DIY Solar charging

Neighbor gave me a 400 watt Q cell panel.

Welded up a frame.

Installed an Enervolt charger.

Max charging amps I’ve seen is 7.5

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How did you wire this to the gem? I put a solar charge controller between my panel and my battery directly. That causes the display to sometimes be funky saying my batteries are 50 percent or empty when they definitely are not. This causes some issues driving like sputtering (especially when it thinks it is empty). When the system thinks the batteries are full, then there is no problem. Did you find a way to trick the cars bms? Thanks for any insight.

@romanroman - Your issue most likely is due to your choice of hooking your solar charger directly to the battery pack. This injects power downstream of your BMC and it does not see the charge, therefore unable to keep track of how much is collected.

Depending on what year your car is, it may not be a simple task. Later models will need to send a request that will wake up the BMC to accept a charge so it can monitor. Then it will lock out the controller because it will think you are tethered to a cord.

In theory, I suppose you could try hooking your panel output up at the controller and the VMC/BMC will just see it as regen as you are driving.
When parked(and charging) you will need to leave your key on so the VMC can keep from going to sleep.

Depending on your intent(longer drive time/range, or using free sunlight), it may just be simpler to store power in a rack mounted storage system at home and plug in when car is not needed.

@AssyRequired That makes sense. My batteries have their own bms inside so I am wondering if I can somehow bypass or remove the Gems built-in bms. I can install a separate battery gauge hooked up directly to the battery. I dont mind the dash display showing a wrong percentage, but the issue is that performance is turned off when the controller thinks the battery is low/empty. I hope that makes sense. As for the solar power, i already have it attached to the roof. Its more of a vanity project as I know it barely provides any charge, but I just think its cool to have built in solar. ( and it looks pretty). :slight_smile:

Need more info
What car do you have? (Year/Model)
What batteries did you install?

@AssyRequired

2016 Gem e4
I installed a 160ah ecobattery
Picture attachd just to get an idea of solar (using a Victron 48v charge controller with 48v panel)