backchannel: “solar is a trickle charge”

from this reddit thread

Solar panels or generator?

Both. Solar is a trickle charge

Let’s break that down into reasonable and unsubstantiated bullshit sections.

Both.

Agreed. Solar + alternator/generator is an excellent combination.

Solar is a trickle charge

Let’s figure out what trickle charge would entail in this scenario. OP is in a small popup trailer¹ which seems to have come with a Group 24 “marine” battery. These run ~80Ah of capacity.

To offset 5% self-discharge per month we would need to “trickle” (float) in some energy. If we assume a fairly high Vfloat like 13.8v this would be less than 2Wh/day.

For context, let’s normalize my array to 200w to be more representative of an average solar setup. Yesterday under under partially-cloudy skies and a bit of rain my setup made 2,050Wh; we will normalize that down to 547Wh. So a 200w array here and now is 273x stronger than a trickle charge.

1. 2007 Fleetwood Westlake, made by Coleman? ↩