WOW these are good looking gadjets

[Kyle Communications]

Rosco when you reply to a thread there is a upload button..when you hit it it will ask you for the picture to upload...THE PIC SIZE CAN NOT BE ANY MORE THAN 500K IN SIZE this will be your issue most likely...you may have to save the picture at a different size then you can upload it and when the bar is done you can then hit the POST button

 

 

[Roscoe]

Rosco when you reply to a thread there is a upload button..when you hit it it will ask you for the picture to upload...THE PIC SIZE CAN NOT BE ANY MORE THAN 500K IN SIZE this will be your issue most likely...you may have to save the picture at a different size then you can upload it and when the bar is done you can then hit the POST button

Got it thanks Kyle. Any comment on my email above regarding Solar charger?

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

The panel is ok but you need a solar regulator... they are cheap off ebay or even Altronics. Because you have the lower voltage panel you can just use a series regulator there are plenty around. Up at my farm I have all my farm machinery on a solar charge arrangement as I was sick of flat batteries all the time as we are not up there often enough but its different as I am using a grid connect panel like on a house they are 40V panels and I am charging 12V batteries. You need to use a different controller for them. A MPPT controller is the best but that that is because my panel at the farm is 190 watts not 10 watts so can deliver a lot more current. I tried a series reg on it but it was terrible it kept cutting out so went down the MPPT road it it is just fabulous. It keeps all my batteries at 13.8V floated the only issue is all of the batteries are essentially in parallel and they will fight each other and want to discharge into each other because every battery does have a different internal resistance. During daylight hours the panel overcomes all of the issues and its only during the night they are all floated with each other but because in the scheme of things its only a short time it works ok. If you are just doing the one battery a 10watt 12v style panel which is the one you showed the data for it will be fine. When floated really there will only be 50 to 100 mA to keep the battery floated. I currently have 7 batteries on my MPPT well actually 8 because my Massey tractor has 2 x 12v in parallel anyway. I was up there this weekend and added another block with 3 out on it...pics attached..have to tidy up the wiring yet but its been a bit of a experiment to see if it would all work..and it does ...extremely well

 

 

 

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Make sure your DC lines to the battery from the regulator are fused

 

 

[jasmreid]

If you put a low voltage drop diode in each battery lead you wouldn't have the risk of one failed cell draining all the batteries and maybe even starting a fire in one of your pieces of machinery? Just a thought.

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

If you put a diode in any of the lines to each battery you block the voltage monitoring by the regulator so it wont see any battery. You would need to leave a diode out of 1 battery but then the rest would be charged to that battery condition. With all the batteries in parallel it gets the "average" of them to be charged at. Each of my cables to each battery are fused so if there is a short or major failure of cut cable it will just blow a fuse and isolate that battery.