Friday, Apr 01, 2005 at 23:21
Klaus, I did not intend to make my post misleading, to clarify it more I think may complicate it even further……
I believe it is less expensive to buy a good Deep Cycle
battery ($220) than a plasmatronic PL20 at $320, because as you have posted the regulator is only effective when the
battery is at, or very near its full capacity, the regulator does not actually add power to the
battery system, only regulating the power that is being produced by the solar panel, and then as you have stated, only when the
battery system is somewhere near fully charged, they are mainly effective on wet cell batteries to avoid them gassing, boiling and running dry, whereby a sealed calcium DC
battery can accept added power supplied by the solar panel on the few times it is available, because the fridge is drawing on the
battery power almost constantly during the day light hours as power is being supplied by the panel.
A regulator is less effective on larger/oversized
battery systems simply because they infrequently receive full charge from the panel when the panel is undersized by comparison and the fridge is running.
By doing the maths and also checking out previous solar panel tests on the
forum, I believe you will find an 80wt solar panel will keep up with or exceed the power demands of an ‘average’ fridge, even by the numbers quoted of ~4amp (which I believe to be low) for 6 hours and a few extra amps each side of the 6 sunhours, because when the sun is on the panel it gives out some amperage, as you can see the numbers will quickly add up.
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