I am working on a customers 2004 Tiara Sovran 44. It has two battery banks and two identical battery chargers. The chargers are each three output/three bank chargers made by Charles and they are of the Charles 5000 series. Each charger is capable of providing 50.0 amps of charge current. One of the chargers is failed so we will be replacing both chargers. Tiara has connected the output of the chargers in a non-standard configuration. The outputs of the chargers are connected in a parallel/redundant configuration as compared to the more common method of each charger connected independently to each bank.
Charger 1 output 1 is connected to charger 2 output 1 and then to bank 1. Charger 1 output 2 is connected to charger 2 output 2 and then to bank 2. Output 3 is not used on either charger. This parallel configuration provides redundancy in case one charger fails the other charger will still charge both battery banks. However circuit theory and experience tells us that the chargers will not evenly divide/share the load current so we will never have a total of 100.0 amps of charge current flowing to the two banks. Since one charger has failed I have not actually been able to confirm this theoretical uneven division of charge current between the two chargers. The manual for the chargers does not address this configuration and there is no reason to believe that there are load division controls to force even sharing of charge current.
We want to replace the Charles chargers with Victron Centaur 50.0 amp chargers. The question is should we keep the original Tiara parallel/redundant connection of the outputs or should we change it to the more conventional connection of each charger output connected to only one battery bank.
