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Understanding AH ratings | 20 comments (20 topical)

Re: Understanding AH ratings (3.00 / 0) (#18)
by ghurd on Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 08:11:54 AM MST

Charging, controlling, and using an 18V bank will be a bit of a pain.
Have to build a charge controller, which would have to be a labor of love to build a decent unit comparable to a $50 12V unit.
Have to very inefficiently use expensive 24V solar panels, which will have an open voltage past 40V (see build a controller), unless you could find 6V panels with enough output to be useful.
Have to have a switching regulator to get much efficiency.
Brings up some series battery issues I would not care to have in a small system.

PowerSteam makes an off the shelf solution.
Input shown as 9 to 14V. Output of 13.8V. ~90% efficient. Starting at $120.
There is a note about ham radio use at the bottom.
http://www.powerstream.com/dc2.htm

It may be a non issue. Like Bob said, I would not run the batteries below about 12.2V if there was a way around it.
The fancy charger on a generator, a $10 handyman generator, long jumper cables to an idling car...
G-

[ Parent ]

Understanding AH ratings | 20 comments (20 topical)

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