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Solar Battery Charger With LM317T Wireless Electricity


HOME Find out how to make a current controlled solar battery charger using an LM317T Monitors
General solar | education | electric circuit Up to date details of
Solar ShareThis Printer Friendly Version the wireless electricity
Shopping monitors for sale in the
Wind A small solar panel makes an excellent battery charger for AA and AAA rechargeable batteries. Only a few UK
components are required and construction is very simple making this a perfect first renewable energy shopping
News project. 13:29, 24th May 2012
Electronics
Energy Efficiency Rechargeable AA and AAA batteries have a voltage of around 1.2 Volts when fully charged. Therefore 2 in Flashing LED on
Education series gives a total of 2.4 Volts, 4 in series 4.8 Volts. Common solar panel output voltages are 3 Volts (for Electricity Meter
Electric Circuit example the 3V 100ma solar panels in the REUK Shop), and 6 volts - perfect for charging 2 or 4 batteries Find out how to
Water respectively. interpret the flashing
Carbon LED light on electronic
The Limitations of a Basic Solar Charger electricity meters
Heating Details on making the simplest kind of Solar Battery Charger are available here. Unfortunately this set-up education
Storage has one serious limitation - the solar panel has to be well matched to the batteries to be charged or the 11:27, 17th May 2012
Transport batteries may be overcharged. If you later decide to charge batteries with a different capacity, you would
Biomass need to change the solar panel. Wind Turbine
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Current The importance of
Hydro Current is the most important factor in any battery charger. As long as the voltage of the solar panel is wind turbine insurance
Wave greater than the total fully charged voltage of the batteries, the batteries will be charged . If the current is too and what to look for
Websites little, the batteries will charge very slowly. If the current is too high the batteries will be charged too fast, are wind
Geothermal at risk of being overcharged, may overheat, and have their usable lifetime reduced. Therefore the next 12:57, 5th May 2012
Recycling development step is to make a current limited battery charger.
Tidal Solar Insolation
Safe Battery Charging Current A measure of the
Website Since we are still making a simple solar charger it will not automatically turn off when the batteries are full. amount of solar
Therefore we need to keep the charging current low enough that it will not damage the batteries even when radiation hitting the
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they are fully charged. A current of around 10% of battery capacity gives the right balance of charging
speed and safety - for example, 2700mah AA rechargeable batteries should be charged with a current of
earth
solar
10% of 2700 = 270ma. To charge the batteries faster a higher current could be used, but the chance of the 10:12, 5th May 2012
New Solar Panels batteries being overcharged would increase.
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Limiting Current with an LM317T PV Water Heating
The LM317T is a voltage regulator chip. It can also be used with a suitable resistor to regulate current. Full Find out about a new
details on how this works are available here in our guide to using the LM317T with LED lighting. hybrid solar PV and
water heating panel -
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The value of the resistor required is given by Ohm's Law as 1.25V divided by the output current required. wall insulation applied
BEST UK prices on a range (The 1.25V is the regulated output from the LM317T's ADJ output.) The higher the input voltage and to external walls
of high quality mono- current, the more heat will be generated by the LM317T since the output current is fixed and the extra energy efficiency
crystalline PV Solar power has to go somewhere. The LM317T will cope with currents of up to 1.5 Amps and so will have no 13:10, 26th A pr 2012
Panels. problem at all with small solar panels.
90W @ £119 + £8 P&P
80W @ £93 + £9 P&P Choosing the Resistor for the LM317T Current Limiting Circuit
50W @ £78 + £8 P&P
30W @ £40 + £8 P&P
Resistors are only available in certain values - e.g. 5.6 Ohms and 6.8 Ohms, but not 6.2 Ohms. Below is a
table of available resistor values together with the output current generated if each resistor is used in an
REUK Shop
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LM317T current limiting circuit (R = resistance, I = current).

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50W Vertical Axis Wind R (Ohms) 3.9 4.7 5.6 6.8 8.2 10 12 15 18 22 27 33
Turbine REUK SUPER LDR
I (mA) 321 266 223 184 152 125 104.2 83.3 69.4 56.8 46.3 37.9 DUSK DAWN RELAY
CONTROLLER
Therefore using the table above we can see that to charge 1000mah AAA rechargeable batteries with a Multi-function light
current of 100ma, a 12 Ohm resistor would be perfect. A 15 Ohm resistor would reduce the current and slow detector triggered
down charging, a 10 Ohm resistor would increase the current and speed up charging. light/dark dawn/dusk
relay controller
Example Solar Battery Charger with LM317T £18.95 each.
In this example we will make a solar charger using a 6 Volt 250ma Solar Panel to charge four 800mah Complete Circuits
AAA batteries. The batteries can be put into a couple of 2 x AAA battery holders and wired in series (link the
positive output from one battery holder to the negative of the other).

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This gives us 4 x 1.2 = 4.8 Volts with a capacity of 800mah - therefore we want a charging current of Renewable Energy
around 80ma. According to the table above, a 15 Ohm resistor gives a fixed current of 83.3 milliamps System Parts
Eco Kettle 3
which will be perfect.
The power loss in the resistor is again given by Ohm's Law as I * I * R = 0.0833 * 0.0833 * 15 = 0.10
Watts, therefore we can safely use a standard 0.25 Watt 15 Ohm resistor.
For testing the circuit photographed below was built using prototyping breadboard. The circuit is
connected between the positive output of the solar panel and the one free positive lead of the battery SOLAR PUMP
holders. CONTROLLER
WITH RELAY
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microprocessor
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A digital multimeter has been used to measure the actual current output by the circuit - in this case 84.1ma is production in birds
a little higher than the expected 83.3ma since resistor values are not exact, and the ADJ voltage output from £29.99 each.
the LM317T is not exactly 1.25 Volts. Complete Circuits
Complete Current Limited Solar Battery Charger Circuit

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Convert 12V DC
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The negative lead from the solar panel should be connected to the free negative input of the battery holders. portable televisions,
£29.99 The positive lead from the solar panel is connected to the positive input of the current limiting circuit, and the computers, video
&pound20 OFF, usually
output from that circuit connected to the free positive lead of the battery holders. recorders etc. 300
£49.99 Watt power rating -
You now have an improved solar charger which will send a fixed amount of current (sunlight permitting) to peak power 600 Watts
On sale solar powered the batteries. Charging from flat would take around 10 hours of sunlight in this worked example and you do £29.99 each.
floodlight w ith PIR motion not need to worry about overcharging your batteries. Renewable Energy
sensor. 80 LED w hite LED
spotlight offers bright light, System Parts
no w iring required, easy A final enhancement would be to incorporate a simple battery status monitor using a Zener diode to light an
installation, w aterproof, LED when the battery voltage reaches the desired level.
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Please take the time to rate this article (5 = excellent). converted to low
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board
A rticle Last Modified: 09:34, 30th Mar 2007 £21.99 each.
Renewable Energy
Comment on this Article System Parts
If you have any comments on this article, please email them to neil@reuk.co.uk.
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£23.95 LM317 Current Calculator


A handy online output current calculator for the LM317, LM338, and other linear voltage regulators
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A handy online output voltage calculator for the LM317, LM338, and other linear voltage regulators
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80 Watt PV Solar Panel electric circuit | electronics | general

Using The LM317T To Regulate Voltage


Use an LM317T to regulate voltage in renewable energy projects
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Page Last Updated on 4th July 2012 at 10:11:26am

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