diy solar

diy solar

Top Balancing woes.

Ha. We'll see what I can fit on the roof of the camper. It's a curved top so I might have to go with two flex panels
not sure what your budget is, but Will recently (last few months or so) did a video on a flex solar panel he was very impressed with. check back in his channel to find it. They were pretty expensive, iirc. He discourages going with cheapy flexible panels. They degrade fast, according to him.
 
It's a 2021 Sunset Park RV Sunray 149.

I stand corrected. The roof does have a flat spot. I could probably fit a 400w panel up there.
 
If you have not labeled your batteries, now is a good time. Take notes on where they each settle in 10 minutes and an hour. If you get any weird chit going on, this will be the beginning of the clues.

After disconnecting them all? I didn't think about that... but I can top them back up and do that this weekend. Great idea.
 
After disconnecting them all? I didn't think about that... but I can top them back up and do that this weekend. Great idea.
If you have them apart now, even if its many hours after your top balance, getting a record of the self discharge (settle voltage) is a great number to have.
I use the overall settle voltage to set my float value. I float just below where they settle on their own so it does not keep micro-cycling them to keep them at some float value.
Its also a voltage that i consider the battery to be full. I am a conservative charger (13.8V) and my settle voltage is 3.35V for all 40 of my variety of cells.

So the settle voltage is important for me is configuring quite a bit of things. YMMV
 
And, for labeling cells, i recommend using letters (A, B, C...) because when you start recording the cell position in a pack (cell 1 is the negative end) you'll be using numbers for that. Its easy to write garbage notes using numbers for cell label and cell position.
 
Last tidbit: If you have any suspect cells that are outliers from the others, do not put them on the ends of your pack, especially not as cell 1. All the weird chit seems to happen on cell 1... you'll see.
 
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