Hi Peter, I have a similar Elcon charger and went through the same questions. The charger can switch automatically to the voltage on its inputs. It took some wincing the first time I plugged it into 220V, but it did work fine. The fans are noticeably faster and louder on 220V, since the charger power output is higher.
You could make an adapter cord, but I was nervous about having a cord that had 220v pins on one end and 110v socket on the other end. In the wrong hands, this could be used to destroy 110V appliances. Kept out of those hands, it would work fine, though. I went a slightly different route. I put a connector on the car that was a little unusual. I chose a 250V/30A twistlock connector. It was a little tricky finding the flanged connector I needed for the car, but I found it mailorder. I wanted the male pins on the car so the cord would have the female end. The female twistlock was commonly available (Home Depot). I then made two pigtails. One was 110V male to twistlock female. The other was 220V male to twistlock female. I keep the 220V cord at home and carry the 110V cord in the car. Some care was required on the 220V cord. The cord on the charger is positive, negative, and ground. Luckily, my outlet was wired that way also (hot, hot, ground). If your outlet is wired as split 110V circuits with a neutral, care would be required because the third wire to the charger should be ground instead of neutral. The 220V plug and socket are different between hot, hot, neutral and hot, hot, ground. On my installation, I wired the ground on the charger and outlet to chassis ground for safety. The flanged twistlock connector is shown on my evalbum page. www.evalbum.com/2778 The connector in the car is a NEMA L6-30P. I like this because no high voltage is present on any pins, no matter what is plugged in (or not). Mike > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of SLPinfo.org > Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 9:30 AM > To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List > Subject: [EVDL] using dual voltage charger > > Hi folks, > > My Quick Charge Select-A-Charge charger is getting old as are my lead acid > batteries in my S-10 http://www.evalbum.com/3739. I've been using them > for about 2 years and have about 450 cycles on them. > > For the past several weeds the charger never seems to get up to the target > voltage. The display seems to get stuck at about 55-60% (varies a little from > one day to the next) and then it just times out after about 11 hours. > Using my DVM it looks like it's hitting about 135V or so which is quite low for > my 120V pack. Clearly I'm undercharging my batteries. I sort of knew this > would happen as I bought the charger used and it's only rated for batteries > up to 150 AH and mine are 170 AH Trojan T-875s. It also only puts out 10 > amps at 110V so I may have been undercharging since day 1. > > Anyway I ordered and have now received an Elcon 2.5KW HF/PFC charger. > It's supposed to run on both 110V and 220V. I ran it last night on 110V and it > seemed to work (though the voltage never seemed to get above 140V on my > 120V pack - should go to about 165V according to the Trojan algorithm it's set > for). I suspect that the 10 amps it puts out at this voltage just isn't strong > enough for these older batteries. So I'm hoping that running it at 220V (which > should put out about 18A) will do a better job. > > My question is this. The charger comes with what looks like a standard 110V > male plug for AC input. How do I hook this up to 220V? There is nothing > about this in the very minimal manual that came with the charger. > Do I actually need to change the plug on end of the AC cord? Or is there > some kind of adapter I can buy so I can use both 110V and 220V as available > (that was why I bought this one). I'd like to be able to use public charging > stations occasion for example. > > - Peter Flipsen Jr > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev- > evdl.org/attachments/20130710/60990ce4/attachment.htm> > _______________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub > http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org > For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA > (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
