How to Connect Solar to National Luna Battery Systems

Video Transcript

Intro

Hi, I'm Paul with Equipt Expedition Outfitters. One of the questions we often get is, how do I hook up my solar power to your National Luna dual battery systems? That's a very good question.

Solar Panel

Because it can get a little bit complicated on the connections into one thing and how one goes into the other, how does that all work with regard to our dual battery systems? Well, let's talk about that for a minute. First of all, what we do is we start with the solar panel, whatever your choice of solar panel is. We truly prefer the Overland Solar Bygot 130 as a portable solution, but whatever that solution might be, we need a solar panel. In most applications, we're going to need a solar controller. This one here is a 10 amp MPPT solar controller used by Overland Solar and means of cabling to your battery. Now, there's a couple of different solutions that we have here. One is our DIY kit, our double battery system that you mount a battery underneath the hood of the vehicle. That system, what you would do is have a portable power, portable solar, a cable to run from the solar to your solar controller and a cable from there to your battery.

Solar Controller

Now, the solar controller bundle that comes from Overland Solar has a set of alligator clips that clips into their system and you can put that right onto your battery. It makes it nice for being portable to other units in your friends' vehicles if they need it as well. Or there's another application where you can go from the solar controller and hardwire it directly to your battery. That is the application I use in my vehicle that I travel with my SUV. That is an option if that's a hard mount under the hood.

Portable Power Pack

Awesome, that makes a lot of sense. But what if you have something like we have here where it's either the portable power pack or the auxiliary battery box? What do you do in those applications? Quite honestly, it's the same thing. The only difference would be an application of the plug that you're going to use. Now, both on the portable power pack and on the auxiliary battery box, there is a gray Anderson coupler here. Now, typically that Anderson coupler is a power output and it's a high amp output for things like inverters or compressors or something of that nature that has a higher draw. But what that also is, is a direct feed back to the battery that is located inside this box. So if you have the breaker on in these applications and you plug this into that power gray SB50 Anderson coupler from your solar controller, it will go into that battery and charge that battery just like it would on the terminals of your battery under the hood. Perfect application for both of these.

DC25 Power Pack

Easy plug and play, not a problem at all. So now, what if you have upped your game a little bit and have gone with a DC to DC system like we have several models? One is the hard mount and we also have what we're calling the DC 25 power pack. Now, this guy here and this guy here already have this built into them. It's not necessary, okay? So this would not be a thing that you need, meaning that you can save yourself a little bit of money when you buy your solar panel because all you need is a solar panel and a cable. This will plug into connections on the hardwire here and also you can plug it directly into the solar port here and it will take that power and charge the battery either inside the power pack or under the hood without the need of a solar controller in the mix. These are built in, takes care of that. I hope this was a little bit of help. If you have any questions on how we can hook solar up to the National Luna battery systems, we're more than happy to help out. Give us a call. I'm Paul with Equipt. Thanks for your time.