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hi everyone welcome to

boatingtechtalk.com

uh we've got a simple question but a

great one from rob uh rob asked jeff

what is a boost controller for solar

panels

love it

geeking out being curious

beautiful thing

so the reality and is that

whatever the sun's doing whatever your

engine is doing whatever

anything is doing you're connected to

shore power right

the source of power

is not necessarily what the destination

wants right so think about

you're connected to for example and this

is relevant bear with me

with solar right the sun might be

shining your batteries are completely

topped off they were connected they're

connected to battery charge

why do you have a controller

well solar arrays come in all different

voltages it doesn't matter it could be a

voltage array that's eight volts or it

could be a voltage rate that's 20 volts

and it doesn't matter if it was a 12

volt array or even a 14 volt array at

the end of the day there's no array

that's giving what your batteries need

at that given moment right because your

battery needs are constantly changing

right sometimes they want to be charged

sometimes they don't sometimes they're

full sometimes they're partially full

but the sun's shining every day

hopefully right or often enough

and maybe your batteries don't want any

power

so the first thing to realize is that we

all need controllers to either step down

right

which is buck or to boost which is to

step up right so either you step up the

voltage or you step down the voltage but

at the end of the day the controllers

are even if it was a 12 volt panel 14 14

4 your battery might want 13 3 maybe

it's floating maybe your panel is 12

volts you can't charge something with 12

volts that's not enough right the

battery needs at least 13 1 13 2 to flow

charge

so regardless when your panel voltage is

outputted and might not need

might not be what the battery wants and

so you've got two choices of control

right

you've got a controller that's either

going to bring the battery voltage down

and we call those fun

controllers and

often the name is completely emitted

because most of the solar arrays are

above

this the voltage of the battery bank and

so effectively you will always bring the

voltage down

and just assume so it's rarely said it's

implied right and that was one of the

confusing part parts that i learned at

the beginning i was like well

why is there boost and not what's the

other term then what's the opposite

so the opposite is step step up or step

down so step up is boost

and a boost controller is used when you

connect a solar panel or solar rate

where the voltage is

below your battery voltage

and so then the controller isn't going

to be able to boost that voltage to be a

charging voltage that your batteries

need

so that's a great question from rob it

took me a while to figure that one out

it wasn't that obvious when i started

looking into all of this

a few years ago now

so thanks for asking rob and thanks for

everyone for watching appreciate it if

you're curious we've written whole

articles about this go on our website

search it out

and we've got a lot of other tech talks

about this very topic if you haven't

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