dixonge
New Member
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2021
- Messages
- 190
Yeah, I just finished trying that over the last few days. I even spent many hours being powered by the existing house batteries in an attempt to get the 4 deep cycle batteries both charged and equalized and even. Between clouds and rain and usage it just didn't work. I got them into float stage but when I tried to manually equalize it never lasted more than 5 minutes. Just not enough sun.What if you disconnected two, ran inverter with just two batteries connected 2s (12V). In the mean time, charge and equalize the other two connected 2s. It takes a number of hours to fully charge and equalize. Once equalized, cells should stay that way for quite some time and battery regains capacity lost from differing SoC.
So it would look like Solar panels > SCC > battery bank #1 > inverter > AC charger > battery bank #2?Couple of ways to charge:
1) AC powered charger, plugged into the inverter and charging the other two batteries (while the sun shines.) Yes this may draw down the batteries on inverter, but what it could accomplish is fully charging the other two and bringing their cells to same SoC.
That's interesting. And even if I don't go that route initially, it does give me an additional option if I'm low on gas or just really, really don't want to run the generator.
I looked into doing this, where one set of batteries was connected ONLY to the SCC and the other was connected ONLY to the inverter. Here is the problem I ran into...2) Disconnect SCC from system, (so inverter is running off batteries without SCC as if sun has gone down.) Use SCC to charge & equalize the other two batteries with no load connected.
Currently the SCC negative out (to the batteries) runs to one side of my smart shunt, which is connected to the inverter as well. Maybe I could run that directly to the batteries, except ... it's too short! And I'm not sure I have any more cable in that gauge. And the shunt has very difficult lugs. So I was always charging two and the other two were disconnected from everything, w/ the inverter off.