My Genlight is dim and only operates for a couple of hours at night

20 Nov 2009

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	My Genlight is dim and only operates for a couple of hours at night

Solution
This is a direct result of inproper incidence angle, bad solar panel orientation, and/or shadow crossing on the panel. The reason for this is your battery is not fully charging throughout the day. When a battery doesn't fully charge the lead plates get a buildup of lead sulfate on them preventing them to turn back into lead oxide of which needs to happen to store energy. Just as an example, lets say you recieve your light and the battery is fully charged (which is not typical). You hook your system up and unknowingly orient your panel incorrectly and set the angle incorrectly. Your fixture lights up at night for its operation time draining your battery 50% (which is a typical drain of the battery in co-ordination with panel sizing) . The next day your panel only receives 50% of the light it's supposed to due to the incorrect orientation and angle of the panel and only recharges half of the 50% depletion from the previous day leaving your battery with a 75% charge. This happens continuosly for a couple of days and you don't realize it because your light is working. Now after those few days a sulfate builds up on 25% of the lead plates because they remain uncovered by charged electrolyte. Now 25% of your battery will never be able to store power because the lead sulfate cannot turn back into lead oxide. So now your still draining 50% of your 75% charged battery in normal operation and this process continues to happen until finally you start noticing your light not working as long and its much dimmer. Eventually this leads to a fully dead non rechargable battery and can happen in less then a month. So in conclusion you must position your panel correctly to prevent this from happening. Correct positioning is panel orientation facing true south (not magnetic) if in northern hemisphere or true north (not magnetic) if in southern hemisphere (below equator) with an incidence angle of your latitude plus 15 degrees for summer and minus 15 degrees in winter. Check your panel between the hours of 11AM and 3PM every hour on the hour for shadow crossings.

Article Details

Article ID:

177

Created On:

27 Nov 2007 06:34 PM