Some Solar Power Activity to Come.

 The past years my activity on the solar front has been lacking, but now I should get it improved. Here are some thoughts.

I started preparing (somewhat larger lead-acid) batteries for use in the solar power system, as replacement for the (too) small battery I have connected at the moment - that one got depleted last winter during the *very short* charging phases in midwinter. The solar panel has been moved to a better position, but I still need more buffering. For now one of the batteries will be setup for solar, the others will be set up as buffers if main power is lost. I still have one more solar charger, so I could probably get another battery running on solar (when the weather improves). I might also find a few low power 12V solar charger/controllers for use with the smaller batteries. As long as we are talking lead-acid batteries a "float charger" could probably be of service

That means that two batteries, 18Ah and 20Ah, are being charged, so they will be ready to receive charge from the solar charger, and will not be depleted by supplying power to the charger when no sunlight is available. Later I may go to pick up some 12V/45Ah batteries designed for electric scooters. They are available locally. 

I do have a few more panels to set up when the weather improves (right now the weather changes between frost and sunshine, then storm and rain. Not good for outdoor work, such as setting up solar panels and/or making/maintaining antennas.

Right now the setup uses one 50W (12V system) solar panel.with a battery of around 7Ah - too little buffering. 

The first battery being made ready to run with this panel (initially) is a 20Ah one. That should provide about 10Ah usable per day, i.e. 120Wh. 

I have two 100W (12V) panels that can be mounted, and some 20(25?)W panels somewhere, they need to be located and put to use, too.

My two charge controllers can be used in a 24V system, so there is an option to use this with a DC/DC converter to a 13.5V system, with a decent efficiency. 

I will need some calculations to see what I can drive with that setup.

In the long term there is no doubt that I should use LiFePo4 batteries, as they are lighter and have better storage efficiency/capacity. In addition they are, in the long term, less expensive than lead-acid batteries.

Further, two of the 4 (almost dead) recycled Pb batteries (nominal 28Ah) look like they should go into a cycle of charge/discharge, to get them up to a decent capacity (probably 20-25Ah).