today i cobbled together the seedling of my own personal power grid. as it stands right now it only has the capabilities to maintain and desulfate the batteries i add to it, but i will be adding more solar panels or wind turbines soon so as to have extra power i can use.
the 4 watt solar panel actually is proving to do more than i’d expected. the battery desulfator only takes 82 milliamps of current while the solar panel puts in 160 milliamps of current during the middle of the day. and on overcast and rainy days it still puts in about 20ma of current. so if in the end it can’t maintain the battery bank by itself it will most definatly slow down the discharging of the batteries.
the battery pack is rated for 85 amp-hours but i will assume it has half that due to sulfation. when i checked on the battery bank at 10AM they where at 12.53v. i connected the solar panel and they where at 12.81v at 2PM. at the ending of the day the batteries have dropped back down to 12.63v.
as the batteries desulfate they won’t drop down in voltage as much. it’s that little black SLA thats the weakest link. but that is also why i have a desulfator!
Post time: Jan-06-2017