Everyday I get asked the same question. Which DCDC Charger’s best?

So I’ve got three of our most common ones here. And I thought I’d give you a quick run down of the advantages and disadvantages of each one of them. And why we use that one in each sort of situation.

BMPRO Mini Boost

I’ll start with our budget friendly MiniBoost. So, this is produced by BMPRO. It’s a 20 Amp DCDC charger. It’s got a cool feature where it will output even if it doesn’t see a battery. So that means you can put a VSR after it and it will still operate, and it’ll turn the VSR on.The down side of it is it doesn’t actually have an isolator in it. So, you do need the VSR in the circuit.But, for the price and it’s mounting options, we’ve found it’s very useful and we install a lot of them in our battery boxes cause they fit inside the lid. And, again, the price is very budget friendly.

Enerdrive DC2DC 40+

Okay, moving along, is this one. We’ve all seen this one. This is the Enerdrive DC2DC 40 Plus. So, for your canopy install, this is the winner. We use these because they will do up to 47 Amps of alternator input.

They will handle up to 850 watts of solar, and you can overclock them to 1000. But, what’s really cool about them is they’ve got up to 45 volt input. So, that means you can use a high voltage panel. High voltage panels generally are cheaper. So, it means you can generally get away with a very large array at a cheaper price and feed it into this thing.

It’ll handle it. It’s lithium friendly. So, you can set it to lithium. You can also, if you want to, you can current limit. So you can wind back the current on it. And, it comes with a fantastic display that will tell you voltage and amperage of either solar or auxiliary input.

It’s got a cooling fan so it good for inside a hot canopy. And, it’s also got a temperature sensor for the battery. So, it’ll modify it’s charge profile as the battery heats up. The downside on this one is it’s not waterproof. And, that’s why I said canopy install this is the one. Or also caravans. To be honest, we’ve obviously mounted a lot of these in caravans.

Redarc BCDC

Moving along. The original and for under bonnet dual battery, still the best. This is the Redarc BCDC 1240D. The BCDC range has been around nearly as long as I have. Fantastic product, rock solid, never see an issue. The circuit board’s inside an epoxy resin. And so what that means is it’s waterproof. We see them all day mounted underneath the bonnet covered in mud.You know that they’ve been doing creek crossings all the time, and I’ve never seen a failure in one a these.

We use them for all our under bonnet dual, well not all of them, 90% of our under bonnet dual batteries. They also fit nicely inside the lid of a battery box. And, to be honest, this is fantastic product. It doesn’t have a display. It’s just got a few lights, but the lights will tell you whether there’s any sort of fault or anything like that.

And it is compatible with any style of battery. You just wire them up differently. Quite easy to mount. The one thing about it is, you got to be careful about heat. In a 200 series or something like that, you’ll put it at the front behind the grill just to keep it cool.

But, once again, in an under bonnet application, this one’s by far the best. The one thing that the Enerdrive’s got on it is, this one will only take up to 25 volt panels, but it will still handle 40 amps of panels.

So, if you’ve got house panels or any sort of high voltage panel, unfortunately this bad boy won’t work. It is an isolator as well, same as the Enerdrive and unlike the BMPRO.

So, we use this one, any sort of under bonnet application and it’s probably our most common used day to day. Millions of them out there. And, yeah, can’t knock it.

If you’ve got any other questions about DCDC chargers, give us a call on 1300 227 353. Email us at info@amae.net.au, or comment below.