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I have a Renogy 40A B2B charger and it's working well. I also have a heavy-duty alternator (220A if I remember) and thus could run a higher capacity B2B charger. I'm planning on a 4th 100Ah LiFePO4 battery and thus I wouldn't mind a more powerful B2B charger to charge the soon-to-be bigger...

In this video, I saw that a power converter was able to limit the current it draws from shore power to a value you can set. I think that could be useful in a setting where you want to use someone's home outlet for power but don't want to trip their house breaker. The key thing is that it...

I'm in a mobile environment and accepted wisdom is that I need to use stranded and not solid cables due to vibration. Sounds reasonable. I've been able to locate 18, 16, and 14 gauge wiring with fine strands. I use them for lower power stuff like LED puck lights. For some slightly higher...

Inspired by one of Will's videos, I hammered flat some 1/2-inch copper pipe (the standard hard stuff at a home building supply store (not the curly soft stuff)) to use as bus bars. How much current will this crude bus bar be able to handle? So far, I have been careful to keep my loads to...

RV situation. Can someone recommend a configuration for a small solar system that can keep my van's starter battery charged up all the time? I've got a good solar system for the RV interior but I'd like to keep it separate from my vehicle's electrical. I know that in pinch I can jump-start...

So @smoothJoey mentioned a website that lets you make logical diagrams of things: https://app.diagrams.net/ I like it a lot. But it got me wondering if there was something like that for documenting or even brainstorming solar energy systems. A random picture I got off the 'net showing...

I'm thinking of getting this monitor because (maybe...) I can tell all the critical parameters at a glance. However, various (and often unreliable) Amazon customer reviews of the monitor suggest that it can't tell you if the current passing through the shunt is that of discharging or charging...

So, of course, the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line. And if it's a 3D space like things are in reality (as opposed to a pretty 2D circuit diagram), one could have batteries, bus bars, inverters, circuit breakers, various types of chargers, etc. all floating around...

I have a 40A DC-DC LiFePO4 charger now. If I increase the size of my LiFePO4 battery bank, I'd like to increase the amount of charging amperage otherwise, it will take longer to charge up the bank. I'm thinking it might be an idea to add a 2nd charger in parallel on my alternator. The...

RV situation here. Is there a Coulomb counter than can talk to a computer like a Raspberry Pi? It's just wishful thinking at the moment but at some point, I'll have an active computer running in my vehicle that will monitor a variety of things. That future computer may be a Raspberry Pi. I'd...

I know (now) that if you have 4 batteries then an intuitive way of paralleling them together is NOT optimal: But a reconfiguring the wiring gives perfectly balanced charging: Balancing information is courtesy of: https://www.iotaengineering.com/pplib/balancedcharging.pdf Question: Is...

So being a fan and user of a 100Ah LiFePO4, I've always been happy to know that I can run the battery down to 80% of its rated capacity whereas users of lead-acid deep discharge batteries are advised to go down only as far as 50%. But when I see Will and others test batteries and report that a...

RV situation and a bit of a gadget guy. I currently have a single 12V 100Ah LiFePO4 battery and want to add 1, maybe 2 more, in parallel. With Coulomb-counting volt/amp meters being fairly cheap these days, I'm considering putting one on every battery. I'm thinking it's nice to know...

Part-time RV situation. I'm contemplating a big DIY battery using some of the great experiences people have kindly shared. A single 280Ah battery will be more than what I need. A single big battery would "all your eggs in one basket" though. So I'm thinking that maybe I should have a small...

Scenario: 12V 100Ah LiFePO4 battery with a BMS. It can provide continuous current up to 1C (100A). If I put an 1800W load on it, that would turn into an 1800 / 12 = 150A draw, greatly exceeding the capabilities of the battery. What would the BMS do? 1) (somehow) Limit current to 100A...

I'm currently using Renogy's 40A DC-DC controller connected to my van's alternator. Quite happy with it. I am interested in a more powerful one because I'm planning to add a 2nd battery to my 1x100Ah battery bank, doubling the capacity or even more. A more powerful charger will of course be...

I hope I'm not wearing out my welcome. I'm a new member and already this is my 4th started thread! I'm planning to self-build a LiFePO4 battery to supplement the name-brand 100Ah one I have now. Due to costs, I'm going to try to do it as inexpensively as I can. I'm ok with certain...

I have a single brand-name 100Ah LiFePO4 drop-in replacement battery. It's actually serving me well but I am careful with my usage, both in how much capacity I use in a day (say 40 or 50 Ah) before charging as well as with max current draw (less than 100A). I'm looking to increase both...

I see numerous coulomb meters, most using shunts. Some using hall-effect. Which is better? I'm primarily interested in accuracy but if there are other factors, let me know. On the surface, I like the hall-effect ones because I don't have to worry about 2 extra connections and finding a...

Is there an LVD device that will allow me to choose the low voltage threshold? What'd I'd like to do is to cut power to a "low-importance" 12V circuit when the battery bank gets down to a certain voltage, ensuring the there'll always be enough power to run the main circuit for a good amount of...

I have a 600W array and a 40A DC-DC charger. Normally, both aren't running at the same time. e.g. I switch on the DC-DC charger only when driving at night to top off the battery and therefore there's no solar. What would happen if there's full sun AND I'm driving with the DC-DC charger on...