Solar Charging & Solar Boost 2000

**BroncoHauler** · 11-04-2008, 07:52 AM

I have a question for those of you with the Solar Boost 2000.

Should the displayed Array Current and the Output Charge Current be dependent on the house battery charge? I swear that previusly on bright, sunny days, my display would show over 5A, but when I questioned Peter at SMBw why I'm only showing 1.6A, he's telling me "the array will not show high amperage coming in if the battery is already full."

BTW, I was told SMBw no longer offers or installs the marine solar panels due to too many issues.

Herb

msponer · 11-04-2008, 10:33 AM

Yes, as the batteries get more full they will not accept as much incoming current as when they are more discharged. It depends on the type of batteries, but AGM's start to taper off and accept less current when they are about three quarters full. When they are completely full you can't put more than 1 or 2 amps into them, which isn't actually being stored for later, it's just warming them up a little.

You can check the full output of hte solar panels by turning on a load-- some lights.

surfgeek33 · 11-04-2008, 12:12 PM

Herb,

We have 1 Kyocera panel on our SMB. I checked this morning on a semi-sunny morning in LB after looking at you post. I had 14+ charge on my battery and the Solar Boost was trickle charging already. The output it was giving was around 2.5-3.1 while the light was blinking. Hope this helps.

Ray