Solar Charger/Balancer

[jerrydelrey]

Does anyone sell a Solar Charger/Balancer kit?

Like Mike's Mima Pack Wack:

MIMA Pack Whack and rebalancing the battery - MIMA Honda Insight Modified Integrated Motor Assist

Something that uses off the self solar panels, so we doing have to build the panel, just wire it up.

[3-Wheeler]

Actually I would be interested in a good response to this question as well.

Now that the car has some acreage in the form of a large tail, solar panels could be applied to the top portion.

Jim.

[gderian]

No such thing as off-the-shelf 175 volt solar panels. They are all wired for lower voltage. Who is going to make a lethal solar panel? I suppose one can wire a pile of them in series.

[jerrydelrey]

Originally Posted by gderian

No such thing as off-the-shelf 175 volt solar panels. They are all wired for lower voltage. Who is going to make a lethal solar panel? I suppose one can wire a pile of them in series.

It doesn't have to be a single panel. maybe 3x60Volt panels in series.

[3-Wheeler]

Originally Posted by gderian

No such thing as off-the-shelf 175 volt solar panels. They are all wired for lower voltage. Who is going to make a lethal solar panel? I suppose one can wire a pile of them in series.

For a lethal solar panel, check out the link at 99mpg.com.

I'm interested in any information about high efficiency panels for a job like this.

Jim.

[gderian]

Harbor Freight has 12 volt, 15 Watt panels for $70. If you just want to play around, 2 or 3 of the panels and a DC to DC converter will be enough for experiments.

[jerrydelrey]

I was wondering if a kit existed, to top off the batteries.

Thanks for the info.

[ackattacker]

I came across this simple circuit on youtube to convert 12 volts to approx 180 volts DC.

YouTube - 12 to 180 volt DC-to-DC converter

I think the way to go would be to use a regular 12 volt solar panel to charge the 12 volt battery. Then use this converter to put a trickle charge into the hybrid battery. You'd want to use a low-voltage cutoff (say around 12.5 volts) to prevent discharge of the 12 volt battery when the sun isn't shining.

The low amperage of this trickle charger could never over-charge the hybrid battery, so it should be safe and would be useful if you leave your car parked for extended periods of time. The 1 kilowatt-hour hybrid battery should only need about 10 watt-hours per day to prevent self-discharge. A bit more is better.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by 3-Wheeler

I'm interested in any information about high efficiency panels for a job like this.

To preserve your aerodynamic efforts ... wouldn't you need something like :

A flexible cell to conform the the shape?

or

lots of tiny cells

or

a clear coat over the cells to restore the aerodynamic shape.

[ackattacker]

I think mounting the solar panel(s) inside the car would work fine. (sitting in the rear hatch etc). From my understanding silicon solar panels get their energy from the visible spectrum so the UV block in the glass shouldn't really hurt anything.

Thinking about this more... perhaps the way to go is really simple. Use a regular grid charger, which is useful to have anyway. When you have no access to electricity to plug into, simply plug it into an small inverter (cheap!). That inverter would be tied into the 12 volt battery through a charge relay such as they sell for marine applications. The charge relay would only activate the inverter when the voltage is above a set point and disconnect when the voltage is low.

Then, use a cheap solar panel sitting in the back to charge the 12 volt battery. Say 15 watts, $80 from Northern Tool.

In operation, the 15 watt panel is not enough to keep the grid charger running full time. So the system would cycle. The panel would charge the 12 volt battery. Once the battery was fully charged, the voltage would go above 13.0 volts and the relay would engage, activating the grid charger. The grid charger would operate for a while, draining the battery below 12.75 volts and turning itself off. This cycle would repeat.

Such a system would keep both the 12 volt and hybrid battery in good shape even if the car was parked for a long time and is (relatively) cheap. Probably not enough to "balance" the pack but you could always just plug in your grid charger for that.

Figure $250 for the grid charger or $100 if you make it yourself. $80 for the panel, $80 for the ACR relay from Blue Sea Systems, $40 for the inverter. The system could keep both the 12 volt and hybrid battery in good shape even when parked for long periods of time.