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- 14 Feb 2005
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Hi all,
I have a small garden pond with two fountains:
- one small run, with a floating pump just under the water surface that contains a battery. The fountain runs all day when there is sun, and once there isn't enough it runs 10 seconds every minute until the battery runs out. The solar panel face south, so it probably runs from 10am to 6pm continuously, then another hour on and off, and the same the morning.
- one filter - this is connected to a larger battery, like this, and in theory I bought this because I wanted to be able to run the fountain later at night. However, the system favours the battery charge over the fountain, and therefore does not operate the fountain at all until the battery reaches a threshold level. In full sun today, the battery was still not charged at 6pm (25degrees today and not a cloud in the sky), so the fountain hasn't run all day. If it doesn't reach the threshold level it doesn't operate. I only installed it this weekend, and the first few days it worked, but I don't know if this is because the battery was fully charged before delivery. The system has an LED indicator as follows:
- red - Battery discharged and system off
- red/green flashing - battery charging (I have never seen this)
- green - ready to go
There is another indicator called Charging that goes orange when charging. This is always orange, but the system indicator stays red. In the Troubleshooting in the manual it says that this means the accumulator has not reached this threshold.
Does this seem right? I would have thought 6 hours in direct sun would be enough. And even at this length of time it is pointless to run the sytem for 6 hours to charge the battery, to run it for 3 hours, when I could just connect it directly to the solar panel and run it from 10am to 6pm. What does the accumulator battery add in this case?
Many thanks,
Gill
I have a small garden pond with two fountains:
- one small run, with a floating pump just under the water surface that contains a battery. The fountain runs all day when there is sun, and once there isn't enough it runs 10 seconds every minute until the battery runs out. The solar panel face south, so it probably runs from 10am to 6pm continuously, then another hour on and off, and the same the morning.
- one filter - this is connected to a larger battery, like this, and in theory I bought this because I wanted to be able to run the fountain later at night. However, the system favours the battery charge over the fountain, and therefore does not operate the fountain at all until the battery reaches a threshold level. In full sun today, the battery was still not charged at 6pm (25degrees today and not a cloud in the sky), so the fountain hasn't run all day. If it doesn't reach the threshold level it doesn't operate. I only installed it this weekend, and the first few days it worked, but I don't know if this is because the battery was fully charged before delivery. The system has an LED indicator as follows:
- red - Battery discharged and system off
- red/green flashing - battery charging (I have never seen this)
- green - ready to go
There is another indicator called Charging that goes orange when charging. This is always orange, but the system indicator stays red. In the Troubleshooting in the manual it says that this means the accumulator has not reached this threshold.
Does this seem right? I would have thought 6 hours in direct sun would be enough. And even at this length of time it is pointless to run the sytem for 6 hours to charge the battery, to run it for 3 hours, when I could just connect it directly to the solar panel and run it from 10am to 6pm. What does the accumulator battery add in this case?
Many thanks,
Gill
. It is apparently protected against deep discharge or overload.