small battery box

highdesertranger · Sep 3, 2015

ok I promised to post pics of my gear and I said I would show my small battery box. so here we go.

my box has 2 of these 12ah batteries in it for a total of 24ah. but remember you should not use more than 50% of your battery power so I have 12ah of available power.

here's the box with all the goodies. the on/off switch will be explained.

in this view you can see 2 stainless bolt heads(arrow) these are for getting power with clip type wire connectors. this is where the switch comes in. with the switch in the off position the hot+ at these bolts is dead. this is for in case metal where to touch the bolts it would not cause a short. btw this is a plastic ammo can.

I can also pull power from a quick connector like shown here(arrow), sorry it's hard to see with the background. but they are like these. http://www.thirdcoastgear.com/produ...source=bing&utm_medium=ppc?variant=4304841477 .
now a bet your saying great but how do you charge it. see next post. highdesertranger

highdesertranger · Sep 3, 2015

so I charge this with a portable 50 watt solar panel. here we go.

here's the panel. I picked this one up years ago from a building that was being demolished I got two controllers with it. there were actually two panels but one didn't live though the demo.

specs

controller it even has a temp sensor

another view, temp senor, panel in, and charge out. more to come. highdesertranger

highdesertranger · Sep 3, 2015

so here it is hooked up.

battery voltage with panel hooked up. this was with heavy overcast.
I use this to run my gold wheel and blue bowl it runs both no problem. then I just connect it back to the panel and let it charge all day. btw I have also used this panel to recharge my truck battery when I have killed it by being stupid.

in the lower left of this pic you can see the battery box running the gold wheel. highdesertranger

Oberneldon · Sep 3, 2015

HDR,

My Prius house batteries are 3 gel cells 12 volt 8 ah in parallel so I have the same ah total as you. I charge mine while I drive via a 400 watt PSW inverter to a multi-chemistry charger.

Sternwake had a post recently about DC to DC chargers and I did some research and spoke to folks at PowerStream about what I could use to charge my gel cells directly off my cars 12 volt system eliminating my multistage power conversion.

I was told that I could use PST-BC1212-15 http://www.powerstream.com/DCC.htm

Although a bit pricy at $185 it would give me the ability to have a cleaner charging system. For you it would give you the ability to charge while driving and via solar.

The unit is good to 100 ah batteries so there is the ability to expand storage over time.

I don't have any experience with the company so if anyone has purchased PowerStream products please let me know about quality and service.

Brent