6.9.19:
Evidently, I don't know my own wiring set up. It looks like the trailer battery isn't connected to the solar panel after all. So, what is charging it? Shore power! Oh, boy. I got this one wrong. I had to go remove a lot of junk to get at the wiring. It is buried because of the shortage of space in here, and I was using that space above the wiring to stash stuff. All that stuff had to be removed so I could get at the wiring and figure out what was going on.
Looks like I will have to re-think how I did all this. In the meantime, the junk will have to go in the van outside because there is no more room inside this travel trailer.
Pain in the nether regions.
6.7.19:
Upon further review, the battery really wasn't charged. The way it is set up, the battery connected to the solar panel gets charged first. Since this battery is rather small, it charges quickly. But the bigger battery outside, which runs the trailer, is connected to this battery. It receives a charge from the smaller battery inside, but that isn't much of a charge. It is presumed that an excess is routed to the outside battery during the daytime, but I don't think that really worked. At any rate, the inside battery is what is connected to the controller and it read a lower voltage ( 12.2 v ) this morning. It should be around 12.6.
As for the sunset portion of the experiment, the shade would have covered the car completely by 7 pm. It was a little too far west, so as of 7 pm, it was still receiving sunlight.
6.6.19:
7:30 am
Today will have a couple of experiments. Number one is to test capacity of batteries and
the means that is charging them. The charging is coming from a solar panel. Nothing new
here, except the battery is the one that is powering the trailer. The trailer lights and
the furnace and its fan are powered by the battery. Last winter, the solar panel could
keep up most of the time, but not all of the time. Since it is near summer now, there should
be more energy available. But instead of the furnace, I decided to turn on all the lights
before dawn. Then, I noted the effects on the battery. The battery did discharge noticeably
after 90 minutes of running all of the lights. After about 20 minutes, the battery is slowly
bouncing back. This is because it is after dawn, and I suspect that the load might have
discharged the battery faster than the 20 hour rate.
Note: The trailer's inverter is not working properly. The solar panel is necessary to
recharge the 12v batt, as the "shore power" cannot do its job due to this malfunction. Shore
power will run the lights and appliances, but these are designed to run on AC anyway.
The second experiment is more observation than experiment. I want to track the sun's movements so that I know better what to expect. There's always more to learn. Yesterday, I noted that the sun moved across the east west line into the northern sky probably after 6 pm. This is usually the highest temperature during the day. It was about that time that my car was going into the shade given off by a high profile vehicle parked next to it. Both vehicles are parked in an east west direction. Therefore, as the sun tracked into the northern sky, the shadow from the high profile vehicle would creep over the car.
sunrise/sunset according to garmin 6:30am/8:33pm
9:30 am:
After letting the battery recharge, and it being 2 hours later, it is now recharged. I turned on the lights again in order to see how well the solar panel can supply the battery with electricity. It is a cloudy day, so the sunshine is actually not abundant today.
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