Advice for charging 12V batteries with solar panels, no AC power needed

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  • Trapshooter
    Junior Member
    • May 2024
    • 19

    #1

    Advice for charging 12V batteries with solar panels, no AC power needed

    I run a nonprofit youth shooting sports club that uses 12v batteries to power trap machines (clay pigeon throwers). I have several Deka Unigy 12AVR100ET that we use to run the machines. I recently was given five LG Electronics LG280S1C-B3 panels with the idea we could charge the batteries when not in use. We meet only once a month and this shooting range does not have commercial power available. It would help me out a lot if I did not have to charge and lug the batteries back and forth every month. I do have some electrical knowledge in AC and DC, but the only experience in solar has been buying a panel that was made for that application and connecting it. As mentioned, we do not need to convert the power to AC. Below are pics of specs for the batteries and panels. I would appreciate any advice I can get on making these panels work for this application.
    Deka.png 20240322_172246.jpg
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    Last edited by Trapshooter; 05-16-2024, 06:40 PM.
  • ewarnerusa
    Solar Fanatic
    • Apr 2016
    • 142

    #2
    The DC batteries are 12V and the panels are almost 40V, so in order to fully utilize them with the 12V batteries you will have to use an MPPT solar charge controller between the panels and batteries. Good news about that is that MPPT is the better technology to be using anyway for maximizing harvest (vs PWM which are limited to 12V nominal panels), bad news is that they are more expensive than a comparable PWM controller. But since the panels are free, maybe the cost of controller is OK. You say several 12V batteries, so I'm going to assume more than 2. 5 of these panels is quite a bit of capacity, I would say enough to maintain 4-6 of the batteries you've listed. You'd have to price out if it is more economical to get multiple controllers and run multiple independent systems
    I'm an RV camper with 470 watts of solar

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