Forum Discussion

ABendage's avatar
ABendage
Explorer
Apr 25, 2015

Charging a powerwheels battery with my solar setup?

Hello everyone, long time lurker, first time poster here.

I pretty much exclusively boondock in the wonderful mountains of Colorado and as such have a 100watt solar setup on my camper. It is way overkill for my little camper and usually the charge controller says the battery is fully charged by noon. It's an older camper so the fridge uses no electricity when on propane, the CO detector runs off of AA's, I have all LED lights, and my little furnace only pulls 1.7 amps and it is sunny almost everyday in Colorado so I have a surplus of power.

I like to bring my son's powerwheels with when camping and it seems silly to invert 12v to 120, then back to 12 to charge with the normal charger. Can I just wire in a pigtail off of my camper battery and let the solar set up do the work or will it mess things up having one 100ah battery and one 12ah battery hooked up? My thinking is the PW battery typically only needs 6-7ah to charge it up and my solar puts out 4.5ish through most of the day so it'd only need to be plugged in for an hour or two. Will that work or does having two different size batteries hooked up in parallel not work?

Thanks!
  • BarneyS's avatar
    BarneyS
    Explorer III
    Apr 25, 2015
    Welcome to the forums. Glad you decided to start posting! :)

    I think you will have better luck with this question in the Tech Issues forum rather than here. I will move it there for you. Good luck and I hope you get all your questions answered.
    Barney
  • MrWizard's avatar
    MrWizard
    Moderator
    Apr 25, 2015
    I think you will be safer to use the inverter and the power wheels charger
    Like you said your batteries are usually charged by noon
    You have a surplus of power, the conversion losses will not affect your system
    How ever connecting 14+ volts at 6+ amps may not be good for that little sealed battery,
    IMO..It would be better to use the correct charger on the power wheels
  • 2oldman's avatar
    2oldman
    Explorer II
    Apr 25, 2015
    MrWizard wrote:
    You have a surplus of power, the conversion losses will not affect your system
    x2. I wouldn't worry about its being 'silly.'
  • time2roll's avatar
    time2roll
    Nomad
    Apr 25, 2015
    +1 for just doing the inverter as power does not seem to be an issue.

    If you want to charge direct you will need to discover the actual charging voltage of your solar and compare to the actual charging of the PW battery. Voltage is the issue, not size. Sealed PW battery could be a bit sensitive to overcharging.
  • westend's avatar
    westend
    Explorer
    Apr 25, 2015
    Could you please describe the PW battery, is it SLA, LiPFe, NiCd, NImh. There should be an output rating on the charger, also. Believe it or not, some of us have never had a Power Wheels, lol.
  • ABendage's avatar
    ABendage
    Explorer
    Apr 25, 2015
    Thanks for the replies!

    The battery is a 12v 12ah SLA battery. I use a Schumacher 1.5 amp battery charger/tender to charge it, the stock chargers are junk and horrible for the battery. Charging voltage should not be an issue, the Schumacher charges at 14.4 and floats at 13.6 and my charge controller on the solar does about the same. I guess 4+ amps would probably be too much for that little guy, wonder if there is a way to regulate that down or if I should just find a small true sine wave inverter to run the Schumacher.
  • doughere's avatar
    doughere
    Explorer
    Apr 25, 2015
    Why not go on e-bay and get a 10A solar charge controller; plenty of them for $10 including shipping. Tie it to your solar panel, and let it control the PW battery.

    Doug
  • westend's avatar
    westend
    Explorer
    Apr 25, 2015
    The amperage or current shouldn't be an issue, the battery for the PW will only draw as much as it needs. I'd suggest to make a connection to your existing battery that is ergonomic enough so that you can position the PW close to the battery and attach a pair of charging wires. Anderson Power Pole connectors come to mind.
  • 2oldman's avatar
    2oldman
    Explorer II
    Apr 25, 2015
    ABendage wrote:
    I guess 4+ amps would probably be too much for that little guy,
    Amps are pulled.
  • ABendage's avatar
    ABendage
    Explorer
    Apr 25, 2015
    westend wrote:
    The amperage or current shouldn't be an issue, the battery for the PW will only draw as much as it needs. I'd suggest to make a connection to your existing battery that is ergonomic enough so that you can position the PW close to the battery and attach a pair of charging wires. Anderson Power Pole connectors come to mind.


    Perfect! I wasnt clear on how amps worked and worried about overcharging. That must be a voltage concern and the charge controller would regulate that? Anyways, sounds like this will work, I'll just put a pigtail on the battery with the same flat 2 connector the normal charger uses and plug it in. I'll put a 5amp inline fuse in it just to be safe.

    Thanks for everyone's help!

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