My Grandfather just purchased a cheap solar panel kit for his ranch that could not muster enough power to run his mini fridge.
He has two 6 volt batteries running positive to negative and would like to add more batteries. Probably 12volt. How would he go about hooking up the other batteries and what kind of wire or coil should he use.
Also, I saw on youtube a guy recommending a lead-acid battery from walmart for under . I was just going to go to ecology and just pick up some used batteries but I may be wrong.
Any help for a first timer might help me and my gramps out will be appreciated.
Thank you
You have a 12 volt system with two small 6 volt batteries running in series. If you get 12 volt batteries, you will have to run them in parallel. That would be positive to positive, negative to negative. Don’t exceed the voltage input of the inverter. You will blow it and create a great deal of heat.
Either way, it really doesn’t matter what you buy. If it won’t run the mini-fridge, it won’t run the mini-fridge. No amount of batteries in the world will make it run. The inverter simply doesn’t have enough kVA (watts or capacity) to be able to overcome the locked rotor amps (LRA) of the compressor on the mini-fridge. You need a different inverter, not batteries. That being said, batteries plus a good sized inverter would do what you want to do.
If you really want to get into it, you could put a much larger capacitor (higher capacitive reactance, otherwise known as a "hard start kit") on the start coils of the compressor. That would give your current inverter a chance at starting the mini-fridge.