[BEP Voltage Sensing Relay advice]

Further to that, if you remember Shazzam the Charter Boat from out of Havelock, had a Multistep charge controller on the Alternator. The Boat nearly caught Fire due to a design issue with these chargers. If they fault, they seem to fault to High charge output with the Voltage so high, it fries everything. They had to replace all the electronics and battery banks and found several areas where electronics mounted against Bulkheads had fried and burned the Bulkheads. Mark, the Marine Sparky in Havelock, refuses to install them anymore.

This sounds like the voltage regulators the BEP sold as their ER4 model. They were in fact a locally made brand, re-branded by BEP. There were an escalating series of problems with these and each modification seemed to introduce a new issue. BEP took them off the market about one year after I refused to use them any more. However, this does not justify labeling all smart regulators as troublesome. There are also other well known brands that I won't use for various reasons, but there are some very good multi stage smart regulators. One alternator repair company doesn't like smart regulators because they supposedly burn out alternators. This doesn't actually say anything about smart regulators in general, but more about the incompetence of those who carry out incorrect installations based on a lack of knowledge and/or experience.

 

A good brand smart regulator competently installed in a charging system designed by an expert who actually knows what they are doing (rather than just claiming that they do - because many don't understand how much they don't know) will give efficient and reliable service.

[BEP Voltage Sensing Relay advice]

Personally I don't like VSR's because one battery will never ever get a full charge, because the VSR drops it out at 12.8V or whatever it is set to drop at.

BEP VSRs are now all dual sensing.

For the battery voltage to drop to 12.8 volts, the charging source must have been removed, or an exceptionally heavy load must have reduced the voltage of all batteries being charged, to the cut out voltage. This occurs so as to prevent a discharging battery from discharging the other batteries connected in parallel via the VSR. This is not a disadvantage, it is an essential feature.

 

The only way that I can see a VSR preventing parallel connected batteries from getting adequate charge is if something inhibits the ability for the voltage of one or more batteries to rise. This problem could occur when multiple batteries are charged in parallel regardless of the system used to parallel them, unless the voltage of each battery is sensed and controlled  independently.

 

The worst method of parallel charging batteries is via diode charge splitters without battery voltage sensing, (as many older systems have).