First post, please be gentle and assume no deep background knowledge.
I run a window cleaning business and we have eight vans on the road, owned by franchisees. All of them are internal combustion engine vehicles. We use leisure batteries (some still lead-acid, some LiFePO4) to power pumps, reels, etc. All of the vans have Victron Energy Orion-Tr Smart 12/12-30A non-isolated DC-DC chargers.
We’re investigating taking on a Battery Electric Vehicle (almost certainly a Toyota Proace), which raises issues regarding leisure battery charging.
It’s my understanding that as well as the motive power battery pack under the vehicle, it will have a standard lead-acid battery providing 12v for the non-motive functions (lights, radio, etc). As this battery discharges it is recharged from the main motive battery pack.
So my question is, will we be able to use the DC-DC charger above to charge our leisure batteries? I’ve spoken to someone in the trade who thinks we should be able to reuse our DC-DC chargers by setting them up with a low enough trigger voltage to take power from the van battery but I’m here for some more expert opinion. Does this sound feasible?
I think this is a question for toyota, i would try to get access to the hv battery and convert this directly to ac. There is probably already a solution for this on the market, toyota should know.
I may be misunderstanding your response but I’m not trying to create any AC current. The leisure battery that I need to keep charged is used only to power 12v DC pumps, reels, etc.
Check with Toyota (if they will even give you the info) to see what their DC DC charger is providing to the 12v battery and see if there is any charging capacity left to send to your system via Orion. I wouldn’t want to overload their DC DC charger.
You could put some PV on the van roof?
Most EV DC>DC chargers do around 1kW of lead acid battery charging. But there may be electronics in the vehicle that checks for excessive drain on the 12V line, which may result in a malfunction of the vehicle.
It’s a simple thought but the solution may be not that simple, I’d like to know what the outcome is though!
(roof solar for windows cleaners with ladders on the roof?)
Just a thought about the auxiliary battery in a BEV - it runs most all the on-board control electronics, so generally, if it dies, the vehicle dies.
It may be too much to ask the small auxiliary battery to have a high drain load (like DC-DC charger) and its regular loads, and still stay charged in all circumstances.
Check with Toyota on the validity of the above, and whether there is a solution - either built-in, or as an accessory.
A second consideration is the Victron DC-DC charger itself. I know there’s a desire to reuse them, but the older 30A units don’t seem to be particularly efficient (lose a lot of energy to heat during charging), nor are they particulary adjustable in terms charge current. The newer (and more expensive) 50A unit is both highly efficient and highly adjustable. It may make the charging using the BEV infrastructure more feasible.