Help with Basic Solar Set Up
After years of storing the TT at home we are thinking of moving to a smaller home and putting the TT in a storage lot. One of the luxuries of parking at home is being able to stay plugged in year rou...
Forum Discussion
BurbMan wrote:
I upgraded the converter to a PD 4655 and also upgraded the charging wire to the batteries to #2 (#4 in parallel with factory #6) so it's pretty efficient now. Really just looking for something to keep the batteries charged while the TT is in storage and maybe offset some light use during boondocking. I have a Honda 2000 that I use for battery charging while boondocking so I don't need the solar to carry all of the usage.
Let's say I watch the late show and the batteries are at 75% when I turn off the TV. The sun comes out and the solar controller is sending 14.4v to the batteries. When I roll out of bed and fire up the Honda, the PD4655 will start putting out 14.4v to the batteries. Does the solar controller stay online so its amperage will contribute to charge the batteries faster?
Multiple chargers will either add their amps or share the amps the batteries will accept, and the proportion of the amps each charger does depends on the charger's voltage wrt battery voltage and the other chargers' voltages.
If you have two equal voltage chargers that can do 40 amps each and the battery will accept 90 amps then you will get 80 amps. If the battery will only accept 40 amps, each charger will do 20a.
If one charger is higher voltage, there will be a time when say the battery will take 50a and it is doing 30a while the other is doing 20.
It keeps changing as battery voltage rises so that eventually when the battery voltage reaches the voltage of the lower voltage charger, it quits doing any amps and the other charger is left doing it all, however much that might be by then.
You can just leave the solar on when running the converter on shore power and let the electrons sort it out amongst themselves who does what to whom. No harm done.
