Solar / Battery upgrade

Michael49

Got my two Battleborn's, Victron charge controller, and BMV 712 installed. Not the prettiest electrical job, but it works . 

Decided not to mount the battery monitor as I can access the info via bluetooth on my phone, plus the display on it is pretty terrible anyway. 

Still thinking about adding a busbar - there's a lot of connections on that positive pole!

Love the fact that I can run any 12v or 120v off my inverter and instantly see the amperage draw. The 10.6 amp draw below is from my immersion blender running off the inverter   

(Edited for photo size.)

JeffroNC

@Tundra57 I ordered the Wildcat converter from Best Converter in AL. They shipped it quickly and I installed it today. Like you said, five wires and done. The battery was at 67% which is pretty common for my morning charge level while boondocking. I plugged in the shore power, it started charging at 40 amps. In one hour, the battery was at 85%, another hour 95%. This is a huge improvement over the factory unit.
I will be able to get away with a two hour generator run when I am parked in the shade without solar. With the original converter it would take more than three hours to get to 90%. I'm very happy with this.
Thanks for the recommendation. 

Tundra57

You are very welcome. I also found a small improvement by replacing the battery wire from the charger to the battery and through the isolating switch. I upgraded it to #6. However it is a difficult job and im not sure it was worth the effort.

JeffroNC

@Michael49 did you have the two six volt batteries or the single 12 volt? What are you using to secure the batteries?

Michael49

JeffroNC said:

@Michael49 did you have the two six volt batteries or the single 12 volt? What are you using to secure the batteries?

I had the single 12v. I built a small frame around the batteries. You can see part of it in the photo I posted above. 

Tundra57

@dutsmiller you still have those batteries for sale? Btw i changed my charger because it would not go into fast charge for long enough. The original would go into bulk then almost straight back out.

Also due to the voltage drop accross the original battery cable the controller thought the battery voltage was 0.5v higher than it really was. The new charger also has a wired remote so you can view the charge mode and change manually the charge mode.

dutsmiller

@Tundra57 I ended up giving them to a friend, he's been looking for a new project, will be fun to see what he comes up with.

As an update to my battery upgrade, we just got back from our first trip.  Everything worked great and we only used about 50% of the capacity (100ah out of the 200ah installed.  I also gained some interesting data with the newly installed battery monitor.

- The solar panel does a great job of topping the batteries off to max voltage.  Given that our T@B 400 is stored outside, I don't have plans to upgrade the stock charger.
- Jensen TV/Radio seem to use 0.2 amps in standby mode (might install switches for them)
- If the battery disconnect switch is on, the trailer is wired to the tow vehicle and the vehicle is not running, there is a ~4amp drain on the battleborns.  I suspect this is due to them having a higher voltage than the battery in the vehicle.  (will start disconnecting the trailer cable if the vehicle is parked for long periods.
- If the battery disconnect switch is off and the vehicle is running, the norcold fridge kicks on (this is normal).  If i throw the battery disconnect switch to on, there is a 1.5amp drain on the battleborns.  Not sure what to make of this.
- Using the inverter to make english muffins works fine, albeit at about 5ah per muffin.  The drain was roughly 75a/900w.  Wondering if I could run the microwave off the inverter if I rewired it to the inverter (microwave popcorn would be nice from time to time).
- It's really nice to not have to worry about over-draining the batteries.  Now the only concern is hitting 0%, vs. seeing them at <50% and wondering how much damage you're doing to your AGMs while you're watching a DVD in a monsoon.

Lastly, it was really great to get out of the house for a weekend

tphaggerty

So I replaced the converter in my 2018 tab 400 with a wildcat 8955. The same unit as Tundra57 I believe, was an easy drop-in fix. The problem I am having is that it will go into boost mode and try to charge the batteries at 55 A when the batteries are below 50%.

Since there is a 40 amp circuit breaker, this gets popped (on the 12v side). We have to disable the boost mode in order to get the batteries to charge without popping the circuit breaker, which kind of defeats the whole purpose. When I get a chance, I plan to upgrade the wiring and circuit breaker. I did the conversion in order to get the boost mode and LI charging capability as I plan to replace the batteries sometime soon.

Even without boost mode, the converter seems to put out more than the WPCO did. I don’t know and was wondering if anyone did know if the converter is smart enough to be able to limit the charge current based on the source. In other words, if I use 15a shore power instead of 30a, will the converter still try to pump out 55a 12v and maybe pop the shore circuit breaker or will it limit the output current. I don’t think it will, but thought others might know for sure.  (I guess I could use a DC to DC converter, but that seems to be an expensive way to resolve a wiring issue).

Son is currently driving the tab cross country to meet us in San Diego where we have been sheltering with mom after dad passed in March. When he gets here, we are heading back to NY.  Would like to get the overcharging issue figured out before we head back if possible...

Arizonayeti

@tphaggerty Did you find a solution to the breaker tripping in boost mode? I have lithium batteries and would really like to install the wildkat charger but really don't want to have to upgrade the wiring.  

JeffroNC

@tphaggerty did you upgrade the breaker to 60 amps? That was part of Tundras mod. I am able to use boost mode with the bigger breaker. I can put 30% in the batteries with a 2 hour generator run.

tphaggerty

Sorry, just saw these questions. I did not upgrade the wiring, but did put in a 60 amp circuit breaker when I added roof top solar. However, there is still a 40 amp fuse on the charging circuit, but I think it is a slow blow fuse and has never blown.

When I added solar (a 350 watt Renogy kit, very nice), I wound up removing about 3 to 4 feet of wiring run to the converter. The wire is 10ga (going from memory) and the converter to battery run now is less than 10 feet, so I feel comfortable that they wire can handle the 55amp peak. Haven’t really stress tested yet, but will let the batteries go to 50% this weekend and see how it goes.

I’m still using the AGM batteries but definitely plan to go to Li soon. Since they can accept a higher charge rate for longer, will have to see how the fuse works out.