[Noisebridge-discuss] 40 volt solar panel

Jake jake at spaz.org
Thu Jul 5 22:22:35 UTC 2012


What you need is a buck converter, which is a DC to DC converter which 
steps down a higher voltage to a lower one.

You need one which can accept 40 volts or more, can be adjusted to output 
exactly 14.1 or up to 15 volts (depending on the chemistry of your 
battery, how long you want the battery to last, etc) and it has to be able 
to handle the wattage/amperage that you will be doing.

How many watts is the panel?  How big is the battery?  These will help 
determine how many amps you will be passing.

More fancy solar charge controllers are available, and you might want to 
choose one if this is a long-term investment like a water pump on a farm 
or something.  A fancy charge controller does something called Maximum 
Power Point Charging, which you could do with an arduino, but i digress..

-jake

Dan Cote wrote:
Can anyone help me build a charging circuit for a 12 volt lead acid
battery? There is a 40 volt solar panel on the roof that I would like to
make use of.




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