Charging 6 group 31 AGM batteries

Yeah any good quality battery charger will charge 10 battery the better question is how many hours it would run and how much of a draw you have on them most battery chargers good for 50-200 amps and truck alts 150-180 amps but if you run them over 60% all the time your burn them out fast

 

I think Paccar offered some type of battery powered system like that a few years back. I want to think it had some kind of gel that was cooled down and air circulated over the gel for cooling. I think it was shutdown because it wasn't feasible. May be wrong about that. As far as your agm batteries, they discharge slowly and recharge slowly. So you're going to be running your recharge system for quite some time. In my opinion your truck alternator and wiring wouldn't handle that kind of load for long. The generator recharge theory would have you running the genset for several hours a day to recharge the agms. Would pretty much defeat the idea of plan A, unless you just wanted to sleep without listening to a noisy apu all night. Then there's your next door neighbors rattling all night. Don't let my opinion influence your game plan. Where there's a will there's a way as the saying goes.

 

Red Dot makes a more robust ac for your use if you are looking for other brands and styles.

But the ac of any style will kill the batteries really fast. So your idea of running an alternator instead of a generator, is likely going to be more efficient. You can run an alternator on a pto also if you wish to keep your installed system completely separate from the factory truck, but not run the gas engine while driving down the highway.

Here's a charger though that can handle a lot of things for many battery configurations.

 

Look at batteries like a fuel tank with amp/hrs like you would gallons. Most group 31 batteries have around 100 amp/hr rating. 6 batteries @ 100 amp/hrs each = 600 amp/hrs.

Find out you loads in amp/hrs from each appliance or inverter. Example truck fridge use 6 amp/hr that if it was the only load would give you 600 amp/hrs + 6 amp/hrs = 100 hours of battery time.

Note: Starter batteries I do not recommend over half of their full capacity or if they are deep cycle batteries for hotel loads only don`t discharge more than 60 to 70% of capacity because shortens the life of the battery.

Now the charger is the basically the same as the load draw in reverse with the amps going back in the battery. Example is a 6 amp/hr charger would only keep up with the 6 amp fridge load compared to a 10 amp charger will have 4 extra amps per hour to help recharge the batteries.

The closer to full charge those batteries the longer they will last.

I installed this inverter charger in my truck that is a pure sine wave inverter that will not hurt electronics or AC compressors along with an automatic charger that I can hook up to shore power or a generator to run loads direct thru it and will recharge batteries at the same time automatically: http://www.donrowe.com/KISAE-Abso-2000-Compact-Inverter-Charger-p/ic122055.htm

A #12 110 volt drop cord can handle up to 20 amps that you can set up the inverter/charger to handle that. To go any more amps like 30 or even 50 amps you will need a larger cord with an RV/dryer type plug and that is a pretty big cord to carry around.

I hope this info helps out.

FYI: My system has the Maxwell ESM to start the truck and 7 deep cycle AGM batteries for my hotel loads that I also have solar panels on my tractor to put back 15 to 20 amp/hrs under full sun in to my batteries.