EG4 charger shutdown time

Hey everyone. I have just installed a new EG4 24v 30a battery charger on my 2x 12v 100ah lithium setup. The charger works great and I'm getting 30a with a large gauge extension cord. This setup is in my off-grid truck camper for when I need a quick charge in town or overnight at a campground. I have been in cloudy weather for a few days now and I have noticed on the victron shunt graph that the battery charger reaches 100 percent, stays there for 4 hours then shuts down completely. This is not ideal for plugging in at night and then waking up to a depleted battery since the charger stopped inputting after 4h. I then have to unplug the charger for a few minutes and plug it back in to get it to kick on again. I'm not seeing anything about this in the manual. Is this normal operation for the EG4 charger to not also maintain the battery while plugged in? Thank you in advance!

Looks like they don't sell the 30a anymore but here is a link to the 35a. same style:

Wrong charger. You need one with a float mode, so the charger continues to meet the needs of your consumption while connected to "shore."

Alternatively, you could get a wifi plug that you program to turn on and off based on a schedule to ensure that the charger runs. I have several wifi plugs for various purposes that would work for this application.

Plug in, turn on the plug. Have it programmed to turn off every 4 hours and back on 5 minutes later.

turn off at midnite.
turn on at 12:05am
turn off at 4:00am
turn on at 4:05am
turn off at 8:00am
etc.

I use the prior version of this:


In addition to being programmable, they also track daily kWh use similar to a kill-a-watt meter.

sunshine_eggo said:

Wrong charger. You need one with a float mode, so the charger continues to meet the needs of your consumption while connected to "shore."

Alternatively, you could get a wifi plug that you program to turn on and off based on a schedule to ensure that the charger runs. I have several wifi plugs for various purposes that would work for this application.

Plug in, turn on the plug. Have it programmed to turn off every 4 hours and back on 5 minutes later.

turn off at midnite.
turn on at 12:05am
turn off at 4:00am
turn on at 4:05am
turn off at 8:00am
etc.

I use the prior version of this:

https://www.amazon.com/TOPGREENER-Monitoring-Appliances-Assistant-TGWF115PQM/dp/B07D8ZNNPZ

In addition to being programmable, they also track daily kWh use similar to a kill-a-watt meter.

Click to expand...

I like this idea as a fix and thank you for the link. My only concern would be Starlink going in and out and messing up the settings on it. An odd thing just happened with it tonight, when I was using my induction cooktop at full blast it kicked back on. So there must be some voltage setting that turns it back on when it took the hit from the induction cooker.

BillyGoat said:

I like this idea as a fix and thank you for the link. My only concern would be Starlink going in and out and messing up the settings on it.

Click to expand...

Once programmed, it retains its settings and should run autonomously as long as it has AC power.

I used one to cycle the AC power to a 12cu-ft absorption fridge running in auto mode. I would power it with AC during the day and switch to propane at night... damn thing would use 9kWh/day in warm weather.

BillyGoat said:

An odd thing just happened with it tonight, when I was using my induction cooktop at full blast it kicked back on. So there must be some voltage setting that turns it back on when it took the hit from the induction cooker.

Click to expand...

There must be some lower threshold that re-triggers bulk, but if that's the case, you shouldn't be waking up to a dead battery.

sunshine_eggo said:

There must be some lower threshold that re-triggers bulk, but if that's the case, you shouldn't be waking up to a dead battery.

Click to expand...

Oh awesome. I think I’ll pick some of those up since it seems like a good solution without having to buy a whole new charger. Thanks again!

The battery was at about 60% when I woke up so not dead, but not ideal to start the day at. I think you’re right with having some voltage threshold to trigger bulk again.

BillyGoat said:

Oh awesome. I think I’ll pick some of those up since it seems like a good solution without having to buy a whole new charger. Thanks again!

The battery was at about 60% when I woke up so not dead, but not ideal to start the day at. I think you’re right with having some voltage threshold to trigger bulk again.

Click to expand...

Ah... yeah, at 60%, it's still likely above the re-bulk threshold. The big load pulls voltage down low enough to trigger it, but the lighter overnight loads do not.