I enjoy sending and receiving low powered Morse code (called “QRP” CW) over the amateur radio bands. I power most of my equipment with batteries that I charge in my backyard off a 40 Watt solar panel. Since Colorado receives a lot of sunshine, throughout the year, I almost never have any difficulty charging batteries when it’s convenient for me. Most of the time, especially for these old/used gel cell batteries I do not use a charge controller* and rely on simple “alligator” clip leads for my connections. When time and money permit I hope to power most of my home off solar. However, as it is now, we subscribe to Xcel Energy’s “Wind Source” to power our entire home at this time. It’s something we’ve subscribed to for many years but believe it’ll be more fun, in the future, to create our own power!
*Although I don’t often use a charge controller I do, at times, insert a diode into the charging circuit to keep the batteries from discharging through the panel if the sunlight gets blocked by heavy cloud cover or I forget and nightfall occurs, etc. However, I even try to avoid using the diode, when I know I’m going to be home most of the day, since it creates a little bit of a voltage drop in the charging circuit…
Here’s a YouTube video of my $20 lead-acid “Lawn and Garden” battery being solar charged: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmRnV3DooN0
Here is the YouTube video of my amateur radio station that’s powered by these batteries at the time of this video:
Here’s a page from my own website that features more solar info:
http://www.rogerwendell.com/solar.html
For the Earth!
Roger J. Wendell
05-03-2008
Post time: Jun-30-2017