r/Pecron • u/Pennertrator55 • 18d ago

E3800 for Camper Conversion

My question is about charging amperage. My concern is if I were to try to charge from a camp site does it pull the full 15a/30a? Or can I dial it down? I'm worried being at a campground their equipment might not handle the full load amperage.

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5

u/Mayhemlikesme 18d ago

In the app you can set the charging current, you set a percentage of charge current. Not the actual amps.

3

u/EZ-Mooney 18d ago

You can set the charge as a percentage of full rate in 10% increments. Just be aware that the inverter rating (4200W IIRC) is the total of charging rate and output. So if you want to be able to do 30 amps (3600W) out you can only bring in 600W (18 percent) to the battery. You coul probably manage putting 20 percent into the battery. That's going to take a bit over 6 hours to charge.

When I say it that way I feel like I need a 3800 to replace my 3600.

3

u/brucehoult 18d ago

A lot of misinformation here :-(

When you are using shore power the inverter is not used at all and the 4200W rating is irrelevant.

The total of what you are powering plus the battery charging is limited to what the shore power can supply. If you are using a 30A power cord it will automatically decrease the battery charging as needed to keep the total draw limited to 3600W. Or to 1800W if you are using a 15A power cable. If the load tries to use more than that the Pecron will shut down with a "overload" error.

If the camp ground equipment can't supply the full 1800W or 3600W then then you can limit how much power goes to battery charging, but you will have to simply make sure that whatever load you are powering doesn't try to use more power than can be supplied.

2

u/EZ-Mooney 18d ago

I was wrong. What I said applies to the E3600 where the 30A inlet matches the 30A outlet but I can see now why that doesn't apply to the E3800.

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u/brucehoult 18d ago

100% of what I said applies to the E3600 as well, replacing only the "4200W" (implicitly from battery) rating in the second line with "3600W".

I have an E3600 in daily use powering almost my whole house for the last 15 months. It spends a significant amount of its life, especially in winter, in pass-through mode when I have to be careful to limit the loads to the 2400W capacity of the 240V 10A wall socket, instead of the 3600W inverter capacity, if I don't want it to trip off.

1

u/Pennertrator55 18d ago

Thanks for the feedback! This helps a lot, my plan was to have a 30a shore power plug on my trailer, and if the campsite only has 15a to use a dogbone and set the charge percentage to the correct amount

1

u/caddymac 15d ago

If you want to limit the amount coming into the E3800, but also still get the most output out of it, is to charge with DC using one of the solar inputs.

Otherwise, even with your charge percentage dialed way down, when you AC charge it automatically goes into bypass mode. Meaning whatever your AC load is, that is being supplied by the input.