Just wondering if anyone has experience with these?
I’ve read that crappy ones will just keep pumping power to the battery and shorten it’s life and that you need some kind of device to limit the voltage and cut it off?
I’m considering wiring one in my car full time as my alarm and immobiliser chew batteries pretty fast if not driven for any more than a week or so.
I’m just after some advice on what to look for and what’s your experience with them.
Cheers.
I could be wrong in this, but I think the general rule is for a car sized battery any solar panel higher than about 5W needs to have a regulator added, to prevent overcharging. A bare “12v” solar panel can produce much higher voltages at very low current (in the 20’s open circuit sometimes) so when attached to a fully charged battery it will carry on trying to raise the voltage, batteries are not very tolerant of this.
A charge regulator stabilises the voltage and prevents overcharging, and a good one will control the charging process in stages, but that is not necessary for your application. They can be quite expensive.
I tried the NOCCO solar charger—— it works great for boats,tractors etc—for my application,a 94 PU the current draw was greater than what the solar panel was giving me ( avg .15 amp)—- you need to figure out the resting current draw on your vehicle—then use a charger with the right amount of output—I finally bought a NOCCO .75 amp float charger — it has a auto shut off—also I wired it directly to the battery with a plug in the grill for the charger to connect to— It is a 110v unit—- the solar idea would have been much easier just didn’t put out enough juice