Solar Charging System for RC Flying Field

Описание: With the growing popularity of battery-powered RC aircraft, our flying club recognized the need to have 12-volt DC available for recharging our LiPO flight batteries. As our location is somewhat remote, we don not have 120 VAC electric service. Therefore, we added a solar powered battery array to provide the electricity.

The system consists of two Grape Solar 100-watt systems purchased from Home Depot. Each system consists of a 100-watt solar panel and a charge/load controller. The panels were mounted on the roof of our field's pavilion and connected in parallel. Each panel provides approximately 5 amps @ 19 volts, thus connected in parallel the system provides, at optimal sun, about 10 amps continuous at 19 volts.

The solar panels feed into one controller that is set up as a charge controller which charges the array of deep-cycle marine batteries. Power from deep-cycle batteries goes through the other controller which is set up as a load controller, which then subsequently feeds the charging stations.
The purpose of the load controller is to monitor the voltage of the battery array. If the voltage drops below the set threshold (11-11.5 volts) it cuts the power to the charging stations in order to prevent battery damage. The load controller will turn the power back on when the battery array voltage gets back above the damage threshold. Total capacity of the battery array is about 360 amp-hours.

The charging bench provides four stations in which to plug field chargers. Three stations have a maximum output of 10 amps. The fourth station has a maximum output of 30 amps. The bench is topped with porcelain tiles to provide fire resistance.