Charging an electric wheelchair

[MJG]

Hi. My son has just got an electric wheelchair and I’m trying to work out if its suitable to be charged in our 6.1 Coast.

The charger has a number of different voltages and amps on it – see attached photo.

I’ve tried to work out what the wattage is for this from other posts on the forum, but don’t know where to start because of the different numbers on the charger.

Could someone help me with what the wattage is for this please, and whether its ok to plug in whilst on an EHU (we’ll be going to Europe soon so will it also work on the 6 and 10 amp supplies over there?). Will I also be ok with charging it through the inverter on the coast, which I believe is 300 watts.

Thanks very much for your help.

 

[Velma's Dad]

Using the left hand side of the label, 100v at 1.2A would be 120 watts (and on the right hand side they give 240v at 0.5A which is the same thing). So you should be fine plugging it into the Cali inverter.

The wave form of inverter power is not quite the same as mains, I'm guessing that wouldn't trouble a battery charger but maybe someone cleverer than me could confirm.

On a campsite hook-up, 120 watts would not cause any problems.

 

[WelshGas]

Hi. My son has just got an electric wheelchair and I’m trying to work out if its suitable to be charged in our 6.1 Coast.

The charger has a number of different voltages and amps on it – see attached photo.

I’ve tried to work out what the wattage is for this from other posts on the forum, but don’t know where to start because of the different numbers on the charger.

Could someone help me with what the wattage is for this please, and whether its ok to plug in whilst on an EHU (we’ll be going to Europe soon so will it also work on the 6 and 10 amp supplies over there?). Will I also be ok with charging it through the inverter on the coast, which I believe is 300 watts.

Thanks very much for your help.

As above, no problems on EHU.
Power wise it should work on the inverter, but it could be affected by the output quality as the inverter is not a high quality sine wave unit.
However, I would have thought the Wheelchair charger would be robust enough, electronically, to cope. The only way to confirm this is to try it at home using the Inverter.

 

[Baldrick]

You may be able to get a 12v DC charging adapter from the wheelchair manufacturers, that would be a lot more efficient charging particularly as you travel. DC to AC back to DC is very wasteful and there’s probably a big battery to charge. Echoing everyone else’s confirmation that hookup will not be an issue at all. My Mums electric wheelchair has both charging options. 240v AC and we got a separate 12v DC cigarette lighter charging adapter for car charging, so it might be worth investigation. Fingers crossed.

 

[MJG]

Thanks everyone for your help. I took Baldrick’s advice and asked the manufacturer but they said they hadn’t tested anything like that on this chair and wouldn’t recommend it!! So we’ll have to test the inverter at home. I’m aiming to be on hook up mostly anyway but needed to check just in case. Thanks again.