Crinstam Camp

larry kidd wrote:Do you have any Milwaukee battery operated tools? They have a nice little 175W inverter that hooks to the M18 batteries. If not other companies likely make something similar.

Well I definitely have to go look at that.

Thanks

David Baillie wrote: I would suggest then disconnecting the light circuits from the larger panel if possible and powering them using plugs.

Exactly how would one go about powering circuits from a separate inverter without disconnecting them from the main panel???

David Baillie wrote:I would suggest you look into low wattage LED bulbs then. The conversion efficiency on any inverter will be at its absolute worst in the first 20-30 watts. What are you lighting up? I've had good success with the USB based low wattage bulbs.  Your conversion efficiency will be much better stepping down in DC from 12 to 4.5 than stepping up from 12 volt to 120ac. Or any of the 12 volt led lighting out there. At the scale you are talking conversion will kill you. All that depends on your application of course.
Cheers,  David

I assume you meant to say low wattage DC bulbs?

Most of our lights are all double bulb fixtures with a 1 watt LED in one side and a pull switch socket with 2 Watt LED in the other. Just wandering through and turn on the switch and the 1 watt comes on, need more light? Pull the cord and the 2 watt comes on.

We aren't going to run new lines for DC lines to power the lights.

Our lights are all going to be on their own 12v bank of two 100Ahr batteries and 300 watts of panels. The little amount we will lose with a inverter is small, I just want it as small as possible lol

It started because we aren't supposed to hook 6 of our batteries in parallel for some reason that I'm still not clear on lol

I figured instead of just letting them sit here until we got two more we might as well use them.

But when I started thinking about it, I realized how much better it would be.

If the other bank drains, or the main inverter takes a dive, we're left in the dark. This way that doesn't happen.

Plus we have three 100 watt panels, that we were using as our main ones until we got the new 200 watt panels, that are now just sitting here along with the charge controller we had then. This way it all is still getting used.

David Baillie wrote:

Crinstam Camp wrote:I'm looking for the most efficient 100 watt inverter (12vdc to 110vac) I can find.

Any suggestions?

Just generalities. Make sure its a pure sine wave inverter for efficient energy conversion and smooth running of your devices. Modified sine can heat up transformers and fry certain battery chargers on tools. I like the small wattage Victrons for durability; they have a 250 watt unit. Samlex is another good small inverter brand, renogy is so so, then you get into the take a chance ones on amazon.
Cheers,  David

All it will be powering are 1 and 2 watt LED bulbs up to a maximum of 40 watts in total. The normal would likely be closer to 6 to 10 watts

I'm looking for the most efficient 100 watt inverter (12vdc to 110vac) I can find.

Any suggestions?

I would take any option that worked over starlink for many, many reasons.

Having said that, we had two options here.

Xplorenet, now called just Xplore and Starlink. We have zero cell service on the ground and very, very minimal with a booster antenna.

Xplore is pretty crappy at the best of times from anyone I've talked to that actually had it, but more importantly, when we called they aren't accepting new customers in our area and can't even estimate when they might be able to.

So... We have Starlink. It works absolutely fantastic. We don't connect anything without a VPN, but the connection speed is more than enough to make up for it.

We'll still switch to Xplore if they ever add more customer slots though.

After letting it sit until about noon the next day, the bank was testing at 13.5 and when I pulled it apart, each battery was at 13.5.

I hooked it all back up and depending on the meter/tester I looked at, it showed 13.2/13.3.

We didn't have very much sun yesterday, way too much smoke from the fires out west, so I didn't get to see if it would come up at all, but in the morning before the sun came up they all read as we 13.2.

Last night after the sun went down they were showing 13.2/13.3 again.

This morning they were again all showing 13.2

I'm still confused how I can get different readings on every damn meter I use and why it dropped from 13.5 to 13.2/13.3 just from hooking it up, but it's definitely holding charge better now than when I had the 6 batteries hooked up.

I don't know if it's just because they were all properly balanced or if it's because their BMSs just work better with only 4, but I'm happy it's better.

At some point I may try balancing all 6 and hooking them up again to see what happens but for now I'm happy with the improvement.

I got 4 of the batteries to full charge at least today.

The manual says 13.5 is 100%

13.5, 13.6, 13.7 and 13.9 is what the batteries tested at after sitting for over an hour after charging.

I hooked them all in parallel with no charge or load on it and will leave it like that until tomorrow when I'll unhook and test each one again before hooking them into the system.

They test out at 13.6 as a bank right now.