A Simple Way to Charge Your Homemade 12 Volt Battery Packs.

Simple and easy.

A couple of weeks ago I showed how to make a simple 12 volt battery pack.  Today I am showing how simple it is to charge the battery packs.  I use these packs for running lights, charging batteries and running radios.  There uses are only limited by your imagination.

For charging I use a Powerfilm Solar R14 rollable solar panel that produces an operating voltage of 15.4, at 14 watts and 0.9 amps. This is quite adequate to charge the battery packs. Because I sometimes use different solar panels, I have a 7-amp Sunforce controller between the panels and the battery pack.  This prevents the batteries from overcharging or discharging.  This setup with the Powerfilm panel will take about 14 hours to recharge both batteries if they were completely drained.

Sunforce controller

Because I use the battery packs with LED lights and other low voltage equipment, I do not let them get drained. I try and stay with the same kind of connectors whenever possible. I use cigarette light plugs for connectors as much as possible, this allows a lot of versatility. They come premade in all types of configurations.

This is a very simple set up and doesn’t take a lot of work to duplicate.  It is also quite portable and does not take much room in a vehicle.  The whole system weights less than 20 lbs.

Howard.

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