Search results

With both of my panels hooked up to same charge controller I was able to take battery from 20% to 100% in far less than 4h, and I was hitting the 30A limit on my controller.. My plan was to use two seperate controllers if I end up deploying the 2nd panel and then I should be able to get it down...

you wont wanna use none of that for FLA, its LFP specific.. they will last longer if you dont keep em at 100% all the time.. FLA will croak on yeh if you chronically undercharge it. If your battery manufacturer gave you charging guidelines, try to set those up.. otherwise, the preset for your...

yeah I tweaked everything based upon feedback from some of our LFP experts here.. it charges up to 14.4v (96% SOC) to keep the cells balanced, then immediately goes into float (13.3v) which then drains the battery down about 10% and holds it there.. the rest of the day while its in sun its at...

you just been testing in town? the picket fencing is from multipath interference, and UHF loves to bounce off all the buildings and flat surfaces here.. which is good for propagation, but bad for multipath interference.. it might get better up in the mountains, the pine trees absorb signals...

Yup, having stats is extremely helpful in the field.. after the first 24h or so at a site I have a pretty good idea what my energy availability is.. I adjust my usage based upon this.. I can go down to about a 20AH a day diet if power is tight, or if its abundant I can crank it up to 60-80AH a...

I was easily getting 100W out of my HIT few weekends ago on complete overcast day, was pretty impressive.. the day before the output hit a full 325W in the sun.. This was Memorial day weekend, I was using ~60AH a day and I only had a ~4-5h of direct sunlight, the rest of the day the panel was...

I just went through the first round of interviews at United Launch Alliance, mebe I'll get that job and find something in the rubbish bins out back worth taking home :P eh whom I kidding, they aint going to hire me to write code that PREVENTS rockets from exploding.. my forte is the opposite...

yeah the only way to get lighter is to go for higher efficiency, the bigger those efficiency numbers the smaller the panel is for a given wattage.. and thus lighter. unfortunately ~20% is about the ceiling for consumer grade panels right now, there's some tech in the 25-30% range but its super...

Its an EarthCruiser, not a roamer.. but I was pretty impressed by this video posted by one of our members in the forsale section Now thats not something yer gonna do in a Winnebago and live to tell about it.. there's alot of world to explore before you'd ever feel compelled to do some rock...

easy.. and yeah its dumb as a box of rocks to convert 12VDC to 120VAC back to 12VDC to run a fridge.. especially since you can buy a Solid State Low Voltage Disconnect for like $25 off Amazon if thats what your after.

not really, glass is heavy.. a 100W Renology weighs 16lbs.. three of em would weigh 48lbs.. flexible panels are much lighter, but they dont last and will be worthless within a decade.

Inverters will gladly drain your battery to the point of no recovery.. there low voltage cut offs are very low, like 10v.. because a 2k inverter will pull hte voltage waaaay down if you actually put 2k watts on it.

HIT's have the lowest temp coefficient of any panel on market, and its just the frame.. which is very lil mass.

@shade, close.. I wanted all black so I wouldn't have to paint it: https://na.panasonic.com/us/energy-solutions/solar/hitr-black-series/n325k-photovoltaic-module-hitr-black-40mm

SecOPS Paranoia, not that it matters.. he's posted many license plates to this thread already, but its still a good idea not to post personally identifying info on the interwebs.

Glass shattering would improve performance slightly, just less in the way, just would not last horribly long after that with cells exposed directly to the elements.. solar panels are quite tough.. building codes require em to be able to withstand hurricane force winds so they don't become 50lb...

alot of circuit switching is on ground using mosfets, meaning as soon as you provide power most of the hot rail is energized and its just got a floating ground until it switches on, so its very easy to have a fault that will pop yer fuse the moment you plug it in.

digikey.com or mouser.com, used to be able to get that kinda stuff at Radio Shack, but alas those days are long gone.. Sounds like you shorted something out when you did the mic, if you take the mic out of the equation does the fuse popping stop? Diodes are usually pretty robust and wont just...

naw the 65a is more than enough.. sounds like you'd be hard pressed to push 10A outta it.. If you wanna run a big inverter or something later just bypass the LVD and keep it shut off when your not actively using it.

yes its fine, all the electronics are potted/epoxied so its IP67 rated.. well ventilated area because solid state relays convert the lil energy they do use into heat and if you sealed one up in an airtight location it'd likely overheat on yeh sooner or later.. I would try to put it in a cooler...