Q: Use Leaf 12v battery to charge a Duracell Powerpack?

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foolios

Well-known member
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May 1, 2014
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Can I use the Leaf's 12V battery to charge another 12v battery? EDIT: I should mention that this isn't just a battery, it's a power pack designed for this sort of thing.
I do this with my ICE car battery. I plug the powerpack into my ICE car battery via the 12v cig lighter sockets(12v dc to 12v DC) and use the alternator(car running) to charge the powerpack.

Can you connect two batteries in parallel and have them even out their charge?
EDIT: I have learned that this is not going to work. You have to have ~14.5 volts to charge a battery. Battery to battery direct charging, I have been told, will not work for this reason. I thought I was recharging a low charge battery with a higher charged battery but it must have been a false reading from exciting the lower charge battery. I am thinking that if I checked the voltage again after letting it sit a bit I would have prolly seen that the charge on the low battery fall back to what it was originally.

EDIT:Do I need to have the leaf running when I try this? Will the voltages of both batteries become an even level if the car is running/not running?
I am wondering if the main battery pack under the car will somehow affect charging somehow. Does it make it not possible or would it also provide some juice to fill both 12v batteries?
And if any of this can be done, can it be done while the Leaf is charging?
ANSWER: I learned from a different post that this cannot be done while the vehicle is charging. The Leaf must be in ON, Ready to Drive mode, otherwise the accessory battery will drain.


Is there a 12v Cigarett lighter port? EDIT: kubel posted the answer; Thanks! It's underneath the climate controls in the 2013.

Thanks a bunch for any idea, answers, suggestions. =)
 
Can I safely recharge this Duracell Powerpack600 via the Leaf's DC Port?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009YR00MI/ref=oh_details_o08_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This probably will work but there is one problem.
The powerpack only has a charge controller on the 120v AC input. It doesn't have one on the DC input for car battery to the 12v DC port for powerpack charging. Which is prolly why the manual states do not charge for more than 4 hours.
Should there be any concern with using it as such or should I attach a charge controller in the wiring for the dc port to port connections?
 
Ok, this is what I've figured out using the 12v DC accessory port on the Leaf to charge the PowerPack via a 100 watt modified sine wave inverter and the 120v wal-wart plugged into the AC outlet of the inverter:

With Killawatt measuring 26 VoltAmps, .2 amps, plugged into a 100 watt inverter this tells me:
that at 120v\12v = 10 so .2 amps * 10 = 2 amps at 12v DC.
The 12v accessory port is rated for 120 watts which is 120 watts/12v = 10 amps DC.
So it appears that it's working out since the draw is only at 2 amps leaving room to spare.

Would someone mind verifying that I have this right?
 
LeftieBiker said:
You should be fine as long as the car is in On or Ready mode, not accessory mode. I suggest you only charge while actually driving.
Click to expand...

Alrighty, I'll try to do just that. Can you explain why it shouldn't sit for long? Say for example at the baseball game I want to use my laptop to compile statistics for the game. If I were to use the dc port for recharging the laptop or recharging the powerpack, what concerns should I have?

Thanks for replying. I appreciate it very much.
 
While the car will charge the accessory battery in On mode, it supposedly takes much longer to start charging than in Ready mode. You can sit there with the car in Ready, shifted to Park, but On mode shouldn't be used either, for long periods.
 
I charge my Duracell Powerpack in my Leaf without any issues. You need to have the car on since the 12v Accessory Port is connected to the same circuit as the infotainment system - this surprised me the first time I plugged in my Powerpack before turning on the car, the radio turned on! :D

The 12v system in the Leaf will maintain a proper charge voltage on the Powerpack, you don't have to worry about overcharging it. The built-in charge controller on the Powerpack is junk anyhow, so you don't want to leave it plugged in for more than a day or two once the battery is completely full.
 
DarkStar said:
I charge my Duracell Powerpack in my Leaf without any issues. You need to have the car on since the 12v Accessory Port is connected to the same circuit as the infotainment system - this surprised me the first time I plugged in my Powerpack before turning on the car, the radio turned on! :D

The 12v system in the Leaf will maintain a proper charge voltage on the Powerpack, you don't have to worry about overcharging it. The built-in charge controller on the Powerpack is junk anyhow, so you don't want to leave it plugged in for more than a day or two once the battery is completely full.
Click to expand...

Ok that's what I've been waiting to find out before I try it is if the 12v accessory port to the 12v cig lighter port on the power pack was safe to use. I like that way better. It beats having to carry around an inverter to plug the wal-wart into. Using one 12v dc to 12v dc port cable makes things a whole lot easier.

Thanks a lot for verifying that that works fine.

Q: How many amps do you think is coming across on that 12v DC cable for port to port plug-in?
 
Ok, I found this comment at the product page that makes me worried about the DC to DC charging.

As far as charging in a car goes, the car alternator is made to put out it's full ~50 amps until the battery voltage is at ~14.5V and the regulator kicks in. That creates some concerns including some OEMs saying "Car charging will 'overcharge' your battery" (which I believe they say because charging at 50 amps for a minute is about the same as pulling 50 amps for that long cranking a car or such). For example, I fully drained a larger deep cycle battery (rated 70AH) and hooked it up to my truck to recharge, but doing that popped a 50 amp breaker (showing how much "juice" it was taking). I've since wondered if the same thing could happen with these but perhaps in the ~20 amp range on it's 26AH battery (which would be bad for the lighter outlet circuits on both the car and in this). So I took another unit with a 18 AH battery and pulled 150 watts for over an hour to pretty much "drain it", then hooked up lighter-plug source (with a meter). I saw ~8 amp charge which doesn't seem too high, yet I'll admit I didn't "drain" the battery to the point nothing would work (like I did on that other one). So there is still the possibility in my mind of that kind of event if you've gone to that extreme a "drain" on the battery, but with a little forethought of charging before going too low you can avoid such a scenario.
Click to expand...

Know how many amps might come across the wire for the direct connection from the accessory port for this?
I tried it without issue since I had some input that it would be ok. And I've used it with success in my ICE vehicle.
I thought that if anything, that if it was too much current draw that the fuse for the accessory port would blow. The Leaf manual does say that the accessory port is rated for 120 watts. So I don't think more than 10 amps is going across there since the fuse isn't blowing. But this was my original fear, that ~50 amps would come across that adapter and I don't understand or know enough to know what prevents more current from flowing through it.

Any input?
 
LeftieBiker said:
Use the accessory port and the current is limited to 10 amps.
Click to expand...

Does the accessory port do the limiting or is it the powerpack that will limit the amount of amps?

Sorry to pull your teeth about this. Thanks in advance for any further explanations.
 
foolios said:
LeftieBiker said:
Use the accessory port and the current is limited to 10 amps.
Click to expand...

Does the accessory port do the limiting or is it the powerpack that will limit the amount of amps?

Sorry to pull your teeth about this. Thanks in advance for any further explanations.
Click to expand...

They're fused at 10A.
 
I apologize for being dimwitted about this and beating a dead horse.
I want to avoid blowing the fuse. I dont want to stress the wiring with overcurrents.
I feel like I'm having a brain fart about this. Where is the resistance that prevents full amperage from flowing between the car battery and the external battery(powerpack) over whats prolly an 18 gauge wire?
I Bet I'm going to facepalm when I read this in the morning.

I am asking the question wrong.
The question should be:
Why is there less than 10 amps flowing? Why not ~50 amps or just enough amps to blow the fuse?
 
Batteries aren't the same as, say, solid copper cables. They don't discharge instantly, and they don't try to 'suck' huge amperages when connected to other power sources. Think of jump-starting a car from another car: does the vehicle with the weak or dead battery suddenly crank over at full speed? No. It's more like forcing water though a water filter than pouring it from a bucket, especially with lead-acid batteries like the one in the power pack. A real short circuit will pull large amperages *from* a battery, but a battery to battery connection will be much slower to transfer power *to* another battery. Your 26AH power pack is designed to charge at a few AH when connected to an accessory socket, and that's what will happen. From the product description:

"The heart of the Duracell Powerpack 600 is a sealed, non-spillable 26 ampere-hour AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat) battery. The Powerpack can be safely and conveniently recharged from any household AC outlet or DC cigarette-lighter outlet [Works while car is running and should be limited to 4 hrs maximum], so that it is ready to go whenever you need it..."

The four hour charge limit is to prevent overcharging.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Batteries aren't the same as, say, solid copper cables. They don't discharge instantly, and they don't try to 'suck' huge amperages when connected to other power sources. Think of jump-starting a car from another car: does the vehicle with the weak or dead battery suddenly crank over at full speed? No. It's more like forcing water though a water filter than pouring it from a bucket, especially with lead-acid batteries like the one in the power pack. A real short circuit will pull large amperages *from* a battery, but a battery to battery connection will be much slower to transfer power *to* another battery. Your 26AH power pack is designed to charge at a few AH when connected to an accessory socket, and that's what will happen. From the product description:

"The heart of the Duracell Powerpack 600 is a sealed, non-spillable 26 ampere-hour AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat) battery. The Powerpack can be safely and conveniently recharged from any household AC outlet or DC cigarette-lighter outlet [Works while car is running and should be limited to 4 hrs maximum], so that it is ready to go whenever you need it..."

The four hour charge limit is to prevent overcharging.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your time in explaining that. I was looking for where that designed part comes in.

Posts at the product page do mention that the alternator will prevent the powerpack from overcharging.
As well as does a post in this thread about the Leaf's charging system doing the same.
Why do you think the makers of the powerpack decided on 4 hours as the max?
 
This will help explain why:

As with all gelled and sealed units, AGM batteries are sensitive to overcharging. These batteries can be charged to 2.40V/cell (and higher) without problem; however, the float charge should be reduced to between 2.25 and 2.30V/cell (summer temperatures may require lower voltages). Automotive charging systems for flooded lead acid often have a fixed float voltage setting of 14.40V (2.40V/cell), and a direct replacement with a sealed unit could spell trouble by exposing the battery to undue overcharge on a long drive. See Charging Lead Acid.
Click to expand...
 

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