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Currently I have the HF 35ah battery. As usual they are having their 25% off coupon. I'm debating if I should get add another 35ah battery or just replace my 35ah battery with a 100ah battery in the $100.00 range. The only reason I'm debating the issue is because I've spent the money on the first battery. I just hate to scrap it to go to the 100ah battery. Currently I'm running a 500W inverter 24/hrs a day to open a garage door occasionally.
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Do you have grid power available to operate the G.D.O. ? -
No. There is no power to the shop. I intended to run power to the structure but never go around to it. It's never really been used as a shop. Just a storage unit. I could just quit being lazy and just use the pull cord. I was just turning on and off the inverter. But the inverter has to be located in the rear of the shop. And isn't easy to access.Comment
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NOMB, but depending on the tools in the shop and what the electrical energy usage is or might be, running power to it might be something to consider doing, perhaps/maybe/possibly even less costly than off grid PV in the near/medium term. Or, depending on how big the door is, your physical capabilities/limitations, how often the door is operated, and how future plans work out, maybe a hand crank/other manual means of operating the door might be a consideration.Comment
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Suseuser
i will stay focused on your question....generally a real bad idea to parallel batteries, especially mismatched ones. And that battery is too small for an inverter...bite the bullet and get a 100 a.h. battery
david.Comment
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Thanks. That's the answer I was looking for. Even adding a the second HF battery for only brings me up to 70ah. I'm thinking there are decent 100ah batteries in $100.00 to $150 range. Now it's a matter of finding the best bang for the buck to work with my 100 watt panel. And then figuring out what to do with the 35ah battery.Comment
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Run AC power and save yourself a lot of headaches. Otherwise stay away from anything from Harbor Fright and parallel batteries. Lastly if you have a 35 AH battery now suggest you have a small battery charger. To charge 1 100 AH battery requuires a 10 amp charger. I assume you only have a PWM charge controller and with a 100 watt panel can only charge a 50 AH battery,
Use the $100 and run AC power.MSEE, PEComment
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The elegant solution is get a battery operated garage door opener. No inverter. Bruce RoeComment
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I hear some of the garage door openers actually have a connection for a 12V battery backup. The opener is only a couple years old. The no load power consumption of the inverter is around 10W. So more than 99% of my power just goes to running the inverter. I'll have to find the calculations for doing the math. But, it seems like a 100W solar panel, with 5 hours of peak sun, connected to a 35ah battery, running a load of 10 amps 24 hours a day would just barely keep up. The part of the math that throws me off is the power that isn't being drained from the battery during those peak 5 hours to run the load. I think that would actually mean you can subtract 5 hours of the load from the 24 hour total.Comment
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It would be nice if a $100 would cover the cost of running power to the garage! The solar setup is a short-term solution. We don't intend on staying in the house for more than another year. If we were I would have already installed a full solar power system for the garage and the shop. I was one day away from the installation of a full system with the grid tie-in. Truth be told, this little setup is more of a pet project and proof on concept project than a serious endeavor. And I consider any purchase from HF to be junk.Comment
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