Jeff,

Bob Libbon

Bob,

You should never run a large generator like this just to use the battery charger circuit. Some generators offer this small DC charging power to trickle charge a battery while you are running the generator to power other loads, but you would use up a tank of gas just to charge a small battery like this.

You want to buy a high quality 120 VAC battery charger and plug it into the AC outlet of the generator. Select a charger that lets you select different amp charging rates to match the battery. You could easily power a large capacity charger with this size generator, so the charging process would be much faster and will save fuel.

One caution – cheap battery chargers will not work from most generators as they require the higher peak-to-peak voltage of a generator output, and if the generator voltage drops while under load the charger will stop charging. Be sure the charger specs indicate it can be powered from a generator.

If you have a half-full basketball with 30 PSI pressure inside, you will never add more air to fill it up if your air pump only goes to 20 PSI, even if you ran the pump all day. You cannot charge a 12 volt battery with 8 volts. Regardless of charger type – solar, generator, wind, grid, the charger voltage must be higher than the battery voltage. A 12 volt battery will require a charger that puts out 13 to 14 volts. At 12 volts the battery will be almost discharged.

Good luck,

Jeff Yago

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 7:56 am and is filed under 12 volt, Batteries, Charger, Charging, Generator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.