Boosting Exisiting Solar Sign Lights

**Sunking** · 03-22-2012, 06:14 PM

Robert this tells me you have a much bigger problem than you are aware of. You are fully discharging your batteries every night right? I will let others tell you what that means.

**Drumminkat** · 03-22-2012, 06:17 PM

Well the lights are going off after 5-7 hours after a full day charge, I want them to stay on all night.

**Sunking** · 03-22-2012, 10:41 PM

What this is telling you your whole system is grossly undersized and incapable of doing what it is intended to do.

For 1 if your batteries are being fully discharged in less than 1 day use is going to give you one very expensive problem. You have destroyed them. If you discharge a battery 50% or more in a day, lead sulfate crystals will form and harden on the plates. Going to fully discharged accelerates the process. What it is doing is significantly shorten your battery cycles. Instead of them lasting 500 cycles if only discharged 20%/day, will only last 50 cycles if discharge to 0%.

If your batteries were properly sized, they should be able to last 5 full nights before being fully discharged. You are not even getting 1 night

Just off the top of my head assuming a night is 12 hours, your batteries should have 10 times the capacity than they do now. I would also bet your panel wattage needs to be increased by 10 fold.

You need to figure out how many watt hours you need in a 24 hour period, then design around that objective. It is obvious you did not do that and guessed.

**Drumminkat** · 03-23-2012, 12:04 AM

These are commercial sign lights that i purchased, not some design i created. Did'nt realize i was going to be attacked and criticized for posting a question that has not even been addressed??

Here is the same unit with 2 seperate spots and a different panel, but much the same, i got mine 3 years ago and paid $300 a piece.

Page not found - Silicon Solar

http://www.siliconsolar.com/54led-solar-spot-light-flood-light.html

Sunking, do not reply, i don't need to be reprimanded and ridiculed, just helped which you obviuosly do not want to do.

**russ** · 03-23-2012, 12:48 AM

Originally posted by Drumminkat

These are commercial sign lights that i purchased, not some design i created. Did'nt realize i was going to be attacked and criticized for posting a question that has not even been addressed??

Here is the same unit with 2 seperate spots and a different panel, but much the same, i got mine 3 years ago and paid $300 a piece.

Page not found - Silicon Solar

http://www.siliconsolar.com/54led-solar-spot-light-flood-light.html

Sunking, do not reply, i don't need to be reprimanded and ridiculed, just helped which you obviuosly do not want to do.

Sorry friend but Sunking was not 1) attacking you, 2) reprimanding you, 3) ridiculing you and 4) he does know.

The Silicone Solar units are grossly undersized - a 1 watt panel is useless and will never charge the battery even in a sunny location - the 6 volt 4 ah battery is so small as to be useless or else the lamps are so dim you could only see them on a moonless night.

That particular unit is grossly overpriced at 43$

The question may be worded a bit different but has been asked many times - it is a matter of watt hour storage available and lamp watt hour consumption -

When the battery is discharged more than 50% it begins to self destruct - that seems to be happening nightly and 100% discharged. People try to not discharge batteries more than 20%. normally

**Sunking** · 03-23-2012, 12:04 PM

Drumminkat no one has attacked you. Those lights you bought are not designed to do what you want them to do. That is not an attack, that is factual truth. They are spot lights made for intermittent use. It tells you that right there in the description.

A 6 volt 4 AH battery has a total capacity of 6 volts x 4 AH = 24 watt hours total. That means you can only use a maximum of 12 watt hours per day from the batteries. A 1 watt panel in your area can only generate about 5 watt hours per day this time of year.

Now here is the problem. I cannot find what wattage those 27 LED's consume. But for grins let's say they burn 5 watts, and you want to run them 12 hours per night. That means they will use 5 watts x 12 hours = 60 watt hours

The battery when fully charged can only deliver 24 watt hours or about 4 or 5 hours, and the panel can only generate 5 to 6 watt hours per day. It will not work, it is not possible. To work would require a minimum 6 volt 20 AH battery, and a 15 watt panel. You are not even close. Think of it like a checking account. You open with an amount with $24, deposit $6 each day, and spend $60 a day. That means you are busted and bankrupt.

That is not an attack, just the facts.

**Naptown** · 03-23-2012, 05:55 PM

The additional 50' of 24 AWG wire is not helping either. You may not have accounted for voltage drop on the wire.

**billvon** · 04-01-2012, 09:20 PM

Originally posted by Sunking

You are fully discharging your batteries every night right?

He may not be. Most of the solar lighting controllers out there have an on time that the lights run for, based on night as sensed by the panel. His looks "non settable" but I've seen at least one such cheapo controller that runs the lights for about 6 hours after sunset then shuts down.

Drumminkat - I'd check the battery with a voltmeter at night when they are running. If it's getting down to 6V or so before you shut down you're OK, but if it's getting down to 5.5V or so you're mistreating that battery and it won't last very long. If that's the case adding batteries won't help unless you are getting a full charge every day (unlikely.) Probably the simplest solution there is to disable some of the LED's to reduce the draw at night.

Boosting Exisiting Solar Sign Lights

Boosting Exisiting Solar Sign Lights

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