daviddschool wrote in
:

On Jan 28, 12:31 pm, Sjouke Burry s@b wrote:
daviddschool wrote in
news:e35a378a-671d-473e-
:

I am thinking green here. I have recently seen a couple of 15W
solar panels (15 X 2) on sale at Canadian Tire for $99.00. If I
have those hooked up to an electric generator, could I :

1) Trickle charge the generator
2) Have enough power to run some lamps, computers etc

Any suggestions would be great. Thanks

1:no.(you cannot charge a generator, you might try a battery)
2:no.

Ok, how about this:
http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/brows...ation/Renewabl
eEnergy/PRD~0111879P/12V+Eliminator+Renewable+Energy+Deep+Cycle+Battery
.jsp?locale=en This is a battery like you suggested. Could this be
trickled charged to run things constantly?
And thank you for the quick reply


The problem with a solar panel of of any power is,
that on a normal day you are lucjy to get 30% of
the specification, wich is very optimistic, and is
not even reached for high noon desert sun.
That leaves you about 5 wats per panel, and you sure need
a lot of panels to reach any usable power.
Storing that is no problem, but soring only imroves, what
peak power you can draw.
Example:
5 watts in ~12 hours is 60 watthours.
Withdrawing it leaves you with about 80% efficiency, or ~50WH.
Using a 100 watt device will drain the batteries in 30 minutes.
To be usefull at all, you need big panels.
A neigbour of mine, in high summer and 30 square meters of panels,
gets peak 1700 Watts, and about a mean of 800 watts during 12 hours
on a sunny summer day.
Now in winter it gives about 200-400 W during about 7 hours.
That kind of equipment might give a household a usefull daily ration
of power, provided bad weather stays away.
He has a 600 volts converter, and feeds it back into the
240 volt household power.
You can sometimes see his meter running in reverse, but most of the
time he can directly use the power.(He runs a gas station, and the pumps
and computers run(almost) for free).
Location:Netherlands, not a very sunny country, about like England.
Batteries are only advisable, where normal power is not available.
Good batteries are VERY EXPENSIVE. Dont use the China ones.
And get a computer controlled charge unit, or even the expensive
batteries give up the ghost in short order.
For batteriesO NOT OVERCHARGE, and , DO NOT TRICKLE CHARGE, and
DO NOT DEEP DISCHARGE.
Those three things kill batteries quickly. Or:
Stop charging when they are almost full(~14.8 volts for AGM).
Stop drawing power when almost empty(~10-11 volts).
I hope this info is useful.