Car trickle charger onboard

Hello. I made a modification on my Honda Civic (also famous model on UK), in which i installed two solar panels (2W total), for trickle charging car's battery.



Full story is here:
http://www.civinfo.com/forum/styling/39 ... reece.html

[Gotwind Ben]

A nice but not so simple mod Simfun ;) - The new Civics do have a lovely shape.

A friend of mine had a Type 'R' Civic - very quick and impressive :D
VW once provided a 5w panel i think, for topping up batteries whilst the cars were for sale on the car lot.
It was an internal suction cup adhesion windscreen arrangment.

The cars sunroof might be another application for solar PV, I'm not sure what the glass reduces the panels performance by?, but makes sense to me.

That's cool, but realistically what purpose does it serve?

I mean I guess if you are leaving it parked for a very long time it might be of some help, but if it is driven every other day (or once a month) there will be enough juice to get it started, and it will be hard to beat an alternator for a lot of amps in a short amount of time.

I am not trying to be a wise guy, just curious.

Tim

Thanks for comments fellows. One use of it is trickle charging while the car is steady for a long time, as you mentioned or listening radio music on a sunny day without worrying for battery SOC. Another use is charging small devices like mobiles without using car's battery. Maybe you have better ideas though :)

I think simfun, maybe ghurd or someone else can verify, it takes 3 amps alone to excite your alternator, thus your 160mah is well lost before you even started?

If I was going to charge small electronics with it, I wouldn't go through the battery, a direct feed would give you something, although at the angle you are at for summer months maybe divide by 2? (80 mah?)

Still looks very cool though,
Tim

Yes, direct feed is easy as i can disconnect panels' wires from battery.