could see a small server rotating the Potentiometer, but sure there must be a solid state option for a variable resistor? - Any ideas?
Incorrect on both counts unfortunately, it maxes out at 70amps and then drops off as it reaches the 14.4v I have it set at, there is a trimpot inside to set voltage, have used it to charge my 4s12p headway lifepo4 pack many times
That would be great... I cooked the server power supply I got from eBay that I was previously using on a mining rig... don't remember which it was now. But I should order another and cook it in a video...
@@Everlanders Just pay attention to the model. Not all of them can be modified to provide 14.2V, some have lower OVP limits. Some of the chargers provide up to 100A. Depending on the wire size that will act as a resistor, limiting the current to remain within the 100A limit
@@knutblaise9437 Every "pedestal" in Central America is miswired, that's kinda my point. We see people with rigs here that they just bought with all the fancy equipment, that just throws a fault and won't charge or even transfer to shore power. This inexpensive power supply takes all the normal grid fluctuations in stride, and then we can just invert our own clean power. If it's a full on lightning strike or pole transformer failure then a little box isn't going to stop it anyway and then this power supply becomes sacrificial, but we'd probably not be plugged in during a storm anyway.
So I got a ASIC bitcon miner few years back uses alot of energy and creats alot of heat 115°F coming off the fan any way it has a unit for the power that looks like that.
It seems like a lifetime ago, we've been traveling South down the Pan-American Highway since late 2018. But I've worked in electro-mechanical product prototyping and design. Industrial Automation and Monitoring systems, mostly bespoke, problem solving stuff. I sometimes get lumped in with Wizards. 🧙♂️
You connect the output of the power supply together with the output of your solar panels. If I have an MPPT solar charger, could I just connect a power supply with high enough voltage to the solar input of my MPPT charger and charge that way from the grid? My MPPT charger can take up to 100 Volts input, is a higher voltage output of the power supply better?
Not Exactly, the output of the charger is effectively connected to the battery, just through a shunt to measure the current. (and it's the same shunt that the output of the DSSR20 chargers are connected to.) I suppose connecting a power supply to a dedicated MPPT could work... I've never tested this.
Couple of questions :) No DC-DC charging to enable alternator charging? If SBMS poops itself, how many systems go down and what redundancy do you have for that. No heat transfer tape / goo on the back of the AC charger?
No, At $2/kWh to charge from the alternator, it would be silly to convert Diesel to Charged Batteries when we have so much solar... In fact we have our alternator's control wire disconnected and power the Engine's electronics from our Solar and Lithium. Furthermore, even if I pulled 50 amps from the alternator, it would still take 20 hours of driving (and $22 in Diesel) to charge it completely. If the SBMS were to fail, everything would continue to run fine, I would need to manually trigger the DSSR20's to charge every few days. If they ALSO failed, I could connect them to the battery directly because they can only harvest a maximum of 7kWh per day... so I'd just wait until the 11.5kW battery was at 30% or so and then let it charge... But, We already have a spare SBMS60 and SBMS100 that we got before leaving on this trip, so I could just connect one of those. ALSO... don't forget that the SBMS is open source and I've burnt them up and fixed them on the side of the road before: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7RdbXw5mJsA.html No thermal compound or pads... It's pretty efficient, doesn't get that hot and like I've said, I hope to not use it that often, In a little over a year since we've had it, We've used it twice...
Any idea if that PSU is RF quiet? A lot of switch mode supplies these days seem to generate a huge amount of RF noise that is bad for radio reception (on short wave usually).
@@Everlanders OK thanks anyway. I guessed you'd have noticed if it interfered with the Baofengs - or maybe not since you prob only use them when mobile.
Question, have you ever considered attaching a second higher amp alternator to the 7.3 and charging batteries off that? Why or why not is this a good idea?
In the planning phases I considered it, but when you consider that extracting electricity from diesel costs nearly $2 per kilowatt hour. It would cost $22 and 20 hours of driving to completely charge our 11.5 kilowatt hour battery bank. It's not free energy... not to mention the added cost of alternators, brackets, DC to DC charge converter... We elected instead for more solar panels... In fact we haven't used our alternator since 2019 in Arizona someplace, rather, we power the Engine and Charge the Chassis Batteries from solar exclusively.
Why not use vehicle charging in this way? So it is only used when needed. As I am guessing you drive a few hours a day average. This could add a lot of power to the battery in emergency
While using a diesel vehicle's engine alternator to generate electricity seems intriguing, the efficiency calculations unveil a less-than-optimal reality. While diesel is recognized for its high energy density, the process of converting it into electricity introduces complexities affecting overall efficiency. 1: Energy Density of Diesel: Diesel has an energy density of 45.5 megajoules per kilogram, theoretically yielding 14 kilowatt-hours of electricity per kilogram. 2: Engine Efficiency: Assuming a relatively generous engine efficiency of 40%, this percentage represents the conversion of diesel fuel's energy into mechanical energy. 3: Belt and Alternator Efficiency: To transform mechanical energy into electricity, we consider the vehicle alternator efficiency at 55% and the belt efficiency at 98%. These values encompass the efficiency of the entire mechanical-to-electrical conversion process. 4: Overall Energy Conversion Efficiency: Multiplying these efficiencies, we arrive at an overall energy conversion efficiency of 21%, highlighting the inherent losses in the system. 5: Calculating the Cost (X): To understand the economic implications, we calculate the cost (X) of charging an 11.5 kWh LiFePo4 battery bank: X=(11.5kWh/0.21)×Diesel price per kWh Substituting the values, we find that X is approximately $59.71 which is the total cost to charge our 11.5 kWh LiFePo4 battery bank or $5.18 per kilowatt-hour. This figure provides insight into the economic efficiency of the diesel-to-electricity conversion process. The overall energy conversion efficiency of 21% suggests a significant portion of diesel's energy potential is lost in the conversion process.
@@Everlanders I get all these losses. Originally I thought you would be using an alternator to run the vehicle the additional fuel to send some to the batteries when you need it for these rare times of need would not affect your fuel budget much. Being you drive so little it would not be worth it as well. This brings up some more questions how far can you drive non-stop before the solar cannot keep up with powering the vehicle?
@@Everlanders because they may fight over or I am sold to victron by thinking that I need to synchronise MPPT chargers and external sources. Which can be done with their equipment.
@@Everlanders I want to build a camper truck (about 8 tons) and I”d like to charge from solar but when it’s not enough, turn on the engine and charge through alternator.
It depends how you're wired, I didn't learn from the books, rather I tackle a simple problem head on and chances are someone else has posted a snippet of code that does 90% of what you need anyway. Then you can build on the example while still having the instant gratification of incremental successes. If you need Python for interacting with the real world, a Raspberry Pi is a great place to start. Also, Using an editor like Visual Studio that has syntax correction and debugging helps immensely. Since you're a member I'll try to cover some of these tips a little more in our next video.
The SBMS (Battery Management System) shuts down the charge when any one cell reaches 3.49v - furthermore, as I said in the video, I have my cutout set to 90% of that. So there is no way the battery bank can ever get to 15 volts.
@@Everlanders That makes sense. I thought the CALB data sheet said the max charge Voltage was 3.65 V per cell, but I just went back and looked at it and I was wrong. I keep dreaming of converting my battery bank to the sbms that you are using now. If my 123 smart BMS ever goes out I will for sure make the switch.
Why do you have an electric hot water heater? If you have hot water why heat it? hehehe just saying. Having said that we have an electric water heater.
