Safe to leave solar hooked to batteries unattended?

I like this one that somebody here posted. Just work the two sliders.

http://pveducation.org/pvcdrom/properties-of-sunlight/calculation-of-solar-insolation

NinerBikes wrote:

What data base are you using on that map, from what geographical area?

The live data appears to be from one of the various solar radiation monitoring stations. On his first link is a map of the US with the various "sun hours". Somewhere (might be on that website) on the internetz I found where you can enter a zip code and it would give you the nearest town that you could use to figure how many sun hours per day you would get in a given month. Where I live it's 5.7 sun hours in the summer. You can take the output of your panels and multiply it by the amount of sun hours to get a good gesstimate of your daily amp hour haul minus the solar irradiance (some people have solar meters to measure that).

red31 wrote:


Live data!

http://www.nrel.gov/midc/

Nice find!

red31 wrote:

NinerBikes wrote:

red31 wrote:
I took a look at solar radiation maps for the time of year and locations I'm interested in visiting and came up with a multiplier of 5 (kwh/m^m/day). Imp x 5 >= to my usage

worth quoting... Care to share where you found this information with us? a 500% uprate factor?

Live data!

http://www.nrel.gov/midc/

What data base are you using on that map, from what geographical area?

NinerBikes wrote:

red31 wrote:
I took a look at solar radiation maps for the time of year and locations I'm interested in visiting and came up with a multiplier of 5 (kwh/m^m/day). Imp x 5 >= to my usage

worth quoting... Care to share where you found this information with us? a 500% uprate factor?

Live data!

http://www.nrel.gov/midc/

the government

http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/1961-1990/redbook/atlas/

search solar radiation map

red31 wrote:
I took a look at solar radiation maps for the time of year and locations I'm interested in visiting and came up with a multiplier of 5 (kwh/m^m/day). Imp x 5 >= to my usage

worth quoting... Care to share where you found this information with us? a 500% uprate factor?

I took a look at solar radiation maps for the time of year and locations I'm interested in visiting and came up with a multiplier of 5 (kwh/m^m/day). Imp x 5 >= to my usage

tplife wrote:
Many contemporary solar installations utilize no-maintenance AGM batteries. They are rated safe for use inside your rig, so there's no need to mount them outside or remove them to avoid casual theft - they can be mounted under the dinette or inside of cabinets at any angle without water levels to check, battery trays or venting. And their many advantages can mean their higher cost is worth the payback.

To be correct, there is maintenance. Per Deka / East Penn, my preferred mfgr; annually, you want to at least go look at them! :)

Seriously though; if you have not observed any loss of capacity over the previous year, you can skate by for another year without peeking. The main reason for checking is to assure that connections are secure.

There has not been any credible proof that AGMs are more expensive, after purchase, over time. IMHO, wets are chaper to buy, but more expensive to own.

HTH;
John

this is way to complicated for me. I just have a small 15w panel on the roof with a 7a controller for trickle. With the batt cutoff turned off it will keep them topprd off if I recharge when returning home. Here in the Phx area I get long days of sun. When camping I just run the gen an hr or so in the morning. I have 2 GC2's with a Boondocker 4 stage conv.