Solar panel power for motorcycle battery chargers?

Fleaman101

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Hi,

Apologies if in the wrong thread. I am moving house and have a dedicated bike garage that I will dismantle and take with me. Currently I have power supplied to it via an exterior 13a wall outlet in order to power two trickle battery chargers/tenders (Optimate type thing which states max 900ma p/hr, usually 200ma for float charging) This will not be an option at the new place, so I was thinking about solar power, like motorhomes may use. Or a long extension cable from the kitchen window... haha.

My research leads me to believe that I need a solar panel, leisure battery and inverter (12v to 240v). Is this correct? As these are trickle chargers to 12v motorcycle batteries I think a small panel would be OK? Do I just connect the panel’s output to the battery and the battery to the inverter and plug in my devices? I see there are panels to 12v batteries available but I have two bikes and Optimate fly leads so I don’t have to remove seats and fairings. I see some panels ending in USB sockets but there is no battery tenders that have USB power into them, only standard 3 pin plugs.

Really trying to not spend a huge amount as moving isn’t cheap!

The products I have been looking at are:

Panel
Battery
Inverter

It would be great if anyone has experience (who am I kidding, the people on here are superb 😎) and guidance on how these things fit together and advice on what would work.

Thanks

Lee
 
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Converting from 12V to 240V and back to 12V is very inefficient and will likely deplete the storage battery quite quickly. The inverter will pull power the whole time - plus the charger itself. If this adds up to about 0.5A, then the battery will probably last about 7-10 hours before it is discharged to a point the inverter will cut out.

A 25W solar cell will probably deliver an average of more like 8W - which is about 600mA @ 12V. Therefore, if your system is pulling about 500mA, your charging is only 100mA per hour, so it will not recharge the battery enough to last through the the dark hours.

I think you will need at least 100W of solar panels and a larger battery - 25Ah or so for both bikes. You may still occasionally need to top up the battery from a mains source.

Can you not get the Optimate solar system, as that uses the bike connections?
 
Many thanks Noiseboy! Now why didn’t that show up in any searches 🥺 I am actually using an Oxford 900 with the old Opimate type cables, but a small job to change the fly leads... at least on one. As usual it will be a major job on the Italian one. A small inconvenience in that I will have to buy 2 though. I do love these forums!
 
If it were me I would get a small panel -maybe 20w (Cost about £25) and a solar charge controller with dual battery outputs (cost about £10) and charge the batteries directly without the (better) optimate charger.
 

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