Club Car charger on a timer

gijosh28

So I have a buddy that is a fire fighter. He said the two most dangerous things in my house are my countertop oven and my golf cart charger. He said he responds to more house fires from those two things than anything else. He pleaded with me to make sure my charger is off before we go to bed every night. So I put the charger on an automated outlet, that cuts power to it every night at 10pm and turns power to it back on at 10am. The problem is that when it turns power back on, the charger doesn't kick back on. So my batteries are only ever getting as much charge as from whenever I plug the cart in, until 10pm. For example if we come home from dinner and I plug the cart in at 9pm, it will charge for an hour, and then 3 days later, it has only gotten that 1 hours charge. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Josh

BGW

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jakesnake27

Do you have a 48 or 36v cart? Does the charger itself have a timer too?
Oh wait, you've got the Precedent right?

gijosh28

48v DS. The charger doesn't have a timer. I plug the cart in and the meter on the front pegs over. When the batteries are full it usually shuts off.

jakesnake27

The timer you are using is making the OBC think there was a power outage, causing the charger to remain off until the cord is unplugged and reinserted. I don't think there's any good way to go around this, you may have to charge only during the day when you are home or something...

CCFanatic

I just worry that the batteries will not receive a full charge

gijosh28

Hmm. I wonder if I could put a timer in line that opens the connection between the charger and the cart, rather than the charger and the outlet.

jakesnake27

The OBC is the problem here. If this were an old 36v cart, the timer would work fine, but being a 48v OBC cart, if it senses a power outage, surge, etc, it shuts down the system until things are reset...

gijosh28

But you're talking about on the side supplying power to the charger (which is where I have it now). I am wondering if I could put a relay or something inline between the charger and the golf cart, to make it seem like I was unplugging the cart at 10pm and plugging it back in at 10am.

jakesnake27

Possibly. You would probably have to put something inline with the sense wire.
Here is a quote I found by TahoeDawgZ71 that mentions a timer add on for your charger:

TahoeDawgZ71

Josh,

In 14 years of working as a golf car technician I've never seen a PowerDrive charger burn a house down. The circuit breaker on them is very effective. The only thing that happens that I can see causing a fire would be a rectifier failure. I've seen rectifiers burn when they short, but the circuit breaker trips and keeps the blaze from getting out of control. When the material inside the rectifier burns up, the fire goes out. As long as you have your charger well ventilated and out of the way of anything flammable I think you'll be fine. I hung my personal charger from the ceiling in my garage over concrete. If it caught fire, there's nothing near it that would burn.