New to whole solar thing

[ilazonic]

I'm new to this "house" power set up so bare with me here guys. I got a 200 watt Windy nation system with one battery everything is hooked up like instructions say solar to controller and battery to controller with big@$$ wire. Now the question is can I run my fridge by hooking it up to the controller or do I have to run another set of cables from the battery to a small fuse box and hook up fridge to that? Battery is not connected to the van battery it's a separate system.

Thanx guys

 

[jonyjoe101]

You have to run everything from the battery to get reliable voltage. The load out from the controller will give you unreliable power, voltage will go up and down with the sun. For instance if you got a fan hooked up to the controller you notice the rpm go up/down with clouds etc, on my controller if there is too much voltage it'll shutoff and I have to manually turn it back on.

This is my fuse box connected to the battery, I use xt60 connectors for everything they can handle up to 60 amps and make a solid connection.

 

[ilazonic]

Sounds good jonyjoe I'm going to have to stop by West Marine today and pick up some goodies

Thank you

 

[john61ct]

Some solar controllers have Load Output terminals. Big advantage is they can cut the output automatically when bank voltage drops so you don't let SoC go too low, and are reminded you should be increasing capacity, or reducing usage.

 

[Bbasso]

Having appliances off the fuse block from the house batteries is the safest way. Be sure to use the correct guage wiring and fuses for each item.
With my ecco-worthy SCC the load out doesn't fluctuate no matter what the sun does. I can induce a slight change if I press mppt demo tho...