Converter upgrade

[JWLSC]

Can I upgrade my PD9245C with a PD9280. I would like to charge the batteries faster.

[Gary RVRoamer]

You can, but you may find that the battery control center has a 50A breaker in it and the 80A charger might trip it if the batteries are real low and the charge rate exceeds 50A. I had that problem when I upgraded the converter on a 2002.

Be aware that the 9280 isn't necessarily any faster than the 9245 unless the battery is really low. Both chargers use a variable charge rate based on battery state-of-charge and it's only in the bulk charge mode that the 9280 pours in the extra amps. Not much difference in absorption mode and no difference in float mode. And it will still take around 70 hours to reach 100% state-of-charge on a single battery. The 9280 might reach the 80% charge level a bit sooner, though.

However, the 9280 will outperform the 9245 with larger or additional batteries, i.e. a battery bank that will accept more amps. The charger goes into bulk mode more often that way. You should see a noticeable difference if you have multiple batteries and the charge state is relatively low (under 65%)

[House Husband]

I made that conversion on my 95 Bounder. Your BCC has 2 30 amp resetable breakers and I doubt that you'll ever exceed their capacity. I didn't, even when I added 2 more 6 volt batteries. You can run another conductor from the converter to the BCC and add another 30 amp breaker if you like. The 80 amp converter will definitely out perform your old 45 amp converter. Go for it.

Richard

[Gary RVRoamer]

Mine would trip the BCC breaker whenever we were boondocking and I turned on the genset to recharge the batteries. With the batteries discharged to 50% or less, the 80A charger would hit it with big amps as soon as the genset power came on. I had to put a jumper cable on to bypass the BCC for about 10 minutes until that initial surge passed. After that it was fine again. I ended up putting in a bypass using a battery cable and a manual disconnect switch and I used that on the occasions when the batteries got real low, i.e. boondocking. In normal use, the charge amps never got high enough to trip the 50A breaker.