Solar charging a portable battery

[flyingmm]

I’m wondering if there is a way that I can charge my new Jackery portable battery from a roof mounted solar panel via the plug socket in the Beach? Do you get a controller that switches between charging your leisure battery or directly feeding the socket? If so can you recommend a solution/ company? Tried searching the forum but can’t find the answer. Thanks!

 

[dspuk]

Yes. Just buy the Roger Roof kit and spec the lighter jack to plug into the MPPT controller that will feed “spare” solar across to your unit.

Solar Camper Solutions - Home

Solar Panel Kits for Mazda Bongo & VW T4 / T5 /T6 and California camper vans.

www.solarcampersolutions.co.uk

 

[Ting Tong]

Yes the excellent Victron MPPT 75/15 controller has an output called load that you can use to charge devices from the solar only e.g. by fitting a 12v cigarette lighter socket. Charging from the Beach socket will deplete your vehicle battery.

 

[kp64zl]

Yes the excellent Victron MPPT 75/15 controller has an output called load that you can use to charge devices from the solar only e.g. by fitting a 12v cigarette lighter socket. Charging from the Beach socket will deplete your vehicle battery.

Does the 'load' output just take 'overflow' charge that would otherwise not be used?

 

[Ting Tong]

Does the 'load' output just take 'overflow' charge that would otherwise not be used?

I don’t use it but it seems it allows any load to draw power from the vehicle battery down to a certain voltage whereupon it disconnects the load to prevent complete battery discharge.

 

[flyingmm]

Thanks for your comments, the solar camper solutions option sounds ideal. Looks like it will also charge the leisure battery if you’re not using it to take power directly to say charge a portable battery. Would 1 x 100W panel likely suffice? Or are 2 advisable for say charging a laptop and thinking about it, perhaps chilling a wee fridge? I’m hopeless with electronics. Could you charge a laptop straight out of the lighter socket they provide?

 

[dspuk]

Thanks for your comments, the solar camper solutions option sounds ideal. Looks like it will also charge the leisure battery if you’re not using it to take power directly to say charge a portable battery. Would 1 x 100W panel likely suffice? Or are 2 advisable for say charging a laptop and thinking about it, perhaps chilling a wee fridge? I’m hopeless with electronics. Could you charge a laptop straight out of the lighter socket they provide?

I believe you can programme the MPPT controller to split the load output between the leisures and the output for a portable and define which you prefer.

Ref how many. We have one, it’s fine for us, but you have to think about the “off grid” reality. How many days will you be without EHU? Forever or more than five days? You will need two. Three days or so? One would suffice.

You don’t charge laptops from a solar panel. They recharge other batteries. So your portable or your leisures. Then you take power from them either via the lighter sockets or the invertor socket on the drivers seat. personally we use the invertor to charge our devices by plugs when off grid.

All solar is is a balancing act between how quick you drain the leisure's with power draw from devices and how quick you can recharge them via the sun.

There are more things to think about, like weather and season, or device wattage but there are many other threads covering this.

This may help you understand the electrics on a Beach:

 

[flyingmm]

Thank you @dspuk, very helpful even though we've got the older beach model, the basics are the same. I've been in touch with Roger and the main decision now is 1 solar panel or 2!

 

[dspuk]

Thank you @dspuk, very helpful even though we've got the older beach model, the basics are the same. I've been in touch with Roger and the main decision now is 1 solar panel or 2!

Think Rogers advice on Solar is spot on and as I say above - 3 days or less, 1, 4 days or more, 2. Bear in mind winter sun in the UK is pants, so if your doing a lot of winter off EHU then 2 would be better. For us, as a gradual top up and justr keeping things ticking over, 1 has been perfect.

 

[Roger Donoghue]

The Victron has load terminals that are ideal for charging secondary batteries, you can completely customise how much of a priority the load terminals get, right down to even specifying the exact voltages to cut off, and resume.

This way you can, for example, tell the Victron only to power the load terminals if the van's LBs are above, say, 13.4v - which is basically telling it to only do it if the LBs are under a decent charge and are close to full. You can then tell it to cut off under, say, 13v, which is the other half of the equation. You could change these voltages to give more of a priority to the external power bank as well.

Dont' quote me on those exact voltages, it's a stab in the dark, but you get the idea.