Pros and Cons on Different DC to DC Chargers

[Glennman]

Which battery bank needs to be able to "handle it", are you referring to the house batteries or starter batteries?

[mqbus767]

House batteries.

[Glennman]

Now that I have my system fully functional (except for charging from the alternator), I'm thinking that the 3000 watts I'm receiving from the solar panels will be all I need. I'll be sharing my results on my "project" thread soon, but recently I ran my batteries down to 89% by running the AC for about 5 hours with the solar panels turned off. Then at about 4:30 pm, I turned on the solar panels and the batteries were at 100% within 20 minutes. All that on a cloudy day! The batteries recharged even while the AC was running (I had it set to 70 degrees so that it would be running). The AC was drawing about 850 watts, and the solar panels were pumping 1700 watts charging the batteries and running the AC at the same time. I am very impressed. I have yet to do more testing, but I may not need to charge off the alternator at all. More on that later...  Thanks everyone!