What Is the Minimum Charge Rate for Solar Panels on a 440 Ah Battery Bank?
Transcript is auto-generated.
jeff cote here with pacific yacht systems we've got a boater with solar panels asking about the minimum charge rate for batteries and how would solar meet that minimum charge rate it's a problem it's a conundrum you know with solar we don't necessarily do what we want we do what we can right all of us or many of us want or would want solar panels to do everything on our boat and bulk charging your batteries with solar panel is going to be a really maybe that's a little bit stretching right because remember solar panels are not able to deliver a lot of energy over a short period of time they give you some energy over a long period of time so when you factor that in it's going to be really hard to size a sol's solar array on a boat to be bulk charging so for example in this instance we've got a 440 amp hour battery bank that's probably four golf cart batteries okay so we've got a 400 hour battery bank and i constantly emphasize that you need a minimum of 10 percent charge as a charge rate so that would be 40 amps well 40 amps on a solar array is going to be huge it might be uh at 12 volts it might be probably seven 800 probably or more watts of solar panels and that's when it's really sunny so you're rarely going to be able to get that sort of output from a solar array with solar you do what you can and generally what's going to be good is the battery bank might not go too low you're probably not going to go from 100 down to 50 overnight you might only go from 100 because when by time you go to bed the batteries are near full you bring them down the next morning and as the sun starts shining you might only bring your batteries down to 80 or 85 percent or 90 overnight and if that's the case then the bulk minimum charging requirement of 10 won't apply right because you're actually in the absorption stage of your battery charging so first solar you do what you can and if you can't do it that's okay thanks for asking
