I have two Orion XS wired in parallel in my camper van. My van alternator is rated at 150A. I understand that I should draw no more than 40% to avoid stressing the alternator so I have set both Orion’s to an input current of 30A each. I’ve left the output at 50A. My Leisure/house battery is 230Ah LifePo4. IS it the case that the output can push put the full 50A even though the input is 30A? I ask because whilst driving today with my battery at 93% state of charge, both Orion’s were showing identical outputs of 28.5A.
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It is impossible for output power to be higher than input power, so no, if you set the units to 30A maximum input, they cannot output 50A.
That’s a shame. Its not clear ( to me at least) from the manual how the input and output current settings interact with each other. I read it as they are independent and given that one can set the output current higher than the input, the charger would produce the uplift to whatever the output is set to whilst the restricted input protects the alternator from overload.
Yeah to be honest I’m not sure why there’s a different setting for input vs output, as far as I can tell only one would be needed. But while the charger can boost voltage from the input to the output, it’s just impossible -per physics- to create energy. Watts (power) out can never exceed watts in, and in fact will be anywhere from 2-8% lower due to device inefficiency.
THAT would be a Perpetuum mobile.
The lower value of those 2 currents win, so 28.5 at rhe output is exactly 30 at input minus some losses.
I think there are two settings because one user needs to limit the input to protect his alternator and another user needs to limit the output to protect his battery.
And by the way the actual output current could be higher than the input current if the input voltage is much higher than output voltage when battery ist very low. Only input power can never be higher than output power.
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Er, the opposite of that. Output power can never be higher than input power.
Editing to add: You’re right though, yes output current could indeed be marginally higher than input current if output voltage was lower than input voltage. Either way though, the possible difference is low enough that I still don’t fully get the point of separate setting. Limiting input current will limit output current, and limiting output current will limit input current, so separate settings for each is -in my personal opinion- a bit on the redundant side, but on the other hand a higher degree of configurability is always appreciated by some.
Guy’s, remember
Power in measured in Watt, the amperes could be higher on either side 
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Of course I was just writing too fast, sorry.
Imagine you want 50A für a low charged battery at 12V thats 600W at output and you have an alternator which gives you 14V you only have 43A at input if you keep those small loss out of sight. I thinks that could bee seen as a relevant difference.
Exactly the amps depend on the voltage which can be some volts different between alternator and battery.
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When operated as a charger, the XS can transform any voltage between 9 and 17 V on the input side to the voltage required to charge the battery on the output side along the current charging phase.
In terms of power (Watts) we have the invariants:
voltage_in * amperage_in = watts_in
voltage_out * amperage_out = watts_out
watts_in * efficiency = watts_out
efficiency is somewhere between 0.9 and 1 meaning 90 to 100%
So it is obvious, amperage_out can be higher the amperage_in in case voltage_in is higher than voltage_out after multiplying efficiency.
Whether this happens in reality depends on the voltage level of the alternator and the voltage level of the battery side. With a lead starter battery and a LifePo4 charged battery this will be rare.
I assume that both input and output amperage settings are max values that must not be exceeded.
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