[Vern2]

Xringer,
I think I've read that you have a few solar panels. You talk about charging something for your wife.

Here's my take on any type of charging. Don't do it unless your off grid.

Here's my take on the use of solar panels. Solar planels are totally for reducing your electric bill. Unless your trying to keep the chickens warm or some novel idea like that, that will never make money. The loss of converting DC to AC at a charger is 25% of your solar DC productivity. Now to change it from Batteries to AC, another 25%, a loss of 50%. If you skip one or both of these conversions you home free, well almost.

My vision... Install your panels in series to start with. Run the DC wire to an inverter, of course it's not that simple. Inverters will take from 14 to 600 volts. For a small inverter that converts DC to 120v 60 cyc, just plug it into an outlet. Every house has a baseline use of electricity and that's what your shooting to reduce. The electrons generated will be used by your house first. Any more generation will turn your meter backward. I have a smart meter on my house and it goes backward. Now your reducing consumption and lowering electric bill. I hope you can follow. More panels bigger inverter next. Buy an inverter you can grow into, don't buy a square wave inverter, they won't run any electronics. Of course if you go to big, that takes an agreement with the power company called a grid tie system. You will be going over the 240v single phase and a lot of local regulations start to apply. You can use a Kill-o-watt device to see how many watts your are generating.

My 2 cents.