National Luna DC-25 Power Pack

Video Transcript

Intro

Hi, this is Paul May with Equipt Expedition Outfitters. Today I'd like to talk to you about the National Luna DC 25 Power Pack, a very unique machine indeed. It has built into it all the capability of our NL DC 25 DC to DC charging system, but what's unique about this is it is a portable system instead of a fully hardwired installed system in your vehicle.

Package Contents

Inside this unit here is that capability. First, let's talk about what you get with the package. First of all, the power pack itself is the same size as our portable power pack. The box is capable of accepting up to a group 31 size battery on the inside of it. There is a battery tie down inside, two cables for connecting that battery inside the box itself. It also comes with a reel of wire, this is what they call a 16 millimeter squared wire, and it's just shy of a four gauge wire which is always necessary for this. This plugs into the front of the unit and then runs up to your main battery. So there are only four wires necessary to run this system. We also have the inline fuse and legs and fuses here.

Wiring Explained

Four wires to make the system work: two wires inside the box to the battery positive and negative, two wires to your main battery wherever that is. You run those to this unit typically in the rear of the vehicle, whether it's an SUV, a van, a pickup truck, what have you. Run it to this unit, those wires plug into the face of this unit, and if you look right here, there's a red Anderson coupler right there. Now that red Anderson coupler takes in the current from your main battery. The system here monitors that power and supplies that charge to the auxiliary battery based on a DC to DC charging system.

Temperature Sensor

There are a couple other things that you can hook to this as far as wires go. One is a temperature sensor that you can run to the battery in here to monitor the temperature of your auxiliary battery. That's a really good thing to have on there because what it does is it adjusts the charge from the DC to DC system to the temperature of the battery for maximum charge at a given temperature. Awesome.

Ignition Sense Battery

The other one that is on here is what they call an ignition sense battery. So if you've got a vehicle that is a smart vehicle that has a variable amperage output on the alternator or start-stop capability with the vehicle still on, you can plug a wire into here, run it to an ignition live circuit on your vehicle, and this will take care of that situation with the adjustments of the output as well as the start-stop of the vehicle and maintain the charge correctly.

Remote Monitoring System

Another really nice item that you can plug into the front of this is the NLDC M2. Now what that is, is a remote monitoring system. The little monitor here is about three inches by three inches by three-quarters of an inch thick, has a little mounting plate to it. It has a cable that plugs into the power pack and runs to the monitor, and you can put this up in the front of the cab, which allows you to monitor all the activity that's going on in your battery system, both the main battery and the auxiliary battery. What input is working at that time, whether it's solar, alternator, what have you, this will tell you what's going on with your batteries as well as your rate of charge and capacity.

What also is nice about this unit is that it has a lot of your power distribution needs taken care of right in the front of this box. Okay, first one I want to talk to you about as far as inputs is this one right here, this black Anderson clipper right here. It says solar panel. This has a 25 amp MPPT solar controller built in. This will manage up to 375 watts of solar input and work it directly to your battery. A really nice system to have there, you can plug solar directly into it, no problem at all.

It also has National Luna's proprietary ML5 charger plug. We have those pigtails here available so that you could use a smart charger of some nature. We like the NOCO chargers, we use those here to adapt and put onto this unit for 120-volt charging.

The other items that you have on here up at the top, you have your voltage monitoring system so you know what's happening at the unit. We have USBs, we have four USBs here at the top, a Hella socket for a National Luna fridge of course, and down at the bottom, a couple outputs for cigarette lighter plugs as well. There are two more outputs for auxiliary, these are higher amperage outputs, these are 50 amp Anderson couplers, and what those are really useful for is something of a nature that's going to run a little bit higher amperage than you want to run through a typical plug ported something like an inverter or a generator or a compressor or something that's going to need a higher amperage output. You can plug those directly into those plugs and run it from there.

What I really like about this system is that in the vehicles that we have in this day and age, there really isn't a whole lot of room under the hood. This is a great alternative to have power where you need it. It's also portable, you can take this in and out of the vehicle if you'd like to, or if you want to, you can mount it right down to a solid surface in your vehicle with the recessed mounting points underneath the battery in here. It solves all of the electrical needs in one location for all of your accessories within the vehicle on this aspect of things. I think it's a wonderful solution in those aspects. If there's anything you have a question on, please let us know. We're at equiptone.com. Again, I'm Paul, thanks for your time.