diy solar

diy solar

Using battery charger and solar charger at the same time

lws2036

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Oct 6, 2020
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I have a 12 V systems that is comprised of 2 6V deep cycles in series that are then wired in parallel to increase my capacity (4 6 V batteries in total with 230 Ah in each battery).

My charger controller is the EPEVER 40A MPPT Solar Charge Controller and is hooked up to 4 100 W panels wired in parallel (on a sunny day I can get 15+ AMPs at 12 volts)

However, this location has many over cast days and tons of tall trees that can block the sun. After a few days of reduced sun, my battery array can get low.

I just bought the NOCO Genius GEN2 20 Amp 2-Bank On-Board Battery Charger. I plan to hook up each 6V series to this charger providing a potentials 20 amps to the the two 6V series. This charger can get plugged into a massive generator to top up the power.

My question is, can I run the NOCO battery charger (with power coming from the generator) while the EPEVER solar charger is hooked up to the battery array and the panels without damaging anything in the system? My other thought is to install a switch allowing me to turn off one charge in place of the other. For this route I'm not sure what sort of switch to get.

Does anyone have experience or opinions on a set up like this? As you may have guessed I'm a newbie, so if anything in my set-up sounds wrong, please let me know.

Thanks!
 
Should be no problem. I have done the same many times when I am getting some solar but need to run the generator to get the batteries charged.
 
You can run both provided at no time do the 2 devices produce more amps than your battery can safely handle. For this you would need to know the battery max charge rate specification.
 
I've watched my GoPower PWM solar charge controller as the on-board generator comes online and powers the 55 watt converter. The amps that the GoPower produces goes to zero. So it plays well with the rest of the system.
 
You would probably be better off by re-charging your batteries during the night, if they fall below a given threshold.
If you use the charger in parallel to your solar installation, you may not harvest the maximum energy you could, but on the other side you will preserve your battery. So it's your choice: harvest more or get a longer battery life.
 
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