# Charging battery bank from an inverter generator



## Crab_Cake (Dec 2, 2011)

Hey guys, I am new to this forum and I don't have an electric car! (sorry, I do think they are pretty cool though) Anyways I had some battery questions that I was hoping you could answer.

Basically I am going to be running a very small scale gold placer mine this summer. Its in a very remote region of Idaho. I am going to be building a small cabin up there and want to have some 12v power for a few amenities. I figure at max I will use 30ah of battery per night but usually it will be more like 7-10ah. I will probably get 3 or 4 deep cycle batteries that will total about 100-150ah. 

What I want to know is what is the most economical and cheapest way to keep these batteries charged? I was originally thinking solar but after some research it seems out of my price range. Now I am thinking about getting a small inverter generator like this Yamaha. It puts out DC current and then inverts it to AC. So it has a 12v 8amp DC output for charging batteries. This thing sips fuel and will run for 12 hours with .66 gallons. 

My main questions is will this work? I basically just want to load it up with a little gas and top off my battery bank every morning. Also I am guessing I will need a charge controller for it. Will the solar power ones work or am I going to have to go a different route?

Thanks a ton for the info, I really appreciate it.


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## dtbaker (Jan 5, 2008)

if you figure in the cost of the generator, gasoline, and losses from going from dc-ac-dc I would guess the plain solar PV route will start looking better. Cost of panels as come way down.

A simple setup with a couple panels in parallel (putting out 14+volts) and a charge controller to hold the voltage at 13.8 into a couple batteries in parallel would probably do just fine. Single panels these days put out up to 230 watts times 5 hours = about 1kWhr per day per panel.


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## Jan (Oct 5, 2009)

Cheaper would be to use even lower voltage panels. Because his batteries are quite an overkill Ah wise. So charged upto 12-13V would be more than enough. And it eliminates the need for a charge controller. And indeed, I don't believe a couple of them are more expensive than the TCO of a generator.


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## bjfreeman (Dec 7, 2011)

for you use a size 24 battery and the generator you mentioned would work.
since the generator regulates the DC at 12volt, you just hook it up dirctly to the battery.
I suggest you go to budget battery for one.


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