Hi
I plan on adding a second battery at least 110ah, since i'll be using
at least 200watt maybe 4 hours, i will be consumming 1000watt/hour, so
83ah.
My question is first if i recharge when i'll be using the truck, how
long will i have to travel to recharge the battery at full, if it's
70% discharged ?
My second question is, would it be best to recharge it with a solar
panel and if so, what panel do i need (in watt) for the battery to
recharge the next day.
Thanks
Joe
Unless you know the output of the existing alternator and several other factors,
the recharge time of the battery is strictly guesswork. Charge time will depend
on the output of the alternator, the charge level of the secondary battery, the
charge level of the truck's primary battery, the electrical load (creeping along
in snow at night in cold weather with heater, wipers, and lights on versus
cruising down a highway in the daytime on a pleasant day with the windows down
and just the radio playing), and the engine speed - low engine RPM (low vehicle
speed in high gear) versus high engine RPM (higher vehicle speed in the same
gear, or same vehicle speed in a lower gear).
Will you have some type of automatic switch to disconnect the secondary battery
from the primary battery when the engine is not running? Otherwise, you'll be
running down both batteries at the same time. Some types of transfer switches
use solid state electronics and have a small voltage drop across the device.
Your alternator output voltage would need to be adjusted to allow for this
additional drop or the battery may never reach maximum charge.
Since you didn't specify where or in which season you're using the truck,
there's no way of knowing the hours of sunlight/day that will be available to
you. There are "insolation" (amount of daily sunlight) charts available online
for most of the world. See what you can find for the location(s) you will be
in.
Remember that charging a battery means putting back more than 100% of the energy
used from the battery (due to various conversion losses), therefore a solar
panel will need to be sized for the amount of power needed to recharge the
battery *** in the available sunlight hours at a specific location *** plus some
margin for weather - a cloudy day will have a major impact on the output of the
solar panel.
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