In IRC, we have discussed a need for a 2.5v charger to help exercise or nudge along a tired cell. Thanks to Kurt and Madscientist, I was able to use a home wired transformer,caps and some rectifiers to add a some amps to several cells that were slow to increase SG with the array alone. These cells took several weeks of charging and discharging to increase their capacity to match the rest of the otherwise better cells. This is a rough method as I have to be there to monitor the voltage and switch the transformer on and off. Also, the Kwh usage of the grid or running the transformer from the RE stuff adds up. So...
I have an extra 230w solar panel. This panel has the following specs. 29.3vmp 7.8Amp and Voc of 36.8v
What I'd like to do is let some factory smoke out of a few electronic devices to try and build a buck converter or as Kurt, in IRC suggests, a vibrator circuit rectified after a transformer for adding a bit of current to the one cell while the main array maintains the other cells as usual.
The reason for the single cell device is to decrease the amount of absorb time and help minimize the often required equalize stage to bring this one cell closer the capacity of the other 23 cells. It takes around 5kwh at 48v nominal to increase absorb stage long enough to bring the SG up on the one weak cell. Each charge and discharge cycle seems to bring the one cell up but is costing near a full 50 gallon water heated amount of energy. So, I'm thinking I might as well put this one solar panel to use and learn a bit in the process....
Here is the battery...
Here is the transformer get up before the caps were installed on the input and I tapped the output for a few volts.... will get an updated picture soon.... Nothing fancy or nice about it, it's got a job to do, I don't care about looks really.
Will get a panel picture soon...