Charging lithium batteries with solar
I've got lithium camera batteries and a lithium jump starter battery pack. All charge via 12v auto circuits, i.e. they have their own chargers, they aren't bare batteries. They all work up to at least...
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I assume the Sunguard measures zero with nothing attached, or with a battery charger attached, because there is zero voltage at the "battery" side. It gets voltage/current from the panels just fine. I can't use the house battery (long story; I have an existing solar setup for that and it works fine, with a MPPT controller, etc. This is a different application.) Using an inverter is very inefficient, and would present the same and/or other issues regarding connection to the controller directly without a battery.
The buck converter is what I suspect is best; not sure if a boost would help, since I'm already down around an amp and if the panel falls too low there's just not enough oomph there to make it worthwhile.
I understand that a constant current is great for charging. But that just doesn't happen with solar and house batteries, or vehicle batteries, or any other batteries connected to solar. The whole point is that these ARE the batteries so carrying batteries to charge these batteries gets rather inefficient. At least the lithiums get a better charge faster than the SLAs.
The buck converter is what I suspect is best; not sure if a boost would help, since I'm already down around an amp and if the panel falls too low there's just not enough oomph there to make it worthwhile.
I understand that a constant current is great for charging. But that just doesn't happen with solar and house batteries, or vehicle batteries, or any other batteries connected to solar. The whole point is that these ARE the batteries so carrying batteries to charge these batteries gets rather inefficient. At least the lithiums get a better charge faster than the SLAs.
