Just getting my LED garden lights out of winter hibernation - giving the batteries a charge to kick start them.
I note they are only 600MAh.
Is there any benefit in having larger capacity batteries or is the limitation the ability to crate enough charging time / current?
yip, the solar pannels in those lights are barely large enough to keep a
600mah battery pack topped up in british weather,going larger will just mean half of the capacity is never used,
a lot of people don't realise how large solar panels need to be to produce 'useable' current, lots of people ask me how many garden lights they need to buy to take the cells out of to charge the batteries in their motorhome,
some have even tried it, even after i tell them it's cheaper to buy a 125 watt 12 volt panel for about 300 quid (or 600 if your stupid enough to buy from a motorhome dealer) one person covered the entire roof of his van in cheap individual cells he bought, sandwiched in toughened glass, cost him way more than proper panels,
He ended up with about a 3 amp charge rate in full sun, the slightest shadow on a panel cut the whole lot out, and his van was so top heavy he had to take roundabouts at 10mph or risk toppeling over.
i spent 1200 quid on my motorhomes panels, giving me a 375 watt array, this produces upto 27 amps per hour in full sun (so i can put back half my battery bank capacity in a day), which is more than my mains charger puts out, i just bought a panel when i had saved enough, then another a few months later, and another a year later when i had fitted a 12 volt fridge freezer that pulls 80 amp hours in 24 hours to run,
Anyway, i've gone off topic again,
Interesting tale. Not the panacea that some people think.
I'd guess they work Ok-ish in Southern California (where it never rains ) or Mexico.
Don't even go there ...
In my experience an average UK summer day's charging will give 15 - 25 minutes worth of firefly like twinkling.
Derek
Probably both battery and panels wil be marginal, but more so the panels. You should get more out of the panel by putting a diffusing rear reflector on them during the winter only, so times of direct sun produce more power out.
NT
In message , Derek writes
I find charging them fully with a 'proper' charger at the start of spring gives me a full summer's worth of light as the sun keeps them topped up enough. Only the solar lights that are shaded have a tendency to flicker and then only late at night.
Are you saying they run all the night hours? Most I've seen don't - so external charging will only help once.
In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes
Certainly some of them did last year. Even the ones that didn't would last until well after midnight before starting to flicker.
I've not charged them yet this year but three out of the 7 or 8 (can't remember how many fell victim to the lawnmower) are already running 'til at least 1AM just on charge from the sun.
next door neigbour has one on the top of a fence post for some reason, so i can see it easily from the living room window.
last summer it would be lit untill about 3am, to TBH i dont recall even looking out the window after 3am, so it could have stayed on longer,
as the nights got longer, it'd be off by 3, then 2, then 1 etc, end of december it was lucky if it was still on at 9pm,
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