Small solar power setup with a 20W polycrystalline panel, PWM5 solar charge controller and 7Ah SLA gel battery.
PWM5 controller available from 256.co.uk
PWM5 controller available from 256.co.uk
By Julian
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
That is a SLA battery meaning sealed lead acid battery. Not a gel battery. Both types of rechargeable batteryes can be used but there are differences: on lead acid should be avoided as much as possible discharging bellow 50% (see car batteryes),they will loose the charging efficiency on time; Gel batteryes are called deep-cycle,and you can discharge them more "deep" than 50% and they can maintain it's charging properties (of course they are more expensive than SLA). But for small setup and "environmental protection" you can use even an old car battery (can be reconditioned in some way,using some electrolyte H2SO4 sulfuric acid + demineralysed water) with some LED 12V lights and will save you some money. I hope it helped these info 😉
hello Julian! Thanx a lot for all of your videos. It really educate me. Can I use Li-Ion Battery for PWM5 Solar Charger? Is PWM5 still available to buy some units? but I want to open-source it if I can do it.
Hi Martin. Yeah it works fine. I suppose that was the point of this video really, to show that it works well in small systems too.
I assumed (don't know why) that the PWM5 wouldn't work with Gel batteries. Clearly I'm wrong!