Charging Unit

[Dtaylor1976]

Is a charging unit for a fork truck considered to be a continuous load? do I need to size overcurrent protection and wire at 125%. I'm not sure how a charger works from A/C to D/C, will it stop drawing a charge after the batteries have been charged? the nameplate is 32 amps at 480 volt. Thanks

 

[George Stolz]

Welcome to the forum.

It takes about 8 hours to reach a full charge on most of these appliances, so I would assume that it would draw close to nameplate for over 3 hours to get there. I would consider it a continuous load.

As for voltage drop, use the nameplate amperage (unadjusted) in the voltage drop formula of your choice to establish wire size.

 

[Barbqranch]

We have an electric fork lift with a fairly sophisticated 3 phase charger that outputs around 190 amps at 48 volts when first plugged in. In less than a minute it has dropped significantly, and although I haven't actually watched it for an hour, I believe it goes down pretty quickly. Yes, it is on for more than 3 hours, but not at anything like the full current.