I have a lithium 12v battery pack 3S3P, which has an inbuilt (shrink wrapped) battery control pcb.

The pack has 2 cables one for going to the load (output cable), and the other for charging it up (input cable). The charging is normally done by a mains plugin charger.

My plan is to use this in a control box to power up some circuitry.

I have a 18v solar panel that will feed into a new solar/lithium charger pcb.

But I am unsure as to whether I can feed that directly into the one input cable via the battery control pcb.

Any thoughts or ideas please.

 

hi gray,
Do you have a simple sketch showing how you plan to interconnect the modules?
E

 

What is the rated output of your plug-in charger?

 

Have a check of this.

 

And what is rated output of solar/lithium charger?

 

3A max

 

I should have been more specific - at what voltage?

 

Sorry about that

Nominal 12V (10.81v) full cut-off voltage 12.6V

 

Standard voltages for a 3S lipo charger, so it should be plug and play. The battery will decide on its own charge rate, as long as the charger can provide at least 1A, so this is fine. Just make sure they are compatible connectors and same polarity, typically centre is +ve.

 

Yes, many thanks.

I always get mixed up with which is the male/female ends of the barrel power plugs/sockets.

I have accidently plugged both the battery plug/socket into each other. Nothing happened, I dont think.

 

I always get mixed up with which is the male/female ends of the barrel power plugs/sockets.

The ones with a hole (female/plug) should always be OUT and the ones with a pin (male/socket) should always be IN. See this Wikipedia article.

I have accidently plugged both the battery plug/socket into each other. Nothing happened, I dont think.

As I would expect; since voltage OUT from pack is < required voltage IN to start charging (otherwise battery would be charging itself!)