Practical use of solar
I have always thought that solar would be a nice mod to make and there seems to be a wealth of knowledge here about solar. However, I'd like to hear your thought processes before you did this mod. Is ...
Forum Discussion
We started off trying to do say two weeks off grid by doing the "50-90" method if cycling the batteries where about every two days we ran the gen for two hours and charged the batts back up to 90 from 50.
By week 2, it happened that the battery capacity had become less and less each time we did a 50-90, so that by the end, we just had to find shore power to get the batts back to 100% and reconditioned, desulphated, shampooed, etc.
"Some solar" fixed that, so now we can go forever off grid. It seems the batts don't get so sulphated when doing say 85-97s on solar as when doing 50-90s. Apparently the secret is to get closer to 100 (97 vs 90) on each recharge. Not perfect but you can make up the diff every so often by going to 100% using the solar where you let batt voltage climb into the 15s voltage range.
If you are only going out for a week at a time you don't need solar at all. You do 50-90s and then go home and nurse the batts back to full capacity in slow time on shore power.
For camping in the woods in winter here, solar is a waste of space. Little daylight time each day, under trees anyway, so you still need the gen to do your 50-90s except now it is so cold the furnace is eating a lot of battery and solar would have no hope of keeping up.
So it turns out we have portable solar for the nice half of the year and where we camp on the open we get lots of sun and we can do it mostly on solar with a few generator sessions if the weather goes bad for a few days. No more having to go home because the batteries have lost so much capacity from successive 50-90s.
Another benefit of solar, when camping activities are slow at times, and if you are easily amused, is that solar is constantly changing how much you are getting and you can get sort of involved in how it is going like a cheerleader or groupie. :)
By week 2, it happened that the battery capacity had become less and less each time we did a 50-90, so that by the end, we just had to find shore power to get the batts back to 100% and reconditioned, desulphated, shampooed, etc.
"Some solar" fixed that, so now we can go forever off grid. It seems the batts don't get so sulphated when doing say 85-97s on solar as when doing 50-90s. Apparently the secret is to get closer to 100 (97 vs 90) on each recharge. Not perfect but you can make up the diff every so often by going to 100% using the solar where you let batt voltage climb into the 15s voltage range.
If you are only going out for a week at a time you don't need solar at all. You do 50-90s and then go home and nurse the batts back to full capacity in slow time on shore power.
For camping in the woods in winter here, solar is a waste of space. Little daylight time each day, under trees anyway, so you still need the gen to do your 50-90s except now it is so cold the furnace is eating a lot of battery and solar would have no hope of keeping up.
So it turns out we have portable solar for the nice half of the year and where we camp on the open we get lots of sun and we can do it mostly on solar with a few generator sessions if the weather goes bad for a few days. No more having to go home because the batteries have lost so much capacity from successive 50-90s.
Another benefit of solar, when camping activities are slow at times, and if you are easily amused, is that solar is constantly changing how much you are getting and you can get sort of involved in how it is going like a cheerleader or groupie. :)
