Best strategy to charge battery with solar energy

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mariosangiorgio
 
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Joined: Mon May 25, 2015 6:51 pm

Best strategy to charge battery with solar energy

Post by mariosangiorgio »

Hello, I have an Adafruit Universal USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger - bq24074 and it’s working perfectly.

Overnight my Li-Ion battery discharges a bit and during the day the charger refills it and once the battery it’s full my project becomes solar powered. So far so good, but it means that every day my battery goes through a charge cycle.

My battery has a lot of spare capacity (overnight it never dips below 85%) so I’m wondering what an optimal charge strategy would be.
Is it better to have more smaller cycles or fewer but longer ones? Should I aim at charging up to 100% or should I be stopping earlier?

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blnkjns
 
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Re: Best strategy to charge battery with solar energy

Post by blnkjns »

I heard lithium cells stay best when used from 20-80%

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mariosangiorgio
 
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Re: Best strategy to charge battery with solar energy

Post by mariosangiorgio »

Thanks, I’ll give it a try. I can disable charging till the battery reaches 20% and then disable it again as soon as it gets to 80%.

I’ll have to see if I can get enough solar energy to go from 20% to 80% in go. If I cannot, would you recommend to use a smaller battery or to charge up in two steps (20% to as much as it can one day and then finish the day after)? Doing it in two steps would have some discharge in the middle and it doesn’t sound ideal

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sj_remington
 
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Re: Best strategy to charge battery with solar energy

Post by sj_remington »

BatteryUniversity.com is an excellent resource for information and tutorials about all types of batteries.

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