PV Gap

Nicole Said:

Looking to charge a 12 V battery with solar power - Lots of questions.?

We Answered:

Step by step. Some small televisions can actually run on 12 volts from a car battery, but if it can only run off mains electricity, then you need an inverter (DC/AC converter) which takes the 12 volts DC from a battery and supplies AC at mains voltage to the TV. As for size, let us say you want to run the TV for 3 hours a day every other day. Your TV should have a rating plate giving its current consumption, but let us say 100 watts. The inverter should be rated for 150 watts, and the battery should then be capable of 12 volts x 15 amps = 180 watts. For a 3 hour usage you will need a battery of at least 3 x 15 ampere-hours, so a small car battery will be more than sufficient. The battery itself does not really need to be Deep Cycle unless you are likely to forget to recharge it.
Your big disappointment may come with the solar charger itself. The biggest I can find from Cabela is only 15 watts, i.e. just over 1 amp of current, and you do need a controller to make sure the battery is not damaged by the charging. For each hour of TV watching you would then need 10 hours or so of sunlit recharging. If you can find a solar charger 5 times bigger it would be more useful, but also rather expensive. Good luck.

Sara Said:

Solar power battery question?

We Answered:

i had a question regarding solar and didn't get it answered here, so I posted it at a solar forum, which in my opinion worked out nicely! i'll dig up the link for you.

Pauline Said:

Do Sunforce 1 Watt Power Sport Chargers Work For Household Electricity?

We Answered:

No, the answer is in the question you asked. It is only 1 watt.

Bertha Said:

Sunforce 50044 60-Watt Solar Charging Kit any good?

We Answered:

Amorphous panels are slightly more shade tolerant than silicon panels, so sailboaters do like to use them (hard to find shade free with the sails), but as Roderick said, they do lose some power over a number of years, then tend to settle into the lower power.

We sell a ton of Kyocera Polycrystalline panels to boaters, http://www.altestore.com/store/Solar-Pan… one 65W panel may be easier to install than four 15W panels. I don't like to talk badly about other people's products, but their charge controller is well known to not be good quality, I've replaced a lot of them for customers, so plan on adding another $50 to the kit.