Dear Solar Panel Talk,
I purchased a non-traditional solar panel for a small hobby setup in my backyard. I wanted to have it isolated from the grid and the house and simply tied into a battery and a couple of small loads.
I am finding that this is much more complex than I had imagined. The solar panel is 190 Voc, 0.79 Amp nominal, 104 W nominal peak power. I have a 12V battery I'd like to link this up with.
It appears there aren't easily accessible off-the-shelf charge controllers that can handle such an application. I have spoken to Radio Shack and some professional electricians and engineers with no luck finding out how to go about linking all of this together. The electrician suggested a forum. I am interested in the easiest/cheapest approach, even if it results in significant losses in efficiency. I would imagine it could just be a matter of reducing the voltage from say 190V to 40V and purchasing a typical 40V charge controller designed for a 12V battery, but without a strong electrical background, even if that approach is very simple I do not know how to go about doing it. Perhaps something with inverters? I could convert back to DC for the battery and the DC loads. That may sound silly, but if it ends up being the cheaper option, it would be preferred.
I can follow instructions, so even if the solution is something that needs to be hand built I can work with that,
Thanks!
Jeremy
I purchased a non-traditional solar panel for a small hobby setup in my backyard. I wanted to have it isolated from the grid and the house and simply tied into a battery and a couple of small loads.
I am finding that this is much more complex than I had imagined. The solar panel is 190 Voc, 0.79 Amp nominal, 104 W nominal peak power. I have a 12V battery I'd like to link this up with.
It appears there aren't easily accessible off-the-shelf charge controllers that can handle such an application. I have spoken to Radio Shack and some professional electricians and engineers with no luck finding out how to go about linking all of this together. The electrician suggested a forum. I am interested in the easiest/cheapest approach, even if it results in significant losses in efficiency. I would imagine it could just be a matter of reducing the voltage from say 190V to 40V and purchasing a typical 40V charge controller designed for a 12V battery, but without a strong electrical background, even if that approach is very simple I do not know how to go about doing it. Perhaps something with inverters? I could convert back to DC for the battery and the DC loads. That may sound silly, but if it ends up being the cheaper option, it would be preferred.
I can follow instructions, so even if the solution is something that needs to be hand built I can work with that,
Thanks!
Jeremy
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