I am wondering if I am making an mistakes with this plan: I am planning to purchase 2- 6 volt Duracell Golf Car Batteries - Group Size GC2, 20 amp hour rate:215 and connect in series. 2- RICH SOLAR 100 Watt 12 Volt Polycrystalline Solar Panels to be wired in series. 1- Victron SmartSolar MPPT 75/10 Solar Charge Controller 75V 10A with Bluetooth. My Camper has a Furrion 10 amp Solar Port Inlet that I would like to use to connect the Victron MPPT to the batteries. Will this work well ? If so, I would like to use 50 feet of wire to be able to move the panels 50 feet from the camper when needed. Thanks Guys
Hi Robin. With the information you provided, I'm going to make a bunch of assumptions in my attempt to help...
You are undersized in your solar panel array and solar charge controller (SCC) for the size battery bank you are proposing*.
If you adhere to the recommended 50% depth of discharge for lead acid batteries, your 215Ah 12V bank has 1,290Wh of usable stored energy (215Ah x 12V x .5). The Victron 75/10 has a nominal PV power rating of 145W. Assuming you achieve that full power (which is likely because you have 200W of solar panels), it would take 8.9 hours of full sun to completely recharge the battery bank. That's two full days to recharge if you weren't using any of that power for your devices/appliances.
* You haven't told us what you're trying to power with this setup, so it's difficult to say whether the battery bank is appropriately sized. If you share what you plan to power, members can provide better guidance on whether you are sizing the bank properly. Then we can size the array and SCC.
Speaking of the solar array and SCC: if we assume that you're sticking with the 215Ah battery bank, and that your location provides 4.5 hours of peak sun (you can check that using
this website) you'll need 286.67W (1,290Wh/4.5h) from your array and SCC to fully recharge in a day (again assuming you aren't using any power while recharging). That basically translates to a 400W array since you generally de-rate the panels to 80% (400W x .8 = 320W). That puts you in the range of a 30A SCC.
Bottom line: Once you figure out how much power you need per day, you can do the math to figure out how big your battery bank, solar array, and SCC need to be to support your use cases.
I hope this helps.