Charging a powerwheels battery with my solar setup?

[ABendage]

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!

[RJsfishin]

[RJsfishin]

I play w/ scooters and other electric stuff all the time.
I am very familiar w/ that 12 ah battery, and it is an AGM SLA battery, trust me.Those batteries will charge just fine paralleling them the the RV batteries.
Many of the smaller SLA AGM batteries out there are called Gell, but in reality they are not true Gell as we've learned to know them. A genuine Gell battery would never be used in that kind of a deep cycle service.
The next post show what I use to parallel to my RV house batteries, whether it be my boat battery, or my electric scooter batteries.

[ABendage]

smkettner wrote:
SLA is a bit of a general term. If you have the charging specs and follow them.... go for it.

GELL does need amps/volts limited or the gelled electrolyte can separate from the plates from gassing.

Just went out and looked at the battery case and it does have the charge specs on there, 13.6-13.8v standby, 14.5-14.9v cycle, and current max at 3.2a.

So, voltage we are in good shape, amperage questionable, because the house battery might take some of that, but either way, I have an ammeter mounted and always know the charge rate, so I can just avoid charging it during peak sun. I think I'm going to give it a whirl, especially as seldom as this will be done, probably less than 5 times a year.

Thanks for the insight everyone!

[time2roll]

SLA is a bit of a general term. If you have the charging specs and follow them.... go for it.

GELL does need amps/volts limited or the gelled electrolyte can separate from the plates from gassing.

[ABendage]

Gdetrailer wrote:

ABendage wrote:
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.

Stop.

That is NOT a SLA battery.

It IS A GEL CELL BATTERY (yes, it is "sealed" and yes, it is a "lead/acid" TYPE of battery BUT it stops there since the electrolyte is GELLED and not a liquid)..

a 1.5A charger is WAY TOO MUCH for that battery, and the Schumacher has to high of a float voltage (it should be about 13.2V for a gel battery).

Using a 1.5A charger is going to DRY OUT THE GEL BATTERY rendering it useless very quickly not to mention putting the battery into a potential fire hazard situation.

The ORIGINAL CHARGER for the Power Wheels is perfectly fine and has a much lower amperage of 1.2A.

If you want a quick charge, they DO have a "SMART" quick charger specifically designed for Power Wheels batteries which can recharge in 3hrs.

HERE

I would NOT recommend connecting that battery directly to your RV 12V power/charging system. The battery can and will charge at too high of a rate and the results may not be pretty.

Just use an inverter AND THE PROPER POWER WHEELS CHARGER.

Sorry, was using the term Power Wheels as a product type instead of brand, the brand is Peg Perego and it is in fact a SLA battery. Sorry for the confusion.

[Gdetrailer]

ABendage wrote:
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.

Stop.

That is NOT a SLA battery.

It IS A GEL CELL BATTERY (yes, it is "sealed" and yes, it is a "lead/acid" TYPE of battery BUT it stops there since the electrolyte is GELLED and not a liquid)..

a 1.5A charger is WAY TOO MUCH for that battery, and the Schumacher has to high of a float voltage (it should be about 13.2V for a gel battery).

Using a 1.5A charger is going to DRY OUT THE GEL BATTERY rendering it useless very quickly not to mention putting the battery into a potential fire hazard situation.

The ORIGINAL CHARGER for the Power Wheels is perfectly fine and has a much lower amperage of 1.2A.

If you want a quick charge, they DO have a "SMART" quick charger specifically designed for Power Wheels batteries which can recharge in 3hrs.

HERE

I would NOT recommend connecting that battery directly to your RV 12V power/charging system. The battery can and will charge at too high of a rate and the results may not be pretty.

Just use an inverter AND THE PROPER POWER WHEELS CHARGER.

[ABendage]

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!

[2oldman]

ABendage wrote:
I guess 4+ amps would probably be too much for that little guy,

Amps are pulled.

[westend]

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.

[doughere]

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

[ABendage]

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.

[westend]

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.

[time2roll]

+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.

[2oldman]

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.'