Towing 12 v wiring in Australia.

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Vpctv

Member
Joined
Sep 27, 2014
Messages
10
Location
Coffs Harbour. NSW. Australia
Has anybody been successful in getting a 12 V supply from car to caravan installed. Im particularly talking about getting a line installed to power a 3 way 12 v fridge in a van. My auto electrician wouldnt do it due to the small 12 v aux batt in the phev and the large amp hrs (18) that the thetford van fridge can demand. He needed more info on the dc to dc charger in the phev but mitsubishi was not forthcoming with this info.
With the 12 pin plug there is a separate large gauge pin and wiring for this load.
Anybody been successful with this?
 
Your electrician was right. The 12V battery on the PHEV is low capacity and if you flatten it you'll brick the car, even if the main battery is fully charged. Better to install a solar/battery system in your caravan.
The PHEV will only charge the 12 V battery when the car is running and once a day from the main battery, quite insufficient for heavy auxiliary use.
 
I'm planning on getting around this by installing a second LiFePo4 battery in the cavity where the charger sits. I'm hoping to install charger that will charge the LiFePo4 battery when the Lead Acid battery is >12v, but cut off as soon as it's 11.9v, preserving the Lead Acid battery from over discharge.

Not sure how I'm going to do this yet, because I don't want to spend $400+ on a professional kit, but I might be able to fiddle with a battery management system to get it to do this. At worse, I put in a low voltage alarm.
 
Sunder said:
I'm planning on getting around this by installing a second LiFePo4 battery in the cavity where the charger sits. I'm hoping to install charger that will charge the LiFePo4 battery when the Lead Acid battery is >12v, but cut off as soon as it's 11.9v, preserving the Lead Acid battery from over discharge.

Not sure how I'm going to do this yet, because I don't want to spend $400+ on a professional kit, but I might be able to fiddle with a battery management system to get it to do this. At worse, I put in a low voltage alarm.

There are a number of DC-DC chargers available. Most (but not all!) will cut out when the supplying battery falls below around 12.8.
They also usually have current limiting, so you don't hit the 12V circuit with a high surge current when the second battery is low, as would happen if you just used a voltage controlled relay. Whenever the PHEV is on, the 12V battery sits at around 14.2V, so this arrangement should work fine. The PHEV with the Wi-Fi module also has an auto battery top-up once a day, so, this could work very well in keeping a second battery topped up as well and not run the risk of running the 12V battery down.
 
Thanks. I know they exist, but the only ones I've seen are quite expensive.

Any suggestions or links?
 
Take a modern universal 12V laptop charger, this will increase the charge voltage to probably 15V(check!), then you take a 6A(or what the charger gives) Diode to lower the voltage to what you want, probably 14.4 or similar.
Now you have a charger for your battery in your Caravan or trailer that will take 12V Power from you Caravan Electric Contact and charge your extra battery, cheap and easy.
I have several myself, works perfect.
 
Sunder said:
Thanks. I know they exist, but the only ones I've seen are quite expensive.

Any suggestions or links?

Seen some Matson brand ones on ebay for around $150.00.

The suggestion about using a laptop supply seems ok too, although max about 6A would take a fair while to charge and there is no guarantee that it will cut off before the 12V main battery is pretty flat.
 
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