A while back I ordered cheap, but allegedly accurate, digital voltmeters from ebay, and today I cut out holes in the tops of my battery boxes and installed them. I built them up so that they hook up to the batteries with little alligator clips, so they can be disconnected if need be.
I also moved the AC charger closer to the new location for the batteries, so that the cables run without tension. It's the big gray box on the right in the photo. Finally, I installed a PV7D solar charge controller, the little gray box on the left.
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| The improved battery situation. |
The charge controller is fed by a cheap 20 Watt panel, also from ebay, mounted on a Sunsei articulating mount from the sale rack at West Marine. I finished the installation (14 AWG throughout, so the panel amperage can be increased in the future) yesterday and tested that everything works today. I'm pretty happy with it, except for the water resistance of the panel-side connections. It's pretty clear that this panel is not marinized, so my quandary is whether to wait for it to crap out somehow or replace it with something marinized and save this one for some sort of terra firma application.
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| The solar panel. |
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