Dustydog said:
Hi Prof
Regarding power consumption my powrtouch is quoted at 20 amps with a max of 80 amps..I guess that is an hourly figure so in theory a 85 amp hour battery should be sufficient. . However when under maximum load.eg climbing a steep hill consumption will be near the maximum. I can confirm my powrtouch has never flattened my 110 ah battery even after a 50 yard run or when manoeuvring in tight places which takes time with a ta..1ah seems very low but I don't doubt you are correct. Those golf buggies seem to go forever!
Hello Dustry,
Your getting the units sligtly mixed u:- a measurement of a current flowing is an instantaneous value. In your case the mover manufacture reckons the mover will consume about 20Amps at normal running with a peak (or stalled) of 80A.
Amp Hours are a differnt but related value. If you had a device that consumed a constant current of 1A and it ran for 1 hour, it will consuke 1Ah of energy.
Now lets consider your mover. You use it to move the caravan about 50Meters which is quite a long distance, and considerably further than most people would use one for, so perhaps your usage is more than common. There is nothing wrong with that. But obviously the more a mover is used the more it will deplete the charge on the battery.
Depending on the make model and the load its moving, caravan movers typically have speeds between 12cm/sec to 30cm/sec, If I assume yours is a mid range speed of 20cm/s (or 0.2M/s) it wll take you 50m/0.2m/s or 250 seconds to move your caravan 50m. 250seconds is 4.16 minutes. Lets be generaous and call it 5 minutes. That is 1/12 of an hour.
Again I will assume the terrain the caravan has to be moved results in an averag current demmand of 40A for the whole journey and that would represent a pretty uneven surface.
40A for 1/12 of an hour = 3.33Ah of battery capacity.
Most people wil use their movers for far less than that and in practice average power consumption per use is about 1Ah.
Its quite an aye opener, to think that the traditional 12" flourcent or halogen lamps that used to be fitted to caravans would each use about 1Ah of battery capacity for each hour they were running! Suddenly the movers power demands don't seem so big, and that is why its not essential to have the biggest battery available just becasue you have a mover fitted.
For the reason that such small amounts of battery capacity are required to run a mover, you don't automatically need a battery with a large Ah capacity. typically an 85AH shold be more than sufficicnt to run a mover. The only slight down side with some cheaper or poorly made or maintained batteries where they may struggle to supply the peak (Stalled) power demand of a mover.