Solar on a cloudy winter day?
I recently got a deal on a suitcase style 120 watt system with a 20 amp controller. I wanted to test it so I hooked it up and attached it to my old trolling motor battery. The controller indicates i...
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Not a real good test using your trolling battery, some of the charging depends on the discharge state that the battery may be in at the time of hookup.. Hook it up to a fully charged battery and you will get virtually no charging..
Discharge the battery some and try again perhaps?
Add a load to the battery with the panel connected and you should see a bit higher reading from the panel.
.8A for one hr is .8Ahr..
225Ahr of battery with .8Ahr charge, nope, not gonna happen with cloudy overcast weather.
120W isn't going to net you much more than a trickle charge on good sunny days in a large battery. A max of 7A and that is when the panel gets full sun around noon time and you have the panel pointed squarely at the sun..
You have just run into the "Nemesis" of solar charging.. Not much charging happens on a "cloudy" day.
It will help to cover some of your battery usage on bright sunny days, but it isn't going to "top" it off if you use more energy than what the panel can supply for that days conditions.
Discharge the battery some and try again perhaps?
Add a load to the battery with the panel connected and you should see a bit higher reading from the panel.
.8A for one hr is .8Ahr..
225Ahr of battery with .8Ahr charge, nope, not gonna happen with cloudy overcast weather.
120W isn't going to net you much more than a trickle charge on good sunny days in a large battery. A max of 7A and that is when the panel gets full sun around noon time and you have the panel pointed squarely at the sun..
You have just run into the "Nemesis" of solar charging.. Not much charging happens on a "cloudy" day.
It will help to cover some of your battery usage on bright sunny days, but it isn't going to "top" it off if you use more energy than what the panel can supply for that days conditions.
