Camping Solar

eeepaulo

Not stricly construction and planning but solar seems to be here, i have an ecoflow river 2 battery for running a compressor fridge when im camping, all good, get a bit over 3 days, if i'm away for a week i just charge it for a while off the car, all good but…

Someone gave me a briefcase solar panel -this its a 100w (2X50w panels) in february the ecoflow was reading 90W input when the sun was out, dropping to 40-50w with a bit of cloud. Tried it on an over cast day and was reading as 20w but no charge for half an hour. battery stayed at 68.1%

The ecoflow says 11-50V 13A, 220W Max for the solar input, is it likely that the voltage drops below the amount required? Anything i can do about it?

I tend to just go away for long weekends when the weather is nice over the summer so not that big a deal.

10-10-20

Not much you can do given the existing setup as the ecoflow will need a minimum amount of power just to operate in charge-mode. What you could do is get another matching set of panels to double-up and put them in series and that will increase the voltage from 24v (open circuit) to 48v. All it needs is a bit of simple wiring.

eeepaulo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121990100#Comment_121990100

cheers, i suspected as much,

works fine when the sun out and even a bit of cloud, just not really cloudy,

i tested it in february would i see a higher voltage in june-august even with the same conditions?

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121990158#Comment_121990158

Yes, much better in June than Feb as the energy density is higher in the summer. But if you got 90W off it in Feb then I'd be presently surprised.

eeepaulo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121990167#Comment_121990167

it was reading 90 on the display, i didnt actually monitor how much the battery increased over an hour.

Can i just confirm, even if its really cloudy i might see it being able to charge in the summer?

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121990190#Comment_121990190

Really cloudy… well not so much. You might make 10% of what you could on a sunny day. Hard to say as it all depends on the angle of the panels and other factors. But on other somewhat cloudy days you might make 30% of max…

But the point is, the more panels you have, the better.