Charging different battery types

[EarlyStarts]

Hello! I have a garage/boathouse on a lake and I keep some toys there - 4 wheelers, Snowmobiles, jetskis, boat batteries and batteries that run 12v light systems that all need to be maintained. I have Gel, AGM, and regular lead acid battery types in various sizes from tiny motorcycle batteries up to small 150ah banks of two deep cycles. I think there are 12 batteries and/or small banks. There is no power on site.

I want to install a couple 100w solar panels to maintain the batteries over the winter but I am not sure how to go about it. Suggestions? Multiple charge controllers in parallel? Use something like the Battery Minder 210AY?

Thanks!

[PNjunction]

On the right track. I like the 210AY splitter with it's three 15A fuses, one for each lead just in case you biff-it.

I wish I was at the battery-candy store with you right now, because you'll want these (in order to keep things safe and sane from a consumer and not engineer-geek standpoint..)

Battery Minder SCC180 controller to mate with your panels. Perhaps a few. Keep controller close to batteries, and not at the panels to keep voltage drop to a minimum. Don't use speaker wire. A large handful of those 210AY splitters. Although the rating for the SCC180 is, um 180-200 watts (from nominal 12v panels, NOT grid-tie!), I'd be a tad conservative and run no more than 120w personally. That's just me though.

AND, because you know the difference between maintaining and charging, and the fact that Battery Minder says that the best results are obtained with the SCC180 controllers when the batteries are charged to FULL beforehand, (like ANY maintainer system needs, not just BM) the following:

Tecmate-Optimate TM500 DC-DC charger. Charge all your smaller batteries to full from a donor source battery prior to using the solar controllers. This is especially important for those 150ah batts, although the Optimate is yeah, too small for those for *charging*. Get them both charged fully first and then the controller will have no problem maintaining those bad boys. I'd probably dedicated a controller just to them.

Of course, heed Battery Minders warnings about paralleling batteries of highly different states of charge. The Optimate TM500 dc-dc charger will help with that.

Does it sound like I own this stuff? Yup. A lot of junk gets recycled around here, but the Battery Minder stuff stays - the only REAL small chargers maintainers with full time temperature compensation. That's important for a battery geek. One reason I love their AC powered maintainers too.

Remember - this is basically a solar maintainer system that charges - meant really for maintaining batteries that are already full. If they aren't, it will still work, but perhaps not as well as a dedicated charger / controller used for daily-cycling which is much more exacting in specifications.