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Equipping the Overland Vehicle Vehicle accessories - Making your home away from home comfortable, safe and reliable.
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  #1  
Old 9 Oct 2013
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Location: Jersey, UK
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National Lunar Dual Battery Controller with three batteries

Hi,

I have the National Lunar Dual Battery Controller to use with my two Odyssey Extreme batteries.

The idea was to have one battery for the vehicle and one for leisure, however it seems a shame to get rid of the standard battery currently in the vehicle, especially as there is space for all three to fit next to each other.

Therefore, is there any reason why i couldn't connect the two Odyssey batteries in parallel to treat them as one auxiliary battery, with the existing battery being kept for general cranking use etc?

There will be a basic 100W solar panel (with regulator) helping out the charging of the leisure batteries, but will the National Lunar unit accept having a standard vehicle battery as the 'Main' battery and the two Odyssey's treated as a single 'auxiliary' battery?

Richard
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  #2  
Old 9 Oct 2013
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Do you just have the controller - or also the NL Dual Battery Isolator or Portable Power Pack?

With the isolator or the PPP you should be able to use a 2nd linked aux Battery



http://www.4x4tripping.com/2013/04/b...ig-selber.html

A 2nd Battery dont makes a difference for the setup. But if one of the linked Aux Batterys dies - it will kill the 2nd too.

Surfy
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  #3  
Old 9 Oct 2013
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Location: Jersey, UK
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I've got the Solenoid depicted in the diagram as well.

So based upon the picture, if I was to wire both house (yellow) batteries in parallel there should be no problem (as long as they are both healthy)?

Would it matter that the Starting (Red) battery was a different capacity, age and type (lead acid starting, AGM house)?
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  #4  
Old 10 Oct 2013
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Quote:
but will the National Lunar unit accept having a standard vehicle battery as the 'Main' battery and the two Odyssey's treated as a single 'auxiliary' battery?
It is no problem to do that this way. Also no problem to link two Aux-Batteries.

I suggests to ask a professional store about.

It is important to know how much "Power" you need. How long do you want to be able to stay away from a external Powersource to recharge. And how often your engine will run - to be able to load the batteries between.

And you have to know how much Power you can get behind, in my case there are just around 13.2AH (long cable)..

Two Aux Batteries looks to me unpractical because they are heavy and you have to provice a way to recharge them if they are near flat.
I guess that you will need a charge management with UiUi Parameters and not just a splitting device - if you plan to travel really extended with weeks without land power for recharging.

I`m not a pro - and batteries arent cheap - ask a pro!

We had one 92AH Aux battery and run a fridge and a freezer. This Setup needs land power or at least all two days to drive some hours (we had no solar)

Surfy
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  #5  
Old 14 Oct 2013
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Good bit of customer service from National Luna who have come back to me with the following good result......

"It is quite common to connect multiple batteries to form an auxiliary bank. It is good-practice to ensure that the batteries in a bank are the same age, size, capacity, type and exposed to similar temperatures.

The main battery being of a different type or age is not of concern since the main and auxiliary batteries will only be connected during charge and not discharge. This limits the chances of one battery being parasitic to the others.

It is far more common for main and auxiliary batteries to be different. A high-cycle battery is used as a starting battery and the auxiliary is very often a deep-cycle type."

Time to get wiring then......
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