ehfastring
New Member
Hey folks, I am a mentor for a high school robotics team. Some of the kids on the team wanted to design a system to recharge the batteries we use on the robots with solar panels mounted on the roof of our high school build space. As a mechanical engineer who has never ventured into solar before, I am not sure where to start.
We are looking to charge lead acid 12V 18AH motorcycle batteries. We would ideally like to have up to 8 batteries that we hook up to charge and stay topped off between uses. The most common use case would be that we would drain a battery over a 1 hour timeframe, and put it on to charge and pull one of the other batteries that is already topped off of the charger.
Our budget would be up to $1,500 (maybe more if there were a compelling reason). We have a multitude of those same batteries that we could use a reserve bank if it would make more sense to charge them and then have more energy banked for when we needed it.
What sort of equipment would be required to accomplish this and what could we hope to accomplish?
We are looking to charge lead acid 12V 18AH motorcycle batteries. We would ideally like to have up to 8 batteries that we hook up to charge and stay topped off between uses. The most common use case would be that we would drain a battery over a 1 hour timeframe, and put it on to charge and pull one of the other batteries that is already topped off of the charger.
Our budget would be up to $1,500 (maybe more if there were a compelling reason). We have a multitude of those same batteries that we could use a reserve bank if it would make more sense to charge them and then have more energy banked for when we needed it.
What sort of equipment would be required to accomplish this and what could we hope to accomplish?