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diy solar

Milk crate portable power station

Question? I am about to build a Milk Crate 2.0 with a Ampere 50ah battery. I also bought a DIY 150AH with a BMS as another milk crate battery add on to plug into an ecoflow river with an XT90 connect. How can I charge the DIY battery with the things in my Milk Crate 2.0. My initial thought is to have the ability to disconnect the MPPT charging and swap it to the battery #2 and once charged, change it back to battery #1.
 
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Welcome to the Crate Club, I just took a look at Will's Milk Crate 2.0 vid. I'd probably put XT90 connectors on the outputs of both the power supply and the solar charge controller. That way you could easily just jack into the XT90 of your auxiliary crate battery and recharge with whatever method is appropriate at the time.
 
I've appreciated all the pics of your milk crate buils. I will try a milk crate for my 24 v / 25 ah / SCC / Shunt / USB Charger / 375 VA inverter (300 watts). I was having trouble deciding on an enclosure.

Intent with this is to hook up six 100 watt portable panels to have the inverter running at 250 - 300 watts while the solar panels push in as much amperage as the load is pulling out. This will work with the lithiums I have. Won't have a hole lot of charge once the sun goes down.
 
I've appreciated all the pics of your milk crate buils. I will try a milk crate for my 24 v / 25 ah / SCC / Shunt / USB Charger / 375 VA inverter (300 watts). I was having trouble deciding on an enclosure.

Intent with this is to hook up six 100 watt portable panels to have the inverter running at 250 - 300 watts while the solar panels push in as much amperage as the load is pulling out. This will work with the lithiums I have. Won't have a hole lot of charge once the sun goes down.
Cool! What are you planning to power with the crate during the day? Also, are you using the Victron Phoenix 375VA or something else?
 
Cool! What are you planning to power with the crate during the day? Also, are you using the Victron Phoenix 375VA or something else?
Yes the Pheonix 375 VA. I spent a bit of time looking at the specs of my 25 ah cells which can charge and discharge at at least 1C, saw the tiny Daly BMS I bought could charge at 15 amps, and decided that I could try to get around 300 watts continuous out of it. This would also be backup AC power should the RVs 3000 watt inverter ever go down.

I’ll probably do some other stuff with it around the house like Crockpot cooking, basically just seeing what it can do.

As far as what I can run off it, this will be for setting a laptop outside with a couple of USB. Charging ports for RVing.

I was going to finish it this weekend, but I have four more cells showing up and they are stuck in Sangun, Texas on a FedEx truck.
 
I’ll probably do some other stuff with it around the house like Crockpot cooking,
Funny you mention that. That's one of the use cases I have for my crates. Our crock pot on low averages about 240W so it seems you should be able to pull it off easily if yours is similar.

As far as what I can run off it, this will be for setting a laptop outside with a couple of USB. Charging ports for RVing.
That'll be perfect for it. I use my converted jump starter system (30Ah battery, 300W inverter, 10A PWM SCC) to run 2 or 3 laptops during the work day with a 150W array. I never run out of juice on sunny days.

I was going to finish it this weekend, but I have four more cells showing up and they are stuck in Sangun, Texas on a FedEx truck.
Seems there's a lot of that going around. Good luck.
 
So purchased my milk crate from WalMart today. Not very happy with the quality. Not solid like the plastic milk crates I grew up with. The WalMart milk crate I will need to be gentle with and I can see it falling apart in a couple of seasons if left in the sun.

Never thought I'd hear myself say I'm not happy with the quality of a milk crate.
 
Home Depot has them too, possibly better quality.
I wish I checked when I was in today.

Their website said out of stock at the two hardware stores local to me and I'd have to drive to the other side of the valley to find a Home Depot with a milk crate. That website inventory they use is not that accurate. The workers seem to roll their eyes when I say the website said they had it. Once the item was being held on a pallet with a "Do not unpack until holiday sale," note for the workers.

I may try to purchase a quality one at a supermarket.
 
Here is my crate build. 300 watt continuous inverter with a 24 volt, 25 ah lithium battery capable of being charged at 15 amps.
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I was able to run at 200 watts of power and still put enough amperage to keep the battery from depleting, which is what I’d hope to achieve. I think it can go to 300 watts to devices and 300 watts from the panels.

The milk crate I bought was not going to big enough. Here is equipment sitting in a milk crate before installing into the crate I made.
E16421DA-87CD-44BA-8936-FB01AB6483FA.jpeg
 
It's portable! It's modular! It seemed like a good idea at the time...

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DC crate has 2 Lion Energy Safari UT 1200 LFP batteries in parallel. (I made it 12V so it could be used to extend my Goal Zero Yeti 1250.) It can be a stand-alone DC power station, extend the GZ, and used in conjunction with the PVAC blue crate. Output is via an Anderson SB175 connector. There's a Blue Sea MRBF terminal fuse block hiding under the main positive terminal cover. The DC outputs are individually fused using inline AGC fuses. I've used terminal and component covers everywhere, and there's a clear polycarbonate barrier around the sides up near all the battery terminals and a lid for when the crate is used on its own.

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PVAC crate has a scratch-and-dent used Renogy Rover 30A SCC and a little baby Samlex SSW-1000 inverter. PV input is via Anderson Powerpole connector. The Blue Sea switch on the front controls power to the whole crate. There's a Blue Sea common source surface mount fuse block holding fuses for the SCC and inverter. I made a lid out of an HDPE sheet.

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Final PV system testing "action" shot. Renogy and HQST haters, avert your eyes... ;)
2 100W HQST mono panels in series generating 181W on a clear 34F (1C) day (ignore temp in app, the sensor wasn't connected).

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Milk crates - all the ventilation you would ever need with almost nowhere to mount stuff!
 
Hey Bob142, I really like your design. I'm fixin to do the same but am looking at a 200 ahr LiFePo4 to chain into my yeti 1250. Have you had any issues running over 100 ahr through your chain and have you charged all your batteries when chained together and if so how does that go for you?
 
Hey Bob142, I really like your design. I'm fixin to do the same but am looking at a 200 ahr LiFePo4 to chain into my yeti 1250. Have you had any issues running over 100 ahr through your chain and have you charged all your batteries when chained together and if so how does that go for you?
I had no issues at all chaining the extra 180Ah of crate batteries with the Yeti 1250.

I never charged the chained batteries through the Yeti charge controller. I always charged the crate batteries separately.
 
Thanks Bob142 - you have saved me considerable development and research time and effort. My project is moving forward thanks to you.
 
You're welcome. I'm happy to help out if I can.
Have you come up with a standardized Milk Crate Interface (MCI)? All this talk about various crate designs reminds me of the function blocks on some kids' learning sets where you plug various functional blocks together using connectors on their sides to get some desired output or behavior. So if you had battery crates, inverter crates, MPP crates, etc. would you be able to come up with plugs and sockets on the sides that would allow you to reconfigure them in various ways?
 
Have you come up with a standardized Milk Crate Interface (MCI)? All this talk about various crate designs reminds me of the function blocks on some kids' learning sets where you plug various functional blocks together using connectors on their sides to get some desired output or behavior. So if you had battery crates, inverter crates, MPP crates, etc. would you be able to come up with plugs and sockets on the sides that would allow you to reconfigure them in various ways?
Yup, sure did. Anderson SB175s. The PV crate, DC crate, wall charger crate, and inverter all have them.
 
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