Should I Disconnect My Solar Panels When I Am Charging With My Alternator?
Transcript is auto-generated.
hi jeff cote here with pacific yacht systems we've got a question from a fellow boater named james james asked i'm about to install a solar panel system on my boat i've got three ways of charging my batteries an engine with an alternator shore power charger and solar panels pretty common do you have some way of disconnecting the solar panels when i'm running the engine should i install a disconnect switch that's a actually this is a little this is a good question because james is thinking about what happens when my alternator is recharging my batteries and my solar controller powered by solar panels is also recharging my batteries some alternators will sense a voltage coming from the solar controller and will say you know what i don't need to help here and will actually turn the alternator off so it is not generating power and in some instances that doesn't matter but in other ones where the alternator is also outputting rpm to actually feed the tachometer on your engine instrument panel what that means is that your rpms are not going to work and so a way to stop that is either to disconnect the solar panels when you're running the engine or simply add more loads so that it actually exceeds the power that the solar panels can provide and when the alternator sees a voltage that is low enough for it to trigger to turn on the alternator will actually start outputting for instance on my boat i have 450 watts of solar array and there are certain circumstances where i'm leaving in anchorage where my batteries are full and my the sun is shining and the batteries are getting a charge i've in the past had to trigger some loads to bring the voltage a little bit down to force the alternator to kick in so that my rpm on my tachometer is going to actually be showing yes you could do what's called the service disconnect and put a device that would disconnect the solar panels from the from the batteries but in doing so you have to make sure that you never disconnect solar panels from your batteries when you're actually getting a charge voltage right so that means that you probably want to cover the solar panel so there's no current output coming from the panels to the controller and from the controller to the batteries so it's not an easy thing to do but if you're getting an external regulator these devices now have a sort of a i guess an option where they're forcing the alternator to output just a little bit just so that your tachometer can get an rpm and that's how we do it with the ball mark we actually force the alternator to do a little bit of output so that even if it senses solar charging or voltage charging on the batteries it's still going to create an output to make sure that your rpm or your tachometer is working at your pension panel so that was a really good question from chips thanks for watching this video if you've got further questions that we didn't answer please ask them below or go on our website and fill up one of the forms and lastly if you haven't subscribed to our channel please do so that way you'll get the regular contents and in closing thanks for watching
