# Thats what I get for dickering with a flea marketer



## Shrek (May 1, 2002)

One of the guys I used to travel the flea market circuits with bought one of my remaining air conditioned cargo trailers and during the dickering asked me if I would consider knocking $300 off the price in exchange for 350 watts/ 15 amps of solar panel. 

I did and now have 35 1 foot by 2 foot solar battery maintainer chargers he had a hard time moving at the flea markets.

Each panel is rated at 12 volts at 10 watts/650 ma per hour of sunlight output. I figure if I gang them up on light weight frames I could feed one of my low load black out circuits off of some of my deep cycle batteries and cut down on my fuel consumption during our extended power outages.

Of course I may only use 30 of them and keep five for battery maintainers as they are intended.

I figure he thought he was shafting me on the deal but regardless what a solar panel is designed for it can always be used as a component of a larger configuration and besides that, the trailer I sold him even with the $300 credit for the solar panels he still paid me $400 more than I paid for it 17 years ago and I got four years use out of it before I quit traveling the flea market circuits and selling my merchandise.


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## wy_white_wolf (Oct 14, 2004)

When designing how to use them pay attention to the VMP of the panels (if listed). Maintainers usually only have a VMP of 14.5 to 15 volts. While that is plenty to maintain a fully charged battery it will not charge a dead one. Might have to wire a few of the in series and use an MPPT controller to bring the voltage back down to what is needed.WWW


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## Shrek (May 1, 2002)

I will remember to check those stats as I consider my options with what various gear I have available.

I guess I sort of considered that when I thought of the fact that one use I have my collection of deep cycle batteries available is to keep two charged off for use with my plastic duck hunt boat that my friends laughed at me using as a bass fishing trolling boat as they put their multi engine hotrods in the river and I dropped my 8 foot long plastic flat bottom tub with two batteries and old trolling motor to first putter upstream along the bank before turning my $200 junky fishing platform around and puttering back down stream to where I put in on the second battery if needed before winching it back into my pick up bed to bring home and recharge the trolling motor batteries with my Shuemacher charger for the next outing.

It crossed my mind that using the charger to keep a small bank of batteries charged from the grid supplied charger and then switching over to some of the solar panels during a day or two power outage might suffice to keep the supply to a low load basic 12 volt convenience appliance circuit reducing my fuel usage.


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