Help to ID a Solarex Panel needed

Dear Paj
From the size you quote (0.38m2) I would expect it would be about 40w. Your multimeter may be out of calibration. The current 60w Solarex module is 1110 x 500( 0.59m2). The 40w is 764 x 502 (0.38m2)

However any regulator with a higher Amp rating than the solar pannel is fine. The smallest quality regulators are generally about 6A and your pannel wont put out more than this. It is often worth buying a higher capacity as it alows you to connect more pannels or a bat charger at a later date (often 10A units are only slighly more expensive than 6A).
A quality regulator will get more out of the pannel. I use is the Plasmatronics PL20 (it will handle up to 20A with lots of great features, programable, with display), but would be a bit expensive (at $300) for your set up. The Morning star 6A unit is only a single stage regulator but is PWM and at only about $80 (from memory) may be a good choice for your small set up.
Cheers John

Paj,

Make sure that the regulator you get is designed to charge Gel Batts. The Morningstar, SS-10L-12V, that I have has a clip which when fitted dops voltage to 14.1 for Gels, or removed 14.4 for normal wet cells, cost $115. It's a 10 amp job.

A call to the bloke at Federal Batteries confirmed 14.1 is better for Gel/AGM.

Cheers,

Jim.

Paj,

According to the Solarex site it is probably a 20 or 30 watt panel. Check out the site It has pics of their panels that may help you as well as complete drawings etc.

Cheers

Magnus

paj,
If you read the entire Morningstar website you will find that -ALL- tests done actually compare various solar regulators, obviously for showing how much better they believe their regulator is, however I could not find a comparison between a regulated battery and an UNregulated battery.
This however is at the far end of the Morningstar website;

http://www.morningstarcorp.com/support/Why-PWM/why-pwm-6.shtml

ANALYSIS - Are charge controllers really necessary?

“The systems described in this paper have battery capacities equal to -4 days of load requirements and are typical of many PV systems used for residential or outdoor lighting applications. The function of the charge controllers in these systems is to protect the batteries from overcharge or over discharge.

There are PV designs which operate satisfactorily without charge controllers. As an example, when load requirements are much smaller than in the systems described here, it is often economical to omit the charge controller entirely and use a battery with a capacity of ~30 days of load requirements instead.
The U. S. Coast Guard has used this type of design in many navigational beacons. While the batteries in these navigational systems do suffer from the effects of overcharging and over discharging, the relatively large battery capacity allows these systems to continue to operate reliably”

Where you put more into the battery system than you remove you will have a battery in a state of charge, and as has been stated elsewhere and often a battery will only accept the charge required. As to boiling the battery, remember the battery is powering a fridge and various accessories, therefore being Discharged and Recharged continuously, not only being charged during the few 'sunhours' available daily.