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Forum Index : Electronics : MM/Arduino Low Current Solar Charger

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ryanm
Senior Member

Joined: 25/09/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 202
Posted: 04:25am 05 Nov 2019
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Hi All,

I'm looking at making a few solar sensors and I want the onboard chip (Arduino in my case) to control the charge on a 1.3AH AGM battery from a 5W solar panel.

Before I reinvent the wheel I thought I'd see if anybody has done somehting that has proven reliable? There's a heap of info on the internet, but none of them come back in two years and update that it's still working.
 
ryanm
Senior Member

Joined: 25/09/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 202
Posted: 04:32am 05 Nov 2019
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I tried to find a similar thread that I saw a while ago, but for some reason it turns out searching the forum for "solar sealed lead acid charger" isn't very productive.
 
Warpspeed
Guru

Joined: 09/08/2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 4406
Posted: 04:43am 05 Nov 2019
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Why not just use a purpose built lead acid battery charger control chip such as the UC3906.
https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/uc3906.pdf

All this has been done before, and the UC3906 offers a fairly sophisticated charging algorithm, even though its all just an analog control circuit.  It has been the basis of a huge number of successful commercial battery chargers, and should work fine for you too.
Cheers,  Tony.
 
mackoffgrid

Guru

Joined: 13/03/2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 460
Posted: 05:13am 05 Nov 2019
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I have a myriad of machines with LA batteries that need their charge maintained.  5W panels are ideal and I use those cheap chinese LM2596 CCCV power supplies.
 
ryanm
Senior Member

Joined: 25/09/2015
Location: Australia
Posts: 202
Posted: 08:23am 05 Nov 2019
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Thanks for the tip Tony, but it looks crazy overkill for what I'm doing. My panel can only put out about 300ma.

I don't want to put much effort in as it's just a stop gap while I refine some lithium MPPT circuits. I think I'll just use an off the shelf PWM charger and wear the extra 5mA or so of current draw.
 
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