Wednesday, Dec 23, 2015 at 15:44
From experience, older model Engels will happily run on unregulated aircraft power anywhere up to 32 Volts, RMS measured on a moving coil volt meter, as long as there was a
battery in the circuit.
Battery power down to 10.9.
You can get a bit of confidence by putting the panels, without regulator, and the
battery in the sun and
check terminal voltage every half hour or so. Open circuit panel voltage of around 22 Volts will drop pretty dramatically when connected to the
battery, especially if the
battery is down a bit. Once there is a circuit established, voltage gets dropped on all the resistances, including internal
battery resistance.
Old school
battery maintenance for FLA required "boiling" the batteries for about half an hour every week. Hydrogenation happens when the
battery is fully charged and leads to dry batteries. GEL and AGM are a lot more sensitive so keep an eye on the terminal voltage if you do the experiment suggested. When I was poor, I ran a 40 litre Engel off a 90 AH Deep Cycle charged by two 36 Watt (nominal) recycled panels without a regulator, for months at a time. I would change the angle of the panels every hour to get every bit of charge I could.
If you are at all worried about applying high voltages to your
battery,
check out the voltage profile put out by something like a D250S at the end of the charge protocol.
Iza
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