PV Gap

Ricky Said:

Can solar batteries (Ni-cd) be charged with an electric battery charger?

We Answered:

If they are the AA size that I'm thinking of, they can absolutely be recharged by a conventional battery charger. We used to do that before in the winter, and it works well, except it's a pain to keep taking the batteries out of the lights, and putting them back in. The newer solar lights from Costco have such a good panel with them, that we haven't manually charged a battery in over a year.

Jimmie Said:

If the sun charges the solar batteries then why do they have chargers for solar batteries?

We Answered:

sun is the source for energy. the photocells produce the electricity by absorbing the sunlight energy.
but imagine , based on amount of sunlight hitted the cells , they transduced it to related amount of electricity which means when it's clear and cells targeted strait to sun there is much produced voltage , camparing to cloudy days or at sunset.
the chargers are not very technical words for their function.they have got regulating circuits which control and smooth the voltage in some cases , of course as a option, it charges the chargable battries to use in case of emergency or for using during nights.

Tony Said:

Solar??? Batteries??? controller?

We Answered:

You can use 12 volt solar panels in parallel. This will increase the current and keep the voltage the same. Regulators come in sizes from 6 to 80 Amps. 12 Volt batteries come in various size and can be grouped in parallel to increase storage. Inverters can change 12 volts DC into e.g 120 or 230 volts AC.
The minimum is 1 solar panel, 1 regulator, 1 battery and 1 inverter. The total cost can be under $400.