PV, charge controller and an amp hungry kettle?

 Quick question relating to new "making camping comfier" project.

Here's the problem...

 I have my PV solar panel hooked up to a car battery via a charge controller
rated to a maximum  8A output & I'm running say, a cool box at 4A and some
lights at 4A taking the output of the controller to it's maximum...  Can I
connect a 12V kettle rated at 10A directly to the battery posts with croc
clips, bypassing the controller, just whilst the kettle boils?

Is this liable to cause any problems?

Les

  Will that amount of power even boil a pot of water?

120 Watts of heat may not boil a quantity of water...ever.
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Quick question relating to new "making camping comfier" project.

Here's the problem...

I have my PV solar panel hooked up to a car battery via a charge controller
rated to a maximum  8A output & I'm running say, a cool box at 4A and some
lights at 4A taking the output of the controller to it's maximum...  Can I
connect a 12V kettle rated at 10A directly to the battery posts with croc
clips, bypassing the controller, just whilst the kettle boils?

Is this liable to cause any problems?

Les

 

Yes, as long as the car battery is a decent size and in good
condition.
60 AH or bigger shpould be OK.

 As far as connecting directly to the battery; no problem, but, a "cool box
at 4A" takes about 4 X 24 or 96 ampere hours out of the battery per day and
the lights take some more.  It's hard to believe that you can store that
much energy in one car battery with your solar panel.  A car battery might
store a total of about 55 ampere hours, but you should not be discharging it
by more than 50% or even less if you want it to last for any amount of time.

Pete Stanaitis
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 And you have to remember the Peukert factor.

This 55Ah battery is only rated with the (usually) 20 hour discharge rate.
Increase your current load  to 18 amperes and now you have about a 35-40
Amperehour battery with  a lower voltage (VA) output for a 2 hour to dead
cycle. At 50% depth of discharge you get an hour of proper usage out of it,
not to mention your maintenance time now goes to weekly visits.
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"Pete S"  wrote in message

As far as connecting directly to the battery; no problem, but, a "cool box
at 4A" takes about 4 X 24 or 96 ampere hours out of the battery per day and
the lights take some more.  It's hard to believe that you can store that
much energy in one car battery with your solar panel.  A car battery might
store a total of about 55 ampere hours, but you should not be discharging it
by more than 50% or even less if you want it to last for any amount of time.

Pete Stanaitis
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