What Would Allow Solar Panel Charge Kit to Charge Trailer Batteries as Well as Charge From Outlet

Question:

I don't think your answer is right If I put that D250S battery charger balancer/regulator between the battery bank and the C3000 Inverter/charger/transfer-switch unit so that both shore power and the solar panels can charge the battery bank, I won't be able to pull 3000w out of the battery bank so that the inverter can power my 120v AC circuits. This D250S unit is not designed for 200A to flow backwards through it from the bank back to the inverter. It's possible they designed them to work together on the same power bus, a variant of Ethernet over powerline protocols to signal/recognize/handshake each other, or just additional firmware routines in the sense/text phase of the charge cycle to recognize the other and proceed accordingly and in either case they would be keeping their intellectual property and proprietary design under cover... but it doesn't exclude the possibility that they just didn't do anything about it, and set the warranty to just less than the expected failure time.

asked by: JL L

Expert Reply:

You can use the solar panel charge kit # 34272628 with the battery bank of your camper and still charge the batteries with a separate charge source (vehicle alternator, power outlet) but you'll also want the Redarc # 331-SBI212D which balances the charge between the two sources and prevents any backfeeding or other issues like you mentioned.

So basically you'd run your two charge circuits to the CTEK and then it would charge the batteries. See attached picture.

expert reply by: Jameson C

click to enlarge

Jl L.

8/14/2019

Jameson C.

8/14/2019

This is a really good set of questions. I sent them to Go Power so that they could give their response on how their kits handle the situations you mentioned: The solar controller bases the amount of current it puts to the battery on the battery voltage. If that voltage goes up from an alternate source like the inverter/Charger then the controller will back off the amount of current it puts to the battery as to not overcharge the bank. All our systems are hooked up in this manner. Even the smaller ones. Even the portable kits will work if there is an alternate charging source like a converter. There is no signal connection or communications between the two units, everything is based on battery voltages and we have thousands of installs done in this manner.