so if you have replaced the battery in your car
recently you know how expensive they are I mean I have a video here my recent endeavors of replacing
my car battery and they're really expensive but can you actually use free solar energy to keep
your battery in top shape and prolong the number of years you use it or let's say you do not
drive that much and you do not want to come back to your car and not be able to start it the
myriad of different solar panels Chargers trickle chargers and so on so I wanted to buy something
moderately powerful and rather cheap to keep my battery topped up so I bought this eco-worthy 10
watt solar panel trickle charger it's a 10 Watt monocrystalline solar panel with the following
specs that you can see here the cables are just like that it doesn't have any connections they they're
just like that so that's the solar panel it looks quite nice glass hard aluminum frame it comes
with a 10 watt solar panel it comes with pwm 10 amps soler charge controller and cables for the
car battery so but before going on to show you how this is connected and used I always had a question
in my mind will this be enough will the sun actually be enough to charge and keep my battery
charged so this will be two and a half months test I will first charge my battery to full using the
noco genius 5 charger then I'll leave the battery for 20 days then measure how much the cold
cranking amps and the European normal en have dropped using my Foxwell bt100 Pro car battery
kind of measuring device or car battery status then I'll charge it again and put it on the solar
panel pointing West for 20 days and then measure again cold cranking amps and EN then I'll charge
it again and keep it on facing south for 20 days and then measure of course again so this should
tell me of course me and of course you I'm quite interested in myself if this will work out keeping
the battery topped up so this should tell me if this is good enough if this 10 watt solar panel
with the 10 amp pwm solar charge controller is enough to keep the battery topped up first of
all how do you connect this kit and how to use it first of all if you have a charge controller always
connect the battery first to the charge controller before connecting the solar panel otherwise this
charge controller might burn out then you connect the solar panel to the charge controller I would
not recommend connecting the solar panel directly as I said if you connect the solar panel to
the charge controller first this this might burn out so this is a 10 watt solar panel you
do not want to overcharge your battery so I do not recommend connecting directly the solar
panel to the battery because you will overcharge your car battery and that's not good for the
car battery so anything above roughly about 5 Watts you would need a charge controller so this
charge controller is Eco-worthy 12 volts 10 amps and it will do bulk charging at 14.4 volts then
eventually will go to floating charge at 13.6 volts it kind of it will detect the state of the
car battery and it will keep it there so it will not overcharge your car battery as far as I know
most charge controllers will do that so first of all how do you connect the whole thing this kit
comes with these crocodile clips for a car battery the red is positive the black is negative first
of all on the charge control the first two are for the solar panel the third and fourth for the
car battery you kind of undo there is a there is a screw you probably can't quite see it you
kind of undo the positive you undo the negative then put the positive in down here underneath you
can plug it in the positive to the Third you screw it in don't tighten it too much I mean you have to
try that is secure then the black to the negative you have to check that it's secure then
you connect it to the car battery so connect the positive to the positive
and the negative to the negative and the load it's green so you can kind of see
it with this button you can switch it off so that's connected then you connect the solar panel
the red is positive the black is negative they're pretty short you can make them a bit longer
but you connect it to the positive and the negative and you can see the solar panel has
lit the PV and you tighten those just make sure that they're connected and this
is your connection the solar panel here first you connect the the battery then the solar panel and
that is that you can that's it you place your solar panel on the dashboard and this will charge your
car battery this is how you connect it so let's first check how much does this solar panel produce
so this is now it's UK May time and this will be short circuit it won't be on load I'll measure it
with my multimeter not on the load so let's check if this solar panel can achieve 10 watts measured
with a multimeter or short circuit so here is me I waited quite a few days in order to find sun
to test that's the maximum of the solar panel so I'm plugging in my multimeter on on amps uh and
trying to find what the maximum amps are under full sunshine in in May and it was I saw it once
0.61 which is the short circuit on the panel but here it was 0.59 then of course I'll also measure the
voltages in order to calculate all the the Watts and the voltages were uh 20.6 I think towards the
end of the video I got to 21 volts I think it's in a second I'll move it of course they can move the
camera away and trying to film it it was having a shade there so you get 21 volts so in other words
to calculate wattage of the solar panel and this is not under load this is a short circuit it's
21 volts times 0.59 the amps you get 12.4 Watts so the panel produces more than it was rated it's
rated 10 watts but it produces 12.4 Watts under May condition in the UK and the time is roughly
about half past three in the afternoon so instead of the simple setup that I showed you from solar
charge control going to the battery that is down there and the solar panel coming in I have a bit
more complex setup but it's nothing really that complicated basically I've just added measuring
device that measures volts milliamperes Watts Watt hours milliampere hours and so on it has
a shunt in there that's the only thing and it just have a little board that I can just easily
move it to the West and the South basically the positive comes from the solar panel the positive
and the negative then I have a little fuse that you can kind of undo that's a little fuse
five amp fuse so all the components that I've used in description of the video if you want
to check them out I have a little switch this is from toothpaste I think and a little switch
there there is a splitter of the positive and negative two so the negative goes so the positive
and the negative go to this measuring device that measures milliampere hours watts and so on and
the negative only one single negative comes out and goes in the input and from the positive
goes to the positive the same thing and then the two negative go out again one another fuse
5 amp fuse and then they go to the battery so the battery is there connected and you can see
that's my device currently measures 12.8 volts but currently it's six o'clock in the evening so
it's just volts but the this the milliamperes if this is less than 20 milliamperes it just doesn't
show anything that's why it is showing zero volts shows what hours not volts Watts Watt hours then it
shows cumulative milliampere hours then the cumulative hours that this has been running inside
is not really complicated I've put it in a box just because it's easier there is a shunt that
the negative goes to it's pretty simple device and I can easily measure how many milliampers and
what what's the the device but simply this whole board here I have just two fuses and I can measure
and calculate how much if it's a sunny day or if it's a cloudy day how much watts has the panel
produced that's it it's a bit more complicated but it it's not actually that complicated so
one might ask why are you going to all this effort you connect the solar panel it charges
the car battery keeps it topped up it's all good but it's not quite like that if you have a
charge controller and this is always connected to the car battery it draws a bit of energy this
consumes 35 milliamperes or 35 milliampere hours so 35 milliamperes per hour when it's overnight
or there is no sunshine or the solar panel is not producing anything well this is during the
night or it just overcast raining this constantly draws 35 mAh so the question is
is the Sun gonna be enough if this is gonna draw too much power and then your car battery get
drained so that's why I'm doing this with 20 days to try to see if the sun will be enough I'll
be also recording how much milliampere hours is produced during the day so the measuring
device just measures how much the solar panel produces is before everything else going to
the to the battery I could have put it after the solar panel to measure how much is going into
the battery but I just wanted to see how much the solar panel is producing so I'll not gonna show
all the measurements I'll have results at the end of the video because it just will take too much
time and you're just looking at at measurements I'll only record the first measurement then
leaving it for 20 days and then record how much the battery has been drained let's first
charge it with an Noco Genius 5 it's currently on standby so press it on mode for 12 volts so
it'll go 25 50 75 and 100% once this is solid green I'll disconnect it so I'll leave it till the next
day to measure how much is the starting point so here is car battery yesterday today is 14th
at five o'clock today it's also five o'clock I left it 24 hours after charging it now let's
measure with Foxwell bt100 Pro to see what the current state of health is of that battery and then
I'll leave it for two weeks positive negative 12.92 volts battery test out the vehicle regular
let's this is 760en I'll do 760 CCA and 760 en so let's first start with the CCA 700 and
60.
Let's see what the state of health is measured 654 out of 760 CCA so it says
good battery that's actually quite good 72% state of health 4.8 Milli ohm resistance
let's do the same with the en the 760. 760 EN so it says replace battery of course 599
EN out of 760, 66 percent 4.81 milliohms so now I'll leave it two weeks and take a
measurement again after two weeks and this will stay at home in house roughly let's say
20 degrees all around not during the night but it won't be under harsh conditions so
let's see how low this will be in two weeks so it has been exactly 20 days since I left
this battery here at my house so let's see what's the condition of the battery after 20 days
sitting without doing anything my Foxwell bt100 let's see 12.83 volts battery test out of the vehicle regular I'll first do the CCA at 760
EN I'll do first 760 CCA 760 testing and currently it says replace battery
630 CCA out of 760 so it has dropped quite a bit not that much you can see the
previous numbers here 70% state of health 4.98 milliohms resistance so the resistance
has increased so let's see as well the en so en 760 EN of course it will say
replace the battery 580 en out of 760. 64% state of health and 4.95 milliohm resistance so obviously the battery has dropped a bit with
the voltage and state of health so now first thing is to charge it again with the Noco Genius
5 charger currently it's five o'clock and the same time 20 days later I'll charge it
leave it for 24 hours and then test it again this whole experiment started 13th of May 2022
and I spent two and a half months now it's 24th of July to do this experiment and this is all
the data that I've gathered one is measuring the car battery before and after after charging
and so on to have a Baseline and to see how much charge can you keep the car battery charged
using this 10 watt solar panel so first of all because before showing the result whether it
has worked or not let me show you the difference between the west and Southeast I couldn't have
a South because my house is positioned Southeast I also positioned the solar panel behind the
glass in the house so this was to simulate the glass behind the car in your vehicle in your
car so first of all this is exactly if you say this is exactly 20 days and this is also
exactly 20 days both on Southeast and west so for the West I had there were quite a few
rainy days so there were four rainy days so these here there are four rainy days and in the south
west Southeast not Southwest there were no rainy days unfortunately I cannot control the
weather so that's how it is overall they were more cloudy days in the Southeast as compared to the
west but there were four rainy days overall I got 9310 milliampere hours cumulative that's overall
9.3 ampere ampere hours from the west and 10.7 ampere hours from the southeast from this 10 watt
solar panel this is the same thing whether you do it hours worked so how many hours this my
device that was measuring the milliampere hours and amperes and and Watts there were 124 hours
kind of cumulative for the West 147 hours from the southeast of course there were there would be
more because there were a few rainy days and it doesn't measure that this device doesn't measure
if the milliampere hours it's it's below 20 milliamperes so in other words that's why this is
this is fewer, overall watt hours per day how many watts per day watt hours per day it's 132 and
146 from the south east as compared to the West I mean if there were a few more sunny days or
cloudy days in the west probably they would be roughly about the same so I've also compared
here average milliampere hours for the sunny days from the West which is 622 milliampere hours and
it's a 651 milliampere hours when there's sunny days from the southeast so in other words it's
a bit more you get a bit more milliampere hours from the West as compared to the to the to the
southeast on the cloudy on the cloudy days on the west I mean I put them cloudy sometimes it's
a bit more Cloud sometimes a bit less cloudy I mean I I should have probably written it a bit
more granular uh it's 254 milliampere hours on a cloudy day on the west and roughly about 419
milliampere hours on the Southeast there were no rainy days so if you see here there were no
rainy days from the from the southeast so now the actual results so these are my measurements let me
move this away this is how many cold cranking amps after the first charge then I waited 20 days and
then measured again then second charge I waited 24 hours to measure it then put it to the west then
I measured it again and put to the southeast so this is after the first charge 24 hours after
the Noco Genius 5 charge and and I got 654 cold cranking amps then I waited 20 days and I got 630
cold cranking amps so it it dropped substantially this is about well not substantially but it
dropped about four percent then I charged it again after these 20 days and I got 661 this is
about the same and then after 20 days using the solar panel facing west I got 638 cold cranking
amps so one could say well yeah this is more than 630 but overall this drop this is four percent
drop this is also four percent drop so in other words the solar panel facing west doesn't really
do that much to the battery doesn't really keep it topped up if you just leave it on its own
maybe the number of rainy days affected that I don't know I mean I have to probably do this
for whole year in order kind of to get average data but then that's quite a long this will be
like three years test then I charge it again and left it the solar panel to the battery on
this facing Southeast behind the glass in in my living room just kind of the simulate the shield
in your car so I charged it and it was 646 so it's a bit less than 654 and 661 well maybe I kept it
a bit longer than 24 hours there is a I charge it then leave it for 24 hours maybe I kept it a bit
longer not too sure so it dropped a bit more so I didn't really quite charge it but then keeping
it on the Southeast it actually increased from the 646 cold cranking amps it increased to 650 so
the southeast actually it worked really well so it doesn't matter if you compare it to the initial
charge 646 cold cranking amps this is a lot more the 638 and 630 and it's fairly close to 654 the
initial charge this is 650 just 4 less than 654. so what I'm trying to say that it does work having
a solar panel connected to your car battery this 10 watts solar panel my kit with a solar charge
controller with a pwm solar charge controller but you need proper sunshine and this is May June
and July months in the UK so I suspect that during the winter this might not work that well it's
still better than nothing of course but the solar charge controller might drain a bit the battery
if there is a lot more rainy days so you have to make sure that your solar panel is facing south
or Southeast so this is it it does work but you have to be careful where you position your solar
panel thank you very much indeed let me know this took two and a half months a lot of work a lot of
editing thank you very much indeed for watching if you have any comments let me know in the comment
section on my video thank you very much indeed
