Building first auxilary power system

[weavil]

I'm interested in setting up a solar powered battery setup. This is my first foray into building a power system for my truck so I was hoping for a little help. I don't want a ready available kit as most are pricey and I don't see myself getting enough use to justify the cost. I want this to be completely separate from my starting battery. I plan on mounting it somewhere in the bed. My truck is still a daily driver so in some instances I'll need to remove it from the truck to have complete use the bed so I'll need to be able to store it in my apartment (until I move this summer). I don't need anything amazing or top-of-the-line right now, but I'd like the setup to be scalable in case I want to upgrade products in the future.


Uses
- Weekend Camping Trips
- Music Festivals (Truck/Car Camping)
- Tailgating

Powered Items
- Whynter 45 qt (Continuous)
- 2 cellphones (Whenever the cells die)
- Several LED Lights (At night)
- Possible Shower setup for heated water (1-2 times a day)

Battery
- Around 100ah size, sealed
- Any specific batteries or brand recommendations?

Battery Box
- Any reasons building a wood box to house the battery, inverter, etc would be a bad idea?

Inverter
- What size?
- Would an expensive sine wave inverter be worth it for my setup?
- Brand recommendations?

Voltmeter
- Probably a cheap ($10-15) one off Amazon. Any reason to buy a more expensive one?

Solar
- Renogy 100W Solar kit
- Better options?

Home Charger
- Necessary?
- Recommendations on brands/types


Anything else I may need?


Thanks for your input.

 

[AndrewP]

The Renogy kit is nice, and better if you buy just the solar panel and run a Morningstar 10 amp charge controller. It should keep up with your load.

For home charging, assuming you don't need fast, the BatteryMinder charges are nice and do the bulk/absorb/float trick just like your solar charge controller.

Any 100 amp deep cycle battery will work. To get started, you can do worse than the Marine start/deep cycle Grp 27 at Costco.

Why do you need an inverter? These are both power hogs themselves and allow you to hook up things that are also power hogs.

They make nice battery boxes for Marine use that would be perfect and save you from having to make anything out of wood.

And it's all about enough power for your daily needs. 100 watts is enough if you are very careful with your loads, ie fridge and a few LED lights. You may end up needing more panels and more storage.

You sure you don't want to tie it into your vehicle's charging system? 'Cause not every day, or every campsite, is sunny.

 

[vati kaki]

I made this one over the winter,have used it 3 wkend and it work great.It got a cteck 250 in

 

[unseenone]

I've got a few ideas, having done the whole deal before. I'd be happy to discuss it with you, drop me a pm with your e-mail and I'll send you my contact details if you like. Here is a few pictures under Solar, Traxide, etc. to give you some ideas of my setup.

A couple of questions-- How much roof / ground space will you have?

I've built a system like you describe, with the exception and Inverter is not in the plan, I run DC as much as possible, but have a little 300w inverter just in case.

 

[crusaderJK]

-I'd also skip the idea using an inverter since all your listed items are available for 12V.
-You should get an AGM or gel battery.
-There's nothing wrong with a wood box housing the battery.
-Maybe you should take cold showers....electrically produced heat draws a lot of power.

I have an 80W solar panel, an 15A solar charge controller and a 75Ah gel battery.
With that setup I power my fridge (Waeco CFX35) and recharge phones, GPS and camera.

The battery sits in a box I equipped with power outlets, fuse holder, charge controller and all the wiring.
My charge controller has a Voltmeter built in.

For trips I just mount the solar panel to the hood and put the battery box into the trunk.

 

[coolfeet]

-I'd also skip the idea using an inverter since all your listed items are available for 12V.
-You should get an AGM or gel battery.
-There's nothing wrong with a wood box housing the battery.

I have an 80W solar panel, an 15A solar charge controller and a 75Ah gel battery.
With that setup I power my fridge (Waeco CFX35) and recharge phones, GPS and camera.

The battery sits in a box I equipped with power outlets, fuse holder, charge controller and all the wiring.
My charge controller has a Voltmeter built in.

For trips I just mount the solar panel to the hood and put the battery box into the trunk.

View attachment 280642View attachment 280644View attachment 280645View attachment 280643

y
You built the unit that I intend to build! What AGM battery did you buy? I want my unit portable and the Optima 75 aH battery weighs about 60 pounds-more than my ARB fridge/freezer. I like your idea of skipping the inverter. I may go with a cheap 300 W pure sine wave inverter to power air pumps for inflatable toys, battery chargers, and cell phones. I have read on other forums that a modified sine wave may be reason why our Macbook battery life is short. Those $125 Apple batteries are expensive! I like your battery box. Where can I procure one? I was going to build a wood box, but that adds weight.

What brand is your 80W solar panel? I want to get a unit that I quick mount to my roof rails and take down for portable power.

I bought an ARB 60 liter fridge freezer. I want to connect it directly to the battery. ARB wants $40 for their power cord? Anyone build their own or use another brand?

Thanks for all the photos as this really helps!

 

[crusaderJK]

y
You built the unit that I intend to build! What AGM battery did you buy? I want my unit portable and the Optima 75 aH battery weighs about 60 pounds-more than my ARB fridge/freezer. I like your idea of skipping the inverter. I may go with a cheap 300 W pure sine wave inverter to power air pumps for inflatable toys, battery chargers, and cell phones. I have read on other forums that a modified sine wave may be reason why our Macbook battery life is short. Those $125 Apple batteries are expensive! I like your battery box. Where can I procure one? I was going to build a wood box, but that adds weight.

What brand is your 80W solar panel? I want to get a unit that I quick mount to my roof rails and take down for portable power.

I bought an ARB 60 liter fridge freezer. I want to connect it directly to the battery. ARB wants $40 for their power cord? Anyone build their own or use another brand?

Thanks for all the photos as this really helps!

Thanks for the feedback.

I bought a complete solar power set including the solar panel, battery, charge controller and the cables. While the charge controller and the cables are quality parts from Germany, the panel and the battery are cheap chinese stuff.....that has worked well for me.

The model type# of the panel is MP-80WP.
My battery is a gel battery and it's about the same weight as the Optima.

Battery boxes of different sizes can be found on ebay. I got mine from a local RV store.

Are you talking about this $40 power cable?!
This will only make sense if you want to run the fridge from your vehicle's battery. It's just a power outlet and thicker wires to avoid the voltage drop you have with the thin factory wiring on the vehicles.
If you want to run the fridge from the aux battery in the box, you won't need such a wiring kit.

 

[coolfeet]

Thanks for the feedback.

I bought a complete solar power set including the solar panel, battery, charge controller and the cables. While the charge controller and the cables are quality parts from Germany, the panel and the battery are cheap chinese stuff.....that has worked well for me.

The model type# of the panel is MP-80WP.
My battery is a gel battery and it's about the same weight as the Optima.

Are you talking about this $40 power cable?!
This will only make sense if you want to run the fridge from your vehicle's battery. It's just a power outlet and thicker wires to avoid the voltage drop you have with the thin factory wiring on the vehicles.
If you want to run the fridge from the aux battery in the box, you won't need such a wiring kit.

Yes, that $40 power cable from ARB. I plan on connecting to the battery box with a standard 12 volt socket that I bought on Ebay

Thanks for the help. I am spending way too much time thinking about the battery. Optima yellow top AGM and a pure sine waver inverter for Macbook. I will post some photos of my portable power upon completion.

 

[weavil]

Appreciate the replies. I was thinking of adding an inverter just in case I needed to run something that used AC.

 

[weavil]

I'm adding 2 12V plugs and 1 12V dual USB socket. What size gauge wire should I get and what size fuses?

I want to account for the fridge which is rated 65W and 4.5A/2.5A.

 

[crusaderJK]

The power outlets have a max. amp rating. The fuse should match that number or can be lower if you don't need that much amps. My 12V outlets are rated for 20A and I used 15A fuses since my accessories don't draw more than that.

I've used 10, 14 and 16AWG for the wiring. White are the 10ga battery cables that run to the charge controller, green are the 14ga main lines i spliced into three 16ga wires (yellow) that run to the power outlets.

 

[snowblind]

I bought a complete solar power set including the solar panel, battery, charge controller and the cables. While the charge controller and the cables are quality parts from Germany, the panel and the battery are cheap chinese stuff.....that has worked well for me.

Cool setup. What was your total price?

To Weavil:

I do not recommend heating water via 12v. For a 12v shower your need a 12v water pump like THIS and an on demand propane water heater like THIS. And of course a propane tank and a BUNCH of water.

Everything else you want to do you can use 12v.

I use a Goal Zero Yeti 400 for pretty much exactly what you describe. I used it for the first 2 years without solar using only 110v. At $459 MSRP it is expensive but it combines a LOT of features for the price. There are also deals via the Costco roadshow and refurbished models direct from Goal Zero. Be aware that some of the GZ proprietary connectors can be frustrating to work with but this has been improving of late. Check out this THREAD of my experiences if you are interested.



Matt

 

[anickode]

Electrically heating water is out of the question. 1 Watt hour is 3.4 btus. It takes 8.4ish btu to heat one gallon one degree, so It would take something like 570 amp hours at 12v to heat 5 gallons of water by 50 degrees, providing zero heat loss from the tank during the process.

Or as a 1 gpm on-demand flow, That's an amp draw of 6800 amps at 12v

I think. My mental math is a bit fuzzy at the moment Because I'm tired.

This doesn't sound right...

 

[anickode]

Sorry... 617 amps continuous draw for 1gpm on-demand flow at a 50 degree F temp increase.

52 amp hours for 5 gallons in a tank, assuming zero heat loss through the tank. Assuming you don't drain your battery past halfway to prolong it's lifespan, That's your entire battery capacity for one 5 minute shower if you have a 1gpm RV shower head. Granted if your water is starting at say 90 degrees from sitting at ambient temps, you wouldn't need a 50 degree increase, but still... totally impractical.

If you look at tankless electric residential water heaters, one that does 2.5 gpm at 50 degree increase (enough for a typical household shower head) draws 80 amps at 220v That's a lot of frigging juice.

 

[crusaderJK]

Cool setup. What was your total price?


Matt

Thanks! I think it was around $500 for the solar set and all I've put into the battery box.