Just getting started in solar. Made a trade for some crown 16-6v 235a golf cart batteries. Looking to run are off grid home. Thinking of wiring up a 48v 470a bank. I haven't settled on a inverter yet. But have been looking at that sungoldpower sp6548. As for panles I have 8- 100w hqst. Any advice is appreciated
16- 6v 235a crown batteries and 8- 100w panels. Just starting out
- Thread starter Merica
- Start date
sunshine_eggo
Happy Breffast!
Assuming these are FLA batteries. You need to become an expert on FLA battery maintenance. I recommend you peruse:
www.trojanbattery.com
Get yourself a 6V charger or a 30V/10A power supply and a hydrometer from Amazon.
Note that the inverter will consume about 17% of your usable capacity of your Crowns just be being on with no loads powered. They have a 80-100W idle draw. That will also consume about 300-400W of your array just to feed the inverter itself.
Trojan Battery | Battery Maintenance
The key to achieving optimum performance and long battery life is to follow a regular care and maintenance program. Read our tips for high performance battery maintenance.
www.trojanbattery.com
Get yourself a 6V charger or a 30V/10A power supply and a hydrometer from Amazon.
Note that the inverter will consume about 17% of your usable capacity of your Crowns just be being on with no loads powered. They have a 80-100W idle draw. That will also consume about 300-400W of your array just to feed the inverter itself.
MichaelK
Solar Wizard
The charging rate will be very low compared to what that bank needs. Most likely you will be destroying these batteries in a short amount of time do to chronic undercharging.
Flooded lead acid likes a charge rate best at about 1/8th of C. 1/10th of C is OK, 1/20th is bare minimum. For 470Ah those numbers would be 59A, 47A, and 24A, respectively.
Doing the math for your panels, assuming you get 85% of nameplate out of them, that becomes.... [(8 X 100W)/50V charging] X 0.85 = 13.6A. So, not even close to minimum.
If you really want to have a well-performing system, charging at 1/8th of C, have [(470Ah/8) X 50Vcharging]/0.85 = 3456W of solar.
I'd advise you to forget the 100W 12V panels completely. Shop on your local Craigslist for high-voltage residential grid-tie style panels. They are far cheaper per watt than 12V panels are. What you might want to do is try to match up a couple of series strings of those 100W panels, in parallel with the larger panels. As long as the parallel voltages are within 5% of each other, they can be paired together. You will need thousands of watts, not hundreds.
Flooded lead acid likes a charge rate best at about 1/8th of C. 1/10th of C is OK, 1/20th is bare minimum. For 470Ah those numbers would be 59A, 47A, and 24A, respectively.
Doing the math for your panels, assuming you get 85% of nameplate out of them, that becomes.... [(8 X 100W)/50V charging] X 0.85 = 13.6A. So, not even close to minimum.
If you really want to have a well-performing system, charging at 1/8th of C, have [(470Ah/8) X 50Vcharging]/0.85 = 3456W of solar.
I'd advise you to forget the 100W 12V panels completely. Shop on your local Craigslist for high-voltage residential grid-tie style panels. They are far cheaper per watt than 12V panels are. What you might want to do is try to match up a couple of series strings of those 100W panels, in parallel with the larger panels. As long as the parallel voltages are within 5% of each other, they can be paired together. You will need thousands of watts, not hundreds.
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