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Post by garym81 on Oct 11, 2019 16:51:09 GMT
I am wondering about how much I need in Solar Watts and Batteries to be able to power some very small items. I need to run a Battery Charger/Maintainer to charge my ATV battery during the winter so the battery does not go dead over the winter. The ATV is located in a shed. I also have a small ultrasonic Pest Alarm that runs non-stop to keep the mice out. This is in Wisconsin where it gets cold in the winter. I currently have a 45watt solar Panel kit, 10amp Controller, 750Watt Inverter and three Marine Deep Cycle Batteries in the system. Now it has been really cloudy and rainy this summer and fall but I can't keep the Inverter turned on to run just the Pest Alarm. I have not even plugged in the Battery Charger yet for the ATV Battery. (I think the Charger is 1.5amps). The Inverter sends off an alarm when there is not enough power and basically shuts down.
Do I need more solar panels and do I need to change out the Controller to handle more solar panels.
Further note that my solar panels do not get much sunlight when it actually is sunny. It maybe gets three hours of sunlight. I hope to improve that soon by cutting some trees and getting a better angle setup for the panels. (60 degree angle) These are 45w Thunderbolt Magnum panels. I am thinking of replacing or adding their 100w panels.
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Post by solaruserpower on Mar 9, 2020 22:59:05 GMT
If it's for your ATV, definitely not the end of the world. It shouldn't even count as the power back, but the battery alarms are usually designed to work in conjunction with inverters. Needing more solar panels would be more for a situation where you needed to store excess power for what your goal is.. Typically for an on-grid solution when the alarm goes on, it is a sign that you may need more solar panels to excess store power to you batteries, to make sure that the batteries are really effectively storing energy that you can rely on to power your home during high spike power usage at night, these primetime hours usually bill you more but if you can generate power back to the grid you're going to get more money back for your on-grid solution. It's not the end of the world having the alarm stay on, it is usually just a red light. However, not getting enough sunlight is a huge problem, you should definitely ground mount them. Plus you really would be better off simply setting your solar panels up with a good design, plugging them into your inverter, and getting power back to the grid, then just use an AC/DC power charger for your ATV battery and plug it into an outside port, you would essentially be getting a better deal then something off-grid rigged to charge an ATV battery.
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Johann
Junior Member
Posts: 56 
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Post by Johann on Apr 21, 2020 2:51:11 GMT
I am wondering about how much I need in Solar Watts and Batteries to be able to power some very small items. I need to run a Battery Charger/Maintainer to charge my ATV battery during the winter so the battery does not go dead over the winter. The ATV is located in a shed. I also have a small ultrasonic Pest Alarm that runs non-stop to keep the mice out. This is in Wisconsin where it gets cold in the winter. I currently have a 45watt solar Panel kit, 10amp Controller, 750Watt Inverter and three Marine Deep Cycle Batteries in the system. Now it has been really cloudy and rainy this summer and fall but I can't keep the Inverter turned on to run just the Pest Alarm. I have not even plugged in the Battery Charger yet for the ATV Battery. (I think the Charger is 1.5amps). The Inverter sends off an alarm when there is not enough power and basically shuts down.
Do I need more solar panels and do I need to change out the Controller to handle more solar panels.
Further note that my solar panels do not get much sunlight when it actually is sunny. It maybe gets three hours of sunlight. I hope to improve that soon by cutting some trees and getting a better angle setup for the panels. (60 degree angle) These are 45w Thunderbolt Magnum panels. I am thinking of replacing or adding their 100w panels.
Let's get started. A marine battery is not a true deep cycle battery, it is rather a better starter battery like you would use for starting a car. A starter battery would state the rating in CA or CCA while a deep-cycle battery uses ah or AH as a capacity of the battery.
You got a starter battery, not really good for starters. A starter battery usually has about 35 ah, there is no real calculation to convert CA or CCA to ah. Since you have 3 marine batteries you may have around 100 ah. Since you have starter batteries you can only take about 15% of power out of it on daily basis so you do not destroy the batteries. So you can only take 15 ah out of the battery or about 180 wh (watt hour). How many watts does your rodent repeller/alarm use ? If your charger uses 1.5 amps at 120Volts that would be 180 wh per hour times 24 hours = 4,320 wh(watt hours, so the charger alone uses 24 times more than your allowance for the battery capacity is.
Let talk about your hidden power user. If you have a modified inverter be not surprised if your inverter uses up to 80 watts per our on idle without load, it depends what model and design you have. Best is if you put an ampmeter in ;line with the battery cable and actually measure how many amps it pulls without load. My inverter uses about 80 Watts without anything plugged up to it.
Back to your solarpanel. By the time you charge a battery you will have about 60 % losses. Your panel under best condition may produce 45 watts per hour wh per manufacturer. You get 3 hours worth of sun at best that would be 135 watts times 60% = 81 watt hours per day. That is all your panel will put out in a day.
Check the label on the battery. It may say how many amps you need to charge the battery to keep a battery good. I guess it should be around 10 amps or so while your pannel gives you about 1 amp per battery as is.
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