How To Speed Up The Charging Of Your Goal Zero Yeti Power Station
Do you have a Goal Zero Yeti and are looking for ways to charge it faster? Today’s post is about five different ways you can do this.
I travel fulltime in my travel trailer and do a lot of camping off-grid. This means that to use my laptop and all the other electronics in my camper, I need some portable power.
So I bought a Goal Zero Yeti 1000. It has been great so far, and it can run everything in my camper except for the AC. It even runs the microwave!
I have 400 watts of solar so on a sunny day, my Yeti can go from 0% in the morning to 100% in the afternoon.
It used to take longer, but I have learned a couple of things you can do to speed up the charging time, and that’s what I am going to share with you today.
Related Post: How To Use Third-Party Panels With Goal Zero Yeti
Five Ways To Speed Up The Goal Zero Yeti Charging
1. Goal Zero MPPT Charge Controller
The first thing everybody should do (unless you have the Yeti 3000 which comes with the MPPT controller) is to invest in the Goal Zero MPPT Charge Controller. It’s compatible with the Yeti 1000, and Yeti 1400.
It’s a big improvement over the built-in PWM solar charge controller and will speed up the charging time. Goal Zero advertises up to 40% more charging efficiency with the MPPT charger vs the PWM. You’ll even see an improvement when using the wall charger.
When used with solar panels, it will improve the charging efficiency the most, especially in the morning, late afternoon, and on cloudy days.
It’s easy to install and definitely the easiest way to improve the charging speed.
2. Goal Zero Car Charger
It took a couple of years, but Goal Zero has finally released a 12V cigarette lighter charger for the Yeti power stations.
If you’re traveling in an RV, or van, and have the Yeti nearby when you’re driving, you’re going to like this.
It has two settings, 5A and 10A, meaning that you can choose to input 60W or 120W into the Yeti when you’re driving.
Pair it with solar panels on top of your vehicle, and the Yeti will charge much quicker than by solar on its own.
Another way to charge your Goal Zero Yeti in a vehicle without buying the car charger would be to get an inverter like the BESTEK 500W Power Inverter and plug your regular wall charger into this while driving.
Before doing this you need to check how many amps the 12V cigarette port in your vehicle can output. You don’t want to blow a fuse by trying to drain too much power from the port.
3. Goal Zero Yeti X 600W Fast Charger
Another accessory that people have been asking for is a faster wall charger.
Goal Zero finally released the Yeti X 600W which can do much more than 100W, it can output up to 600W.
Unfortunately, it’s only compatible with the Yeti X power stations like Yeti 1500X and larger. Not the older Yeti Lithium batteries, or the smaller Yeti X.
4. More solar panels/chargers
The most obvious way to charge a Yeti faster is to add more solar panels, but did you know you could also buy an additional 5A wall charger to double or triple the charging speed?
The YouTuber Todd Parker went even further (before the 25A fast charger was released) and combined four wall chargers.
If your van or RV roof is already filled with solar panels so mounting a couple more isn’t an option, I recommend considering a portable solar panel like the Renogy 100W Suitcase solar panel.
I own two of those and move them around during the day as needed.
Sometimes I don’t have to move them at all for a week, it depends on how my camper is parked and if something is blocking the sun from reaching the panels during the day.
Goal Zero sells its own briefcase solar panels that comes with the 8mm cable (except for the Boulder 200 which has an APP connection) which plugs straight into the Yeti power stations of all sizes.
The Renogy panels require an adapter in between to turn the No products found., or mc4 to 8mm.
If you have the Goal Zero MPPT Charge Controller, you can connect up to 360W of solar to the Anderson Power Pole input.
The 8mm input port can handle 150W per port, so if you max them both out you would be at 660 watts of solar panels. Since no 100W panel is capable of outputting 100W, it would be okay to have a total of 700 watts without exceeding the 660 watt rating.
5. Angle your solar panels towards the sun
Now that you have a bunch of solar panels, what can you do to make them as efficient as possible? One great way is to angle them towards the sun.
During the winter months, the sun won’t ever be right above you, so if your solar panels are mounted laying down on your roof, you’ll be losing out on a lot of watts.
Use tilting kits, or angle your portable panels towards the sun, and you will see a huge difference.
Part of this is also planning how you park your vehicle. If you park so your tilted panels are facing the south, you will gain the most during the peak hours of the day.
Now that I have shared my five ways to charge a Goal Zero Yeti faster, what are your ways?
Let me know by leaving a comment, or if something is unclear, feel free to leave a question.
So I was so excited to read this… and then I blew a fuse in my cars 12v lighter. I got the inverter and the fast charger and all I heard was a pop. I haven’t been able to figure out much except the inverter and fast charger still work, just not together. Any ideas?? I have a Jeep trailhawk v6 the battery should be crazy good enough. I don’t know. I wanted to try it again in the hatches 12v but I don’t want to lose both. I need to get the one up front fixed. Thanks! Great idea, I never would have done the inverter. I am currently typing this in a power outage that may last another 2 days and the 3000 is powering my fridge and stand up freezer. Some sun helped today, but mostly rainy so I hooked up 2 extension chords to the inverter and the 3000 is pulling 130w. Better then nothing. I’ll be able to get it back up to 50% before I go to bed, but I def need something more efficient. I lose power at least 3 times a year. It is crazy. Thanks for all your knowledge, I had zero idea where to start. I was stuck on a gas generator, which may still be my best option, but I really don’t know anything about them.
Oh… and I wanted to say thank you for the knowledge that lead me to being able to hook up renogy panels to my gz. And what all the different connectors were!! I even managed to add my own connectors!! I was very excited!! I currently have 4 100w renogy, 2×2 and the gz 200 briefcase hooked up and they do a fine job of running my fridge and freezer on most days. I do have 1 plug in the wall for the extra umph. Thought about going with another 200 renogy, maybe next year.
Hello Melissa,
So sorry to hear that, that’s totally my bad. Apparently the Bestek inverter can only handle up to 150W when using a 12V cigarette port, but up to 500W when clamped directly to a 12V battery. I don’t remember seeing that when I first wrote the post, so I assume that they’ve had others blow fuses due to this.
Glad to hear my posts have been helpful, but again sorry for misleading you about the inverter and blowing a fuse! Great job on the panels, that’s a nice setup!
Jesse
I was scared to use the clamps but that is something that sounds much more efficient! So I’m basically going to use my car as a gas generator? I can run my car for a few hours to get the charge back up? If I go to a gas generator would you be able to recommend one?. I have looked online for them but it’s like reading Greek. Or is my car with the clamped inverter pretty much going to work the same?
And no worries about the fuse. It took me 2 seconds to change out. Glad I didn’t try again lol
YETI 1000: When I charge my Yeti 1000 from 110VAC the charging rate is only 59 watts?
Can I get a faster rate off of 110VAC, or do I need to go thro a battery charger from 110VAC and input 12VDC to Yeti?
Thanks
What you would need to charge the Yeti 1000 faster is the 25A fast charger. I’m not sure where you can buy one currently, but they should be available online.
Dumb question – I have a Yeti 1500x that I need to be able to charge via car charger & solar simultaneously. I purchased both the 8mm & HPP “combiners” from GZ but they don’t seem to combine; only one input seems to work. For example: if I plug 3 different wattage GZ chargers into the 8mm to HPP combiner it only picks up the highest wattage. Same goes for the 4-to-1 HPP combiner. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for all your posts. They’re quite informative.
Hi,
Thanks for letting me know that, I thought it was possible with the combiners since my old Yeti could do that. It must not be possible with the latest Yeti X power stations.
Would it be possible to change from two different sources using the MPPT module?
Hi,
If I understand the product description of the MPPT module correctly, it’s compatible with the 1500X but you can only plug solar panels into it, not a wall/car charger.
The downside with the MPPT module is that it doesn’t accept voltages above 22V, and without knowing your solar setup I can’t say whether it’s compatible or not.
If you have 12V panels wired in parallel, they’re most likely outputting less than 22V and will work. Then you can connect the car charger to the built-in input and connect all solar to the MPPT module.
I use the MPPT module to bring in solar and use the built in Anderson port to bring in power from the standard 220watt charger. From my experience you can’t use the combiner from different sources of power.
I spoke with Goal Zero about this and you cannot charge from two different sources at the same time on the 1500x. You need to manually switch between the higher source so my plan is to charge solar for my 100w panel(which typically varies depending on sun exposure/time of day) and switch to the car charger when I am driving long distances as that is a constant 120w.