User Tools

Site Tools


electrical

This is an old revision of the document!


The electrical system is mainly solar powered and stored in an array of batteries.

Solar Panels

The solar panels are Conergy 260P panels. There are six panels on each side of the car path.

Batteries

There are 12 NCT-13 Lead Calcium batteries. These are all wired in series. This makes the battery bank a 24V system.

When charging there is a near-constant gurgling sound. This is relatively normal but the constancy could point to the batteries nearing their end of life.

Charge Controllers

The solar panels provide varying voltage/current depending on the amount of sun they are getting. Because of this, you can't just wire them directly to the batteries, you need a controller that ensures that they are connected to the batteries when they have sufficient voltage to charge the batteries.

Because there are two arrays of solar panels, Ken made the good decision to use two separate charger controllers. Each one is a MidNite Classic (I am pretty sure, that they are Classic 250. I am unsure if they are the SL (solar only) or the 'normal' ones.

From the MidNite Classic documentation:

electrical.1754869379.txt.gz · Last modified: by jmct