So I am wondering about a couple of things, what would happen if I hooked up a 24 volt charger to four 12 volt batteries which I have connected in series for a 48 volt system, would it charge them just slower, or not at all?
Also I heard of guys using four trickle charger to charge four batteries, does that mean they disconnect them in order to charge them, or do they just charge them all at the same time?
Which brings me to my Subject question, can I connect two 24 volt chargers to four of my batteries and charge them that way, would that give me a 48 volt charge?
I am torturing myself with all this because 48 volt charger are expensive.
Whoa… don’t everyone reply at once, jk. So I learned on another forum that you should not connect a 24 volt charger to a 48 volt battery pack, since electricity is like air pressure it will flow from the higher to the lower source. So you risk frying your charger. Makes sense, thought I would share that valuable lesson.
If they are dumb chargers, you could connect two 24V chargers in series to charge something at 48V. Though, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s best to go with a single 48V smart charger.
what kind of chargers are you looking at? I don’t think two 24V chargers is going to be cheaper than one 48V charger.
Battery chargers have a protection diode that should prevent the battery from ever discharging back into the charger. Connecting a 24 volt charger to a 48 volt battery could cause several things to occur. A sophisticated charger would show a high voltage error. An automatic charger would not come on by assumption that the battery is fully charged. A manual charger would run but not put out any amps. In any case, always use the correct voltage charger for the sum voltage batteries you are connecting.
Daniel