E MTB bike charging

Sean O Leary

Sean O Leary

Senior Member
T6 Guru
Hello is there anyone in here who is charging their ebike from an inverted in the van.
The ebike battery charger requires 4 Amps so if I purchase a 1000Watt inverter this should be enough right! The battery take three hours to charge so will it drain 12 amps from a 70 Amp battery. I will get a pure sine wave inverter
Thanks for advice
 
Assuming the bike charger is 4 amps @mains voltage (230/240V) then this will be a lot higher current at 12 volt
Current and voltage is inversely proportional, going from 240V to 12V you are dropping by a factor of 20 so the current will increase by a factor of 20 this will mean at 12V you will be pulling circa 80A from the battery, times this by 3 hours and you its not going to happen unless you have a bank of batteries and a charging regime to fill them up again.

This is of course assuming the charger runs at 4A all the time which it probably wont, depending on the bike battery and charger type its feasible it will pull 4A initially and them tail off as the battery charge level goes up eventually reaching zero when the battery is full but again this depends on the battery type and charging characteristics.

Its also worth noting you may want to consider a larger invertor as if the charger is running at full 4A you would be running the invertor near max level which is likely to produce some heat, personally i would get an invertor that is running below capacity at max demand somewhere around 80% this would require a 1500W invertor
 
Pauly thanks very much for your reply a wealth of knowledge as usual
I will read up some more on the spec of the charger but a 1250W sounds better
Thanks again
 
Pauly is correct in what he says but it seems unlikely. I think it probable that the OP has read that the charger is rated at 4 amps output making the load in the region of 50 watts, so I think in reality you will be looking for a much smaller inverter and the Victron 12.375 would be ideal.
 
Yes that is like exactly what I would need except I have a Brose motor so will look into that option
Thanks fir info
 
After reading above I’m still baffled about what inverter I need for mine. It’s a Yamaha mains charger rated at 4A, but going by W=V * A, is it 4 x 230v = 920W or is it 4 x 36v = 144W (it’s a 36v battery)?
 
Almost certainly 4 amps at 36v

The alternative is that you are putting nearly 1 kW into a small battery - it would explode !

Pete
 
Sean O Leary said:
Yes that is like exactly what I would need except I have a Brose motor so will look into that option
Thanks fir info
Click to expand...
Hi did you get your bike to charge from an inverter? I have a Levo with a Brose motor so would love to know if it works.
 
Jimmi said:
Hi did you get your bike to charge from an inverter? I have a Levo with a Brose motor so would love to know if it works.
Click to expand...
Mine has a Yamaha rather than a Brose, but I've tried the Victron inverter I just bought and it charged up my battery to 100% without any problems
 
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