I would like to connect a battery optimiser/charger to charge my vehicle battery, if I connect it to the input terminals of my Orion Tr Smart 12/12 - 30 isolated DC/DC charger will it charge just the vehicle battery or the leisure battery at the same time.
Vehicle battery is lead acid, leisure batteries are lithium?
I would be wary of any battery charger described as an ‘optimiser’; however, this is a personal bias against some gimicks sold with that title.
A proper charger has both absorption and float settings.
However, if the dc/dc charger is enabled, charging the Vehicle battery will also charge the leisure battery. Ensure that the max voltage from the dc/dc converter will not overcharge the lithium battery, and that the ‘charger’ will not overcharge the vehicle battery.
@DJG we will have to know a little more about your setup for those questions to be answered. Perhaps a little diagram of the setup would help.
What I want to achieve is to charge the vehicle battery when the van is parked up for more than a week, the leisure batteries charge from the vehicle when running, from solar panels and a charger/inverter when plugged into 240v.
The leisure batteries are fully charged when I do not use the van and wanted to use a charger/optimiser from the 240v from the inverter to keep my vehicle battery fully charged particularly in the cold weather.
I guess you could set the Orion so that when the charger is in absorption it is on and when it switches to float it switches off. That way the alternator can charge the house batteries and the multiplus will charge start and house and not charge house when in float.
Having batteries provide charger power to then be recharged by the same charger is not ideal. In the absence of another charging source it will grind to a halt because of internal losses. Setting as described above would overcome that problem to some extent.
OK thanks will look at the settings for the Orion.
I did have another idea that if I fitted a battery change over switch to the feed into the Orion from the vehicle battery, that would isolate the two systems and allow a charger/optimiser to be connected to the vehicle battery when the change over switch was in use.
That is the way to do it but I thought you were trying to make everything automatic.
Automatic is easier but I suppose the battery change over switch may be fool proof.
I have a setup in my camper that may be similar to what you’re trying to do.
48 volt LiFePO4 house battery
Orion Tr 48-12/30
Orion XS 12-12/50
12 volt lead acid battery on the trailer tongue (for starting the generator and running the tongue jack)
LiFePO4 → Orion Tr → Orion XS → Tongue battery
This setup keeps my tongue battery charged properly. The main difference in my setup with what is often seen in motorhomes is that the tongue battery has no ability to charge the house battery.
This setup is working well for me.