"Wally" wrote: > Lew - I seem to recall that Hunter isolates the starter battery, using > a small solar panel to charge it as you suggest, but something I'm not > understanding here. The starter battery is isolated, but a 10W charger > will take quite a while to recharge the battery after starting, since > that's a large draw, it sounds inefficient if not ineffective - or > does the battery still have the alternator charging it?
Starting an engine requires a relatively small amount of energy from the starting battery; however, it requires it at a very high rate. If you ever had to try to start a stubborn engine in the winter time anyplace in the northern US, you no doubt have had to try to start the engine for maybe 2 minutes at a time for maybe 2-3 attempts before draining the battery. The point is, starting an engine requires a small amount of power that can be replaced by a small solar panel over a relatively long time. A word of caution: In this application, smaller is better. If the solar panel is too large, you either end up boiling the battery or adding complexity by adding a means to dump the excess energy generated after the battery has been recharged. Lew _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
