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Solar Charging a Battery

dgraham1995

There are 2 parts to my question, I have a mobility scooter that assists me when a great deal of walking is required. I am going to add a 5 watt solar charger to it to try and lengthen run time. Will it charge as i am using the scooter in full sun. Also when i use the battery charger for the device do i need to disconnect the solar panel of can I add something to isolate it? A switch or a diode isolator circuit?

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  • 0

    It is a All Season Ranger Freedom which calls for (2) 22 AH Batteries. When I bought it (used but in great working order) it had (2) Interstate 18 AH batteries installed. I live in Florida and use it for the theme parks, there are places to plug in but i figured a trickle charge in the sun all day might help. I was going to use a Harbor Freight 1.5 Solar panel that i saw a hack of taking out the led and and putting it through a a buck converter which allows it to produce 5 watts. The scooter performed well the first time i took it out but even with plugging in a couple of times, it was nearly dead when I got back to the car. Thanks for all the help!

  • 0 in reply to dgraham1995

    The panel you indicate seems to be only 1.5W so even with a buck converter you will not get more, only less as the converter is not better than 100% conversion, it will give maybe 85% at best, it is 24V output too so I see why the buck converter but it will still be limited to less than the 1.5W

     

    So if you convert to 12V for the batteries you will have  less than 125mA to use, if the batteries are 2*22Ah  and there 6V each (Assumption) that's still only 22Ahr so 22/.125 = 176Hrs min to charge from empty to full, you can extrapolate that to any period you need but basically 0.5%/Hr of charging allowing for losses etc. It wont make much difference

    This is just napkin math from memory so I could be off a bit here or there but nothing significant , but even if im way off and you double the figures it is still only 1%/Hr

     

    or to do the math another way, battery = 22Ah * 12V total = 264WHr, solar cell = 1.5W

    264/1.5 = 176 hrs

     

    I think you can draw your own conclusions with the math

     

    Sorry to be a downer

     

    Peter

  • 0 in reply to Robert Peter Oakes

    Hi Peter, Looks like we are crunching numbers at the same time as usual. Different assumptions but yours are probably more realistic than mine. Discouraging for David in either case. Thanks for your insights. When do we start the PS again?

    John

  • 0 in reply to jw0752

    Hi John

     

    I googled the panel and found to be actually 1.5W at 24V and the panel he quoted was Harbor Freight 1.5 Solar panel (1.5 indicating the wattage)

    also typically scooters and other like devices put 2 * 6V batteries in series so still 22Ahr, just at higher voltage

     

    At the end of the day, it does not matter which of us is correct, either way, at best only 1%/Hr will not provide any measurable increase in ride time

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