Solar Battery Charger

[JTAus]

Hi All,

I have a new boat with 2x 12v deep cycle batteries wired up for 24v to run the electric motor. I brought a solar charger for the batteries so that when we put the boat away there is a Anderson plug to attach the battery to the inverter, problem is when I wired it up all was good until I pulled out the Anderson plug and the inverter let the smoke out. After some quick googling I found that the inverter needs to be attached to a battery at all times. How can I get around this so I have the solar always plugged into inverter and the battery can be plugged in and unplugged when needed.

Also I blew up my cheap inverter and I will be after a new one. Any suggestions?

I am running 2x 110Ah batteries, 1x 24v 300W solar panel

Any and all help is appreciated!

[Mike90250]

Puzzled. Are you typing INVERTER while you are thinking Solar Charge Controller ?

Solar Charge Controllers should be powered up by battery before the Solar is connected. And to remove, the Solar gets disconnected first. Sometimes solar panels produce a lot of voltage, and if the Charge Controller does not have any place to send voltage to, ( like a battery ) they can be fried.

Inverters take DC voltage and convert it to household alternating current. Disconnecting a inverter from a battery happens all the time and should not hurt anything.

[JTAus]

Yes sorry I did mean solar charge controller.... so the only way I can do it is to disconnect the solar power first. Is there any that you would suggest to buy as a replacement? The boat will not be at my house and would be connected for sometimes weeks without being unplugged so I would be after one that is reliable and won’t fry

[Mike90250]

It pretty much applies to all controllers, just the way they work, like not putting the car in park while on the freeway, like my mom does when she runs out of gas.

But you can get a simple switch to disconnect the solar panels from the charge controller, and once the panels are switched off, it's fine to pull the battery out

[chrisski]

I've not had luck with leaving batteries unattended weeks at a time and not be charged. Usually there's some drain. On the RV solar installation project, since it will not be used weeks at a time, I plan on removing the batteries from the RV. The single RV battery I have now would get weak when left in the RV for weeks, even not connected. I tired a small solar trickle charger, but that did not work because of bad wiring on my part. I couldn't deal with a single battery alone weeks at a time, so four batteries at many times the cost are going home when not used.