Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Trickle Charge Multiple Vehicles

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Trickle Charge Multiple Vehicles

    New guy here. I just picked up the 100 watt solar panel kit from Harbor Freight. And I purchased the 35ah battery they sell. I also purchased the precision watt/amp meter. I have a shop full of toys that I keep on battery tenders. 2 motorcycles, 2 side by sides and a good size boat. I used to run an extension cord out to the shop to power all the Battery Tenders. Anyone see a problem running the inverter to power these various low amperage chargers? I know Battery Tender makes chargers that will run on 12volts. But considering I already bought 5 chargers that run on 120v it would be nice to not have to buy all new chargers.

    TIA
    Curtis

  • #2
    The best thing about the HF panel kit, is the fancy cardboard box. From there, it goes downhill.

    The type of panel they use, degrades rapidly in sunlight, becoming nearly useless in 5 years. I'd use the panel to charge your batteries on a rotating basis:
    Monday = Battery 1
    Tuesday = Battery 2 and so on.

    I'm sure each trickle charger you have, takes 15 - 20 watts, and that would completely consume the panels daily harvest by 5pm.

    Sorry, other than swapping batteries daily, I don't see a good way to have this play out. I worry about leaving 1 battery to charge for a week, if the controller is not set right, it could cook your battery.
    Powerfab top of pole PV mount (2) | Listeroid 6/1 w/st5 gen head | XW6048 inverter/chgr | Iota 48V/15A charger | Morningstar 60A MPPT | 48V, 800A NiFe Battery (in series)| 15, Evergreen 205w "12V" PV array on pole | Midnight ePanel | Grundfos 10 SO5-9 with 3 wire Franklin Electric motor (1/2hp 240V 1ph ) on a timer for 3 hr noontime run - Runs off PV ||
    || Midnight Classic 200 | 10, Evergreen 200w in a 160VOC array ||
    || VEC1093 12V Charger | Maha C401 aa/aaa Charger | SureSine | Sunsaver MPPT 15A

    solar: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Solar
    gen: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Lister

    Comment


    • #3
      I know better than to have high expectations from anything purchased at Harbor Freight. I was only giving them a year till they are unusable. So you already had more faith in them than I do. But for $150.00 it's a cheap toy. It does a pretty good job of keeping the battery charged that I use for my shops garage door opener. I'm using a little 600W inverter. And the battery tenders are only used for a float charge. The ones on the motorcycles are only drawing about 150ma each.

      Comment


      • #4
        Do make sure that your bat tenders do NOT start discharging the battery when AC
        power is removed, the HF versions do.

        I have a few heavy metal working tools from HF in service up to several decades.
        They are far from premium quality, but I could not have afforded the best quality
        back then. I know their limitations. Bruce Roe

        Comment


        • #5
          Maybe it's just me, but it seems quite silly to trickle charge batteries from other batteries when grid power is close at hand. I know people like to work with what they have on hand and experiment but if you already have grid power and the trickle chargers that require grid power, why spend extra funds to go solar?
          Dave W. Gilbert AZ
          6.63kW grid-tie owner

          Comment


          • #6
            Modified square wave inverters can be lethal to some rechargeable tool batteries. At minimum insure you are using a pure sine wave inverter.
            2.2kw Suntech mono, Classic 200, NEW Trace SW4024

            Comment


            • #7
              The problem is that my shop doesn't have access to power. I've had to run a very log extension cord for a couple years now. The only thing that is being powered by the HF system is a garage door opener. Actually it's a more of a big garage where I store my motorized toys. I don't really have any intention of expanding the system to include any high current items. And I agree it seems to be horribly inefficient to do all this power converting.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by littleharbor View Post
                Modified square wave inverters can be lethal to some rechargeable tool batteries. At minimum insure you are using a pure sine wave inverter.
                I'm using a pure sine wave inverter.

                Comment


                • #9
                  I expect measurements will reveal, low current battery tenders are quite inefficient. They went
                  on my power waste list, I designed an efficient replacement for my vehicle storage. And they
                  can be fatal if pulling back any battery current when not powered.

                  Actually intermittent solar power can be a good match for battery maintaining, if sufficient
                  power is available for the job under this intermittent supply. But you may need to build
                  something to do it with direct DC-DC efficiency, if not already on the market. Bruce Roe

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Thanks. I was hesitant about going this route just because it's so horribly inefficient. I'm assuming someone else out there has attempted something similar. Say, an RV and a Boat out far away from their main home. The only other route I can think of is going with a Battery Tender that is specifically designed to work with a 12V output from my main panel. And then trying to get the 12V power out to each individual charger.

                    http://products.batterytender.com/Ch...ontroller.html

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by suseuser View Post
                      Thanks. I was hesitant about going this route just because it's so horribly inefficient. I'm assuming someone else out there has attempted something similar. Say, an RV and a Boat out far away from their main home. The only other route I can think of is going with a Battery Tender that is specifically designed to work with a 12V output from my main panel. And then trying to get the 12V power out to each individual charger. http:// products.batterytender.com Chargers/Battery-Tender-Solar-Controller
                      That looks like a 3 stage charger, my needs and maybe yours, are just to maintain or FLOAT batteries
                      put away pretty much charged. 1A should be plenty (usually too much) for these small batteries. Since
                      that one has a 32V max limit, it will not run directly off a generic (cheap) 60 cell 250W panel. There is
                      no minimum voltage spec, I suspect it is for so called 12V panels (expensive per W). Maybe the 32V
                      limit is to avoid overheating a linear reg/control device, if so any extra voltage will be burned as heat.

                      When you find the perfect one, I will probably buy some also. Bruce Roe

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X