A lot has happened since the last post about renewable energy. On Saturday 3/18/2017 I received the order that had the MC4 connectors and the charge controller. Those were the last pieces that I needed to start pulling power from the sun.
From the previous posts, you know that I have a bank of 6 batteries wired in parallel. This gives 12v but multiples the capacity of 1 battery by 6. It was finally time to hook up the charge controller to the battery bank. I had a few lengths of 10/3 600v stranded wire that I got years ago - someone was throwing it out. It came from old Uninterrupted Power Supply units. Those UPS units had batteries that failed, and it was cheaper to replace the units completely than to pull them apart and replace the batteries. I wish I would have taken the whole units back then knowing what I know now. Instead I just took the wire thinking I was going to recycle it. There are three conductors in that wire, all 10ga. I did not use the green wire. I stripped back the sheathing on the black and white wires and crimped a eye on each one. I also opened up the connectors in the charge controller, stripped the other end, and inserted black into negative and white into positive and tightened it down. Next I connected black eye to the far right negative battery post and white to the far left positive battery post. This will charge the whole bank evenly. So if the batteries were numbered 1 through 6, I had positive for the charge controller on battery 1 and negative on battery 6. The charge controller came to life and told me the pack had 12.6 volts in it. This was great! Next was time to connect the panel.
The panel comes with MC4 connectors - you can check them out on Google and YouTube. There's plenty of videos and pictures. I needed to put these connectors on another length of the 10/3 wire. Again I stripped back the white and black. Then looking at the diagram / instructions that came with the pane, I found that lead that was positive. I put a piece of red electrical tape on it to make sure. Then I found the MC4 connector that would match that positive and assembled it on the end of the white wire. I did the same for the negative side. This gave me MC4 connectors on one end of the wire. I forgot to mention that this wire was originally going to be an extension cord for my parent's RV, so it was double the length of the other wires at about 15 ft. Before connecting the wire to the panel, I connected it to the charge controller. Then I covered the panel with a piece of cardboard (even though I was still in my garage, I wanted to be sure) to make sure that it wasn't making any power / electricity. Then I connected the MC4 connectors. There was no change on the charge controller display.
Then I opened the back door to the garage and brought the panel outside. Even though it was cloudy, the charge controller still showed that the panel was charging the pack!
Here's a picture of the charge controller and panel outside: Charge Controller and Panel
I was pretty excited. It didn't take that long for the voltage to climb up to the 13.7 float charge the charge controller is configured for. After a few hours I took the panel back inside.
The next step was to start using the battery bank to charge various batteries. The first step was some AA batteries. I hooked up my 300w inverter to the pack the same way I did the charge controller. Then I loaded the AA batteries into my sunJack AA/AAA USB charger, and plugged that into the USB port of the inverter. I let those charge overnight. As I looked at the setup, I had an idea.
I found an old set of alligator clamps that came with a battery tender I have. I had cut the end off of it to make a connector for my parent's RV, but still had the clamps. I stripped the wires and connected them to a replacement automobile cigarette lighter receptical I had left over from another project. I could now clamp that onto the battery pack and use any charger or device that would typically plug into a car cigarette lighter port. I grabbed the Scosche dual USB 2.1a cigarette lighter charger from my car and plugged it into that receptical.
So at this point I had a bunch of ways to charge things. I had the 300w inverter with the two AC plugs on it, the two USB ports on the inverter, the two USB ports on the charge controller, and the two USB ports on the cigarette lighter receptical.
So far I have charged my iPad, the AA and AAA batteries, and the New Trent IMP120D (12,000 mAh ) battery pack. I've been using the New Trent (which is loaded with power from Solar) to charge my phone a few times, the bluetooth keyboard to the iPad and my jawbone ear piece. the IMP120D will help me from needing to go into the garage every time I want to charge something. It makes the power much more portable.
The only drawback here is that there is some loss going from device to device. What is nice is that the panel will charge the large battery pack up very quickly. And when I say very quickly, it was apparent to me that I'm barely tapping the output of the panel. I realized to really take advantage of this setup, I'm going to have to do more than just use it for recharging batteries in our devices.
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