Thread: Charging Battery in Camper

What about a solar panel? Ask at camping stores, or somewhere like Jaycar,

Cheers Charlie

Drivesafe does just such a kit, to charge off the car battery while driving. It is on my wish list.
Other options are solar panels.
It all depends what you want to run off of it.
Cheers
CraigE

Quick fix one of them cheap 2 stroke 240v generators , some have 12v chargers as well get them from supercrap or bunnings
$99 BARGAINS

Just been through the exact same thing myself, and have fitted an 80Ah deep cycle in the new camper trailer, plus have dual battery setups in both LR's.

In the Defender, I have an SC80, which has two outputs, so one can charge the aux battery and the other can run to the back and charge the battery in the trailer.

In the D3, I have a single output SC40 and an aux battery that it charges, which will run the fridge and a few sockets when I finish adding the wiring. While I could parallel the trailer battery off of this, all that's going to do is equalise both batteries to the lowest level until they are charged again....so I'm just not going to bother charging the trailer from the D3 for now, and if I really need to charge form it, I'll probably swap the SC40 for another SC80 in the future.

However, neither will help charge the battery in the trailer when parked, and as this is where the trailer will spend most of it's time, I went with a solar setup to try and run everything during the day plus put some charge back in the battery. In addition, I'll keep a cheap generator in case we either get no sun or my maths turn out to be wrong and I still use more power than the panels make! A point worth mentioning though, is that you need to recharge deep cycle batteries properly, so unless the 12v output on the genny is designed to do this, you'd be better running the 240v output through a decent smart charger.

After next week, I'll know if I made all the right choices!