How to Perform a Charge Test on a Solar Energy System

Video Transcript

"Alright. We've got everything connected, it appears to be working fine. Let's just do a charging test to make sure we've got what we think we have. Now, we've got our clamp meters set up for DC amperage and we're going to clamp it on to the red wire which comes from the charge controller and goes right to the batteries, and see what kind of juice. We've got 2.45 DC amps coming in and charging our battery at about 12 volts. So, we're really only putting in about 45 watts into our battery. And that determines how much charge we get, which determines how much power we can withdraw later on. So, when you want to find out how long these batteries will last, it depends on what kind of load your sucking up. If you're trying to run 150 watt flood lights on the outside of your house, these batteries will only last for a couple of hours. But if you go economical and you use these Compact Fluorescent Bulbs, which only draw 800 milliamps, they would run for three weeks on these batteries and you could have plenty of light. If you're even further down the totem pole you can get a 12 volt marine activated light and this will work directly on the 12 volt power and you don't need any inverter. So depending on what you actually want to run, you choose your lighting and your loads and that determines how much run time you get out of your batteries. Depending on how much sun there is too. So it's a little bit of guess work involved in the whole thing."