BellaOnline Forums Money Frugal Living PowerStation Marine Deep Cycle Battery

As part of my birthday present from my family, I ordered a PowerStation Marine Deep Cycle Battery to attach to a solar panel and work on getting my home off the electrical grid.

The battery is a 12 volt with 35 amp hours. Model ps-12350 NB.

It is the size of a 6 volt golf cart battery but is a full 12 volts. It's heavy and has a plastic basket-type carry handle.

I picked up a $5 multimeter from amazon, and from watching enough you tube videos, i figured out how to test my battery charge. According to my test, the battery is over-charged. It arrived this way, so i will assume that is alright.

I attached my 300 watt inverter and ran a few things from it - so that is working fine.

Since it's already charged, there is no need to attach the solar panel to it as yet. What I need to do is use up the battery charge on it, or start fresh on filling a battery up. It feels like a waste to drain this nice full one for no good reason, so I will go with the other option.

I have a depleted car battery in an old jeep of mine that I can go unscrew and plug in to the panel. The steps involved:

-figure out how to take a battery out of a car
-test it for volts
-set up my solar panel
-attach them together

I don't feel like messing around in the 97 degree heat figuring out how to take out my old car battery. But I can look up some you tube videos showing me how to at least do that. So that is my project today.

I might decide to run my fridge off my new charged up battery and see how long that takes to run down, or use it with my computer station, and of course document it all. I haven't decided.

Apparently, to remove my car battery, I need sockets. I don't know if i have sockets. I probably do. I don't feel like rooting for them anyway (again, it's too frelling hot).

Here is a good youtube video on removing your car battery safely. It shows a dude doing it wrong and being zapped with electricity. Sort of.

I'm not exactly a handy type of gal. I prefer rock climbing tools to automotive tools. For the sake of self sufficiency I should learn this stuff. Eventually.

huh. Grabbing a car battery is sounding less appealing.

Maybe what I need to do it use my fully charged birthday battery and run my household from it for a day. So, my netbook and external monitor, my fans and some lights. I won't be able to use the fridge unless I want to trip over a zillion cords around the room, but this might be okay for a test drive. I can connect the two surge protectors on the living side of the studio, and keep testing the battery to see how long the charge lasts. This will be a good way to get data on how long this battery can handle household tasks.

Alrighty then! Off to test my starting volts!

My test at 5:54 pm - 12.71 volts. No load on the battery.

Connection to computer desk power strip. Drawing off the strip:
- surge protector itself - 1 watt
- tiny black fan - 33 watts
- external monitor - 180 watts
- netbook - 28.5 watts
- phone charger - 3.68 watts
- external USB mouse - less than half of one watt

Also a 13 watt light bulb, which is off.

Total - 246.68. Will add 13 after dark: 259.68

Inverter handles 300 watts. I am well within the device's capabilities.

6:09 pm - success! I nervously took the surge protector off the wall and connected everything, in this order.

- battery to floor near outlet area.
- inverter to floor near battery. Connected DC cig type outlet to inverter.
- connected surge protector to inverter. Made sure inverter was OFF!
- Attached battery clamps from inverter to battery. Red to positive first, then black to negative. There was a tiny arc but i expected that.
- Deep breath! Then turned inverter switch to ON. No problems. Everything is running! YAYAY
- I didn't blow anything up. More yay.
- Tried to test multimeter for volt load and got nothing. Apparently there is a different way to do that. I might have to poke around you tube some more.

So there we have it. I could add another fan to this and a light or two. If I needed more load, I'd have to disconnect the external monitor or use the netbook on battery. Easy peasy!

How long will this last me? A few hours? A day or two? This is where the fun testing begins!

11:20 and alls well. Everything is running beautifully on my battery. I will unplug it all when i go to bed though.

I'd love to see how much i can get off the grid. It seems like everything but cooking devices and AC.

I have no idea how long it will take my solar panel to fill the battery, but at least seeing how long the battery lasts once full is a solid step.

At 12:05 midnite my inverter emitted a low, long whine. I thought it was my cat at first. Then i wondered if the inverter was running out of battery juice.

I unhooked everything and tested the battery for volts. Got 0.0, so it was either drained or I was testing it wrong. Either way is likely; maybe both.

Around 11am the next day (today) I moved the battery to my solar panel, which i have leaning against the house in the sun. I hooked it to the battery. I should go out and test it right now.

Let's see what I get. I am still worried I am not doing the testing right.

Tested. Still nothing. I must be doing it wrong. I will look on you tube tomorrow and see if i can learn more about my multimeter.

I unplugged the battery from the panel in any case. I will re-read all the directions again and see how to get the juice from panel to battery. I bet it's not that hard.

I was doing it wrong. I am also mentioning some of this on Jilly's First Solar Panel thread, but here are the battery specifics:

I did not have the plugs in my multimeter properly seated. So i just tested it, and hooked up to my 15 watt solar panel, it is now at a 12.00 volts charge.

Fully charged: 12.7 volts for a 12 volt battery, according to this battery page from Northern AZ Wind Sun.

There is an excellent chart here that shows how much charge a battery has from its volt test. Right now I am at a 40% charge. 12.06 is 50%.

After the sun passes off the panel for the night I will do another test and see what I have. I got a late start in the day, but at this rate, it should be charged fully some time tomorrow.

I actually have no idea what is going on - this is all learning as i go. I am not handy at ALL. Just ask my ex.

This solar link shows another site with a volt discharge/recharge chart and offers this tibdit:

"this measurement is most accurate after the batteries have been at rest at least 1 hour, and neither charging nor discharging"

Good to know.

No actual instructions arrived with either the battery or the panel. Thank goodness for the internet!

Oh and this page shows a quickie diagram for a clear difference between wiring more than one battery in parallel or serial connections. In my case, if i added another battery, I'd want to wire them in series.