PV Gap

Rhonda Said:

i have three 130 watt solar panel and 6 battery cells of 2 volts 550AH. but my batteries are never fully charg?

We Answered:

Well you are stating the solar panel powers but no mention of their voltage????. Yes, they should do the job. I suspect the lack of blocking diodes may be your problem, assuming you have done the homework. You have 6 battery cells at 2 volts each, that is ...err..12 volts, assuming you have them connected in series. Count the number of cells on the solar panels and maybe we have a starting point. One solar cell is 0.6 v, in this case you would need a minimum of around 30 cells (physically it will probably be 32 to make it 'square'), you need a fair bit of over- sizing in that direction. Solar panels are resistive when not illuminated so must have a blocking diode included to prevent the batteries from discharging into the solar panels at night. Check that each array has a blocking diode included, if not add them. Solar power is pretty useless unless you have loads of sunshine. You seem to have gone through a bit of trouble and expense on this one, so give me some basic facts and I will help you through it.

Update 7 Dec If the batteries take 20 hours to fully charge and there are 10 hours of sun each day then the batteries will be fully charged in 2 days. The question was, can the battery be charged, answer is yes, it can. There is no mention of load. If the batteries are not charging there is something wrong.