Ecoflow Alternator Charger connected to leisure battery. GC680

[bromleyxphil]

Well I got stuck in yesterday and connected the whole thing up. Ecoflow Delta Max2 along with the EDM2 extra battery connected to the battery under the bonnet through the EF alternator charger. It took about 4 hours but in truth there was only one hours work in there. The rest of the time was thinking, finding the best cable run and finding tools and bits. We are going away next week so the system will get a good test and I will report back on how it works. I have fitted the EDM under the rear shower and the extra battery in the cupboard. Stacked up and with the connecting wire connected they almost fit but when I closed the door the bar on the chair rack pushed the top over, just enough to destabilise the stack


I feel they are inherently more stable on the floor anyway. You can see the AC is in the rear cupboard and earthed to the strap down bolt behind the rear wheel arch. I used the cable that I cut off to extend the positive cable to the battery. Being now a single positive this was easy to feed through to the front of the van. It reached to just beyond the front seat where there was a little cut out, almost big enough for the fuse unit. A little judicious alteration and it fitted.

The cable now heading forward is the off cut of the earth sleeved up. It runs easily underneath the trim and then up behind the fuse box in the dash and through this unused grommet into the engine bay.

I passed around the wing side of the battery clipping to a similar cable and then connected to a spare terminal just below the pink fuse.

It’s difficult to test properly at the moment as all batteries are quite full. It’s currently set on the factory default 13v kick in I fired up the engine and nothing happened but I pressed the “boost” on the dash and it kicked in and started to charge the EF. Sat in the van today the solar boosts the leisure battery to 13.5 it then kicks in charges the EF for 20 seconds bringing it back to 13v and knocks off. Watch this space, my main aim in wiring it up this way is to enable the battery maintainer function to let the EF units support the AGM battery when we are off grid. Let’s see if it works

 

[Kevantlin1973]

Very interesting and on my to do list, did you manage to find a route through from the engine bay into the cab ok?

 

[Gareth Salton]

I have an almost identical set up the only difference being I wired the input to the EcoFlow charger into the vehicle battery under the passenger seat. I also re routed the hookup socket to charge the ecoflow and the output from the ecoflow to what was the hookup line to the va It all works fine with one minor niggle…

You end up with a situation where the EcoFlow is constantly charging the leisure battery which then goes on to power things like the fridge, et cetera. So effectively a battery charging a battery. This is rather inefficient. And it means that the 4 kWh EcoFlow will only run the van for a couple of days without a boost.

I’ve been out and bought myself a 3.5 kW gas generator inverter which charges the EcoFlow in about 40 minutes. Without it, I think things will get a bit sticky after two or three days.

 

[Grand Cali Pete]

I have an almost identical set up the only difference being I wired the input to the EcoFlow charger into the vehicle battery under the passenger seat. I also re routed the hookup socket to charge the ecoflow and the output from the ecoflow to what was the hookup line to the va It all works fine with one minor niggle…

You end up with a situation where the EcoFlow is constantly charging the leisure battery which then goes on to power things like the fridge, et cetera. So effectively a battery charging a battery. This is rather inefficient. And it means that the 4 kWh EcoFlow will only run the van for a couple of days without a boost.

I’ve been out and bought myself a 3.5 kW gas generator inverter which charges the EcoFlow in about 40 minutes. Without it, I think things will get a bit sticky after two or three days.

Hi Gareth, I have the Ecoflow delta 2 which I have fitted in the cupboard next to the kitchen. Under the water tank hatch ,I have intercepted the 240V feed to the kitchen area sockets and fed those from the Ecoflow, via a hole drilled through the cabinet wall(high enough up to miss the water tank). The feed to them now feeds the charge side of the Ecoflow. It means that on hook up the Ecoflow charges and when off grid the Ecoflow supplies the kitchen sockets for the coffee machine etc. Hence you are not feeding the battery charger under the passenger seat. Suits me and I’m sure you could do a similar thing in the Elec cupboard.

 

[bromleyxphil]

I have an almost identical set up the only difference being I wired the input to the EcoFlow charger into the vehicle battery under the passenger seat. I also re routed the hookup socket to charge the ecoflow and the output from the ecoflow to what was the hookup line to the va It all works fine with one minor niggle…

You end up with a situation where the EcoFlow is constantly charging the leisure battery which then goes on to power things like the fridge, et cetera. So effectively a battery charging a battery. This is rather inefficient. And it means that the 4 kWh EcoFlow will only run the van for a couple of days without a boost.

I’ve been out and bought myself a 3.5 kW gas generator inverter which charges the EcoFlow in about 40 minutes. Without it, I think things will get a bit sticky after two or three days.

Gareth, if I understand your set up you are charging the leisure battery using 240v from the Ecoflow through the VW 240v charger. I am support charging the leisure battery using the battery maintainer function in the alternator charger. I hope this will prove more efficient, as said I will report back once I have used it in a wide range of situations.

 

[bromleyxphil]

I have now used my set up whilst using the van so thought I would report back. It worksand so far it works well but it isn’t a fit and forget solution. For the moment I have left the Alternator charger on its kick in setting of 13v, this in reality waits until 13.3/ 13.4 to start charging so under normal driving doesn’t charge the Ecoflow much at all. If you press the “battery button” it then charges straight away and works well. I quite like this as I don’t push the button when first setting off just once cruising along if however I hit a traffic jam I can temporarily turn it off. In my mind protecting the alternator, this may however be all in my mind as these clever alternators may protect themselves? I don’t know. So charging good but labour intensive as you also need to use your phone to turn the alternator charger to charge mode before you set off. When it comes to the battery maintenance mode this works very well. I leave the vehicle leisure battery to do its work supporting the van systems, in the morning “when it reads 70 or more usually 80% I use my phone to switch on maintenance mode. This slowly but efficiently charges the leisure battery back to 100% then turns maintenance mode off automatically.

This is the screen with maintenance mode on.
The whole process seems to have no ill effects on the van systems at all.
So if you don’t use many AC appliances and want an easy to fit system that just supports the van 12v system without causing any errors the alternator charger and one Ecoflow Max would keep you going indefinitely. You do however have a few buttons to press every day.
We use quite a few AC appliances so I have a Max and the extra battery it keeps us going but after 4/5 days I need to drive. If I want to charge fully I need to drive a lot! From here I can see I need to reduce our AC appliance use and see if I can adjust the alternator charger settings to get it to charge without my input!
Hope my ramblings are helpful to someone, this is a work in progress.