I have started a DIY electrical system. I have 2 renogy 100ah batteries with 2 renogy 100w solar panels and a 20a renogy charge controller with the bt-1 Bluetooth module and a 2000w renogy pure sine wave inverter. Soon to add a smart isolator to the alternator battery. I am running 58 qt alpicool fridge, 4 slim led panel lights, max air roof fan, and cpap machine. I am wondering if I will need more power to run this system. Also, playing with the Bluetooth module are the default settings good enough for my batteries or should I change some of the settings?
It depends on your batteries, they should be fine though. The only exception is sealed AGM’s that should not have any equalization charge. That depends on the battery manufacturer, but yeah. I have no idea what a cpap machine takes to run but I am assuming it’s not 12 volts an that it will be running at night when there is no solar. You might want to think about a larger battery bank honestly which would need more panels to charge fully. Unless you’re driving a lot everyday the isolater won’t do it.
So a dc-dc charger is my best bet I’m taking? They are the renogy 100ah deep cycle batteries. I just did a stress test. I had my machine on, the fridge running, the fan in full blast, my phone and watch charging and this is the result from my battery monitor
So you’re pulling ~11 amps. Do you know if the batteries are lithium or lead acid? Lead acid you get 100/200 amps with lithium you would get 40/200 before damaging the batteries.
One question here is if you had the solar connected while doing the load test? If so that 11 amps is likely higher.
We have all three, solar, dc to dc (isolator) and a generator. We pretty much never use the generator and only use the isolator on really rainy and cloudy weeks.
You need to see how much your panels are going to output as well. My guess is they would be ~12 amps in full sun. We get ~20 amps with 300watts and 40 amp controller.
They are agm I’m sorry, and I did have the solar connected when I did that test. So I figure I’m gonna need another battery, which will put me at 400ah but I don’t have the room for bigger or more panels, my roof can only fit 2 100a panels. So I figured getting a 50 or 60 amp dc-dc charger would help
I have a friend who uses a CPAP machine. He plugged it into a 30-amp gel cell that I had using a DC adapter (not an inverter) and a 50 watt solar panel only exposed to the sun for 3 or 4 hours a day. In the 5 nights of camping we never ran out of power, and also charged our cell phones. He did not use the option of humidifying/heating. Haven’t tried one in my bigger van system, since I don’t use one.
Thank you for your input, I’ll keep that in mind!