rruff
Explorer
Efficiency, safety, simplicity, low cost. That's what you get with no devices mucking with the current and voltage between the battery and the thing you are powering.
19v custom camper battery... will a MPPT charge it?
- Thread starter rruff
- Start date
Efficiency, safety, simplicity, low cost. That's what you get with no devices mucking with the current and voltage between the battery and the thing you are powering.
But that is not an option, without putting all the complexity on the input side of your battery.
Which is another way to go, from your House bank at 12V or 24V, run an inverter to feed your existing power brick
and that can go either direct to your PC, or if you want, put a big 19V battery in parallel there, charging off your power brick. That pack runs nothing but your PC.
That pack can be bigger than your House bank if you don't need lots of storage there.
Either way of course, the total energy inputs must on average be greater than what you use.
Storage Ah just gives you more buffer to spread that average out over more days.
Between House and the 19V pack you can go DCDC instead of DCACDC with the inverter, I guess that is "simplifying" maybe a bit more energy efficient (maybe) but will likely cost more investment up front.
If anyone can show a Solar controller that can adjust output 20-21V then you are correct just using the PC pack as House getting rid of the 12/24V requirement would be great.
But no links have materialised so far here.
Maybe head over to the DIY Solar forums maybe such a unit does exist.
Which is another way to go, from your House bank at 12V or 24V, run an inverter to feed your existing power brick
and that can go either direct to your PC, or if you want, put a big 19V battery in parallel there, charging off your power brick. That pack runs nothing but your PC.
That pack can be bigger than your House bank if you don't need lots of storage there.
Either way of course, the total energy inputs must on average be greater than what you use.
Storage Ah just gives you more buffer to spread that average out over more days.
Between House and the 19V pack you can go DCDC instead of DCACDC with the inverter, I guess that is "simplifying" maybe a bit more energy efficient (maybe) but will likely cost more investment up front.
If anyone can show a Solar controller that can adjust output 20-21V then you are correct just using the PC pack as House getting rid of the 12/24V requirement would be great.
But no links have materialised so far here.
Maybe head over to the DIY Solar forums maybe such a unit does exist.
rruff
Explorer
Not really complexity at all. I'll find an MPPT that can charge it properly, or I'll have to do something else. I'm not ruling out running the laptop on 24v direct, if that seems to work.
I'll contact Victron and see if I can get someone who knows, and try DIY Solar also.
Paddler Ed
Adventurer
The bit that's just twigged with me is the signal that the charger gives the battery management system to tell it to feed the volts in. For example, when my cable isn't plugged quite right, my laptop tells me that it can't charge because the charger can't be detected correctly. I think you may hit that problem as well.
I think you may need to test the idea before you go too much further down the investment path; something like this*:
would let you tweak the voltage and amperage to see what is required to work (and if there is a secondary signal that signifies the charger is connected).
*This may be overkill, but something like that - I knew what I was looking for, and it was easiest to just go to the big guys rather than trawling ebay etc for an el-cheapo version.
I think you may need to test the idea before you go too much further down the investment path; something like this*:
*This may be overkill, but something like that - I knew what I was looking for, and it was easiest to just go to the big guys rather than trawling ebay etc for an el-cheapo version.