The cyclic nature of the sun actually makes for way better maintenance of lead acid batteries in practice than float chargers. Basically everyone with a boat, RV or rarely used heavy equipment has switched over at this point.
The cyclic nature of the sun actually makes for way better maintenance of lead acid batteries in practice than float chargers. Basically everyone with a boat, RV or rarely used heavy equipment has switched over at this point.
Can you elaborate here?
Float chargers do fairly frequently kill batteries by evaporating the fluid over time. It's like the difference between a battery being dead in a month or two of non-use vs 3-6 on a conventional float. It's hard to get the charge current just right. By contrast a charger that's voltage naturally decreases in proportion with what the battery is willing to suck up and tapers its charging and turns off overnight has the effect of more or less just "topping off" the battery without boiling much/any of the fluid. If you don't have a parasitic draw in excess of what the solar charger can make up for a battery is likely to be good for 6+mo without being touched. I can go 6mo on cars and other stuff that has digital electronics that draw a little bit and I can go 12+ for heavy equipment that has a hard cutoff switch.