I’ve been creeping up on some portable DC power solutions for a while now. This has gone through a few iterations involving a 28 pound 30AH Sealed Lead Acid battery, Added a solar panel (with a very noisy charge controller!) And now, finally, a proper battery with a proper charge controller.
The good folks over at BatteryHookup.com deal in second-hand battery stock. Some of it is B-Stock, some of it is pulls from medical equipment, and some of it may have, in fact, fallen off of the back of the truck (literally, not figuratively.) They do rigorous testing on all of their merchandise and have heard good reviews all around. Recently they came into some Valance 40AH 12V batteries (that originally retailed for north of $1200 USD) that were in impeccable shape. I had a mighty need, so I swung on it.
All in all it was about $242 shipped with some special hazmat fee ($37) that was well documented beforehand.
While the battery has a built in Battery Management System, I was still in need of a decent solar charge controller. The original one that came with the solar panel was quite noisy on 40 and 80 meters, rendering the bands completely unusable during the daylight hours. Luckily, the good folks over at West Mountain Radio have been turning out some awesome products recently, including the Epic PWRgate.