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Solar panels
Gary wrote in news:uVSyg.273940$IK3.20678@pd7tw1no:
Is anyone familiar with "self regulating solar panels"? I would like to hear from someone who has installed one without a regulator and how well it keeps the batteries up. Thanks, Gary I've never heard of a self-regulating solar panel, but I would suggest that you need one. The problem occurs when your boat is plugged into shore power and the batteies are fully charged. If there's nothing drawing any current, then the additional amperage will easily bring your batteries way above charging voltage What you need is a regulator that runs in diverter mode. In this mode it senses the voltage and when it goes above the level that you've set, it diverts some of the wattage to a resistive load (in my case, a water heater element in my hot water tank). There is absolutely no loss when running in this mode. This regulator controlls both my solar panels and my wind generator. I would suggest looking at charge controllers from MorningStar. I went through several Trace/Xantrex and finally scrapped it. It seems that once they started buulding the units in China that the reliability went to hell. I went with MorningStar TriStar unit and have been very happy with it. -- Geoff |
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