Skip to main content

Solar Powered SLA Battery Maintenance


This circuit was designed to ‘baby-sit’ SLA (sealed lead-acid or ‘gel’) batteries using freely available solar power. SLA batteries suffer from relatively high internal energy loss which is not normally a problem until you go on holidays and disconnect them from their trickle current charger. In some cases, the absence of trickle charging current may cause SLA batteries to go completely flat within a few weeks. The circuit shown here is intended to prevent this from happening. Two 3-volt solar panels, each shunted by a diode to bypass them when no electricity is generated, power a MAX762 step-up voltage converter IC. 

Circuit diagram:
Solar Powered SLA Battery-Maintenance-Circuit-Diagram
Solar Powered SLA Battery Maintenance Circuit Diagram

The ‘762 is the 15-volt-out version of the perhaps more familiar MAX761 (12 V out) and is used here to boost 6 V to 15 V.C1 and C2 are decoupling capacitors that suppress high and low frequency spurious components produced by the switch-mode regulator IC. Using Schottky diode D3, energy is stored in inductor L1 in the form of a magnetic field. When pin 7 of IC1 is open-circuited by the internal switching signal, the stored energy is diverted to the 15-volt output of the circuit. The V+ (sense) input of the MAX762, pin 8, is used to maintain the output voltage at 15 V. C4 and C5 serve to keep the ripple on the output voltage as small as possible. R1, LED D4 and pushbutton S1 allow you to check the presence of the 15-V output voltage.

D5 and D6 reduce the 15-volts to about 13.6 V which is a frequently quoted nominal standby trickle charging voltage for SLA batteries. This corresponds well with the IC’s maximum, internally limited, output current of about 120 mA. The value of inductor L1 is not critical — 22 µH or 47 µH will also work fine. The coil has to be rated at 1 A though in view of the peak current through it. The switching frequency is about 300 kHz. A suggestion for a practical coil is type M from the WEPD series supplied by Würth (www.we-online.com). Remarkably, Würth supply one-off inductors to individual customers. At the time of writing, it was possible, under certain conditions, to obtain samples, or order small quantities, of the MAX762 IC through the Maxim website at www.maxim-ic.com.
Streampowers

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

3 Channels Audio Splitter Amplifier Circuit Diagram using TL084

This is the schematic diagram of 3 channels audio splitter amplifier circuit which built using op-amp IC TL084. The 3 channels amplifier output distribution applies a single TL084.   3 Channels Audio Splitter Amplifier Circuit Diagram The very first step is to capacitive coupling having a p. 1.0 ~ electrolytic capacitor. The entries are railways Vee Y2 or 4.5 V. This enables working with an individual 9V power source. A voltage gain of 10 (1 M?/100 Kohm) is obtained in the first stage, as well as the other three floors are connected as a unity gain voltage followers. Every single output stage drives independently through an amplifier output 50 pF capacitor towards the resistance of 5.1 k ohm load. The response range is flat from 10 Hz to 30 kHz.

Simple Automatic Street Light

There have been lot of problems in street lights. Major problem in some places is every evening a person has to come and switch ON the street light and it should be again switched off in morning. Yes, this may not be the situation in everywhere but exists in many places. So this problem can be overcome by using a simple circuit. Below shown circuit will be automatically switched ON and OFF during night and morning times respectively. Circuit diagram : Simple Automatic street light Circuit Diagram In above circuit R1 can be used to adjust the sensitivity. And the working of the circuit is very simple. The LDR will have very low resistance during day time so the transistor Q1 will be in OFF condition. And during night time the resistance will be very high so automatically the transistor Q1 will be ON. The Q1 is PNP transistor and the emitter of Q1 is given to base of Q2. So the Q2 transistor will be ON only if the transistor Q1 is ON. The TRIAC is used in the circuit to make is circ...

A basic Arduino Solar PV Monitor

I have just recently had solar pv installed, mainly to future proof my energy costs, I do not expect it to be like drilling for oil in my back garden, however the return looks to be encouraging. The install gives you another single unit meter, from this you will see the total amount the panels produce, but that is about it. I wanted to know how much the production was as it was happening, I discovered the light blinks on the front of the meter will flash 1000 times for each kWh of electricity which passes through. The rate of the flashing of the LED tells you how much power is currently passing through the meter. [ ]