/diy/ - Do It Yourself

I have a policy with mytalented /diy/er When I buy him something big, it always requires that he complete it in some way. Usually an electronics project.

In this case I've gotten a used Jeep Hurricane power wheels and we're going to over-volt it to 24v together. I'd also like to walk him through setting up a solar charging station for it out in the back yard. We live at the edge of a public forest and I thought it would be cool if he could go explore it in the jeep and come back to charge via solar. I have some extra panels and will probably stick one on the hood for good measure.

My question is, since it's a two battery 24v pack, should I buy a 24 volt panel, or string together enough to supply a 110v inverter and plug in the charger the vehicle came with? I won't use two 12 v panels because that could over/undercharge one of the batteries relative to the other and that's bad news. There's also no easy, reliable way to prevent over charging (I could stick a zener diode across the terminals but that's kind of a kludge.)

So, any safer ways to do direct DC charging from a 24 volt panel, or am I going to need an inverter (and a load of extra panels to overcome the inverter losses)?