Hello fellow Super Soco riders, I am in the UK and want to be greener so does anyone know if there a portable solar power unit out there to recharge my TC battery? I was thinking on the lines of a small caravan type unit I've seen on Amazon. If there is one, what are the specifications that I need to follow? Would it be worth asking the UK importer if they have heard of anyone using one or if they know where to get one?
Hi Frankie, I’m in the UK too.
I monitor my bike charging using a Smart Plug, which tells me how much power is being drawn and how much is required overall. It also as a time so I can charge using cheap rate electricity overnight.
These are observations only, not test data, but it seems that a battery that is nearly empty needs around 450w when it gets started, and this power drops over time until the battery is fully charged. My batteries take 7 hours to charge and use, overall, around 1.5Kw hours which costs (overnight) around 10p
I have solar panels on my roof and if I charge the battery during the day it would draw on the solar generation, but since the power generated is at the mercy of the cloud cover I’m never going to be able to charge exclusively from solar. If, as you’re suggesting, I had panels that were connected directly to the battery with no other source of power, I suspect charging would take a very long time indeed and the bike would rarely be ready to use when I need it!
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Ive gotten one of these from aliexpress to try.
Ive got a few of the camper/hobby 150w panels on my shed roof and plan to divert one of the pairs I have plugged into a grid tie inverter into this to directly charge the battery via DC instead of using the AC charger, but from knowing how much these panels produce in summer it will at most put in 1KWh of charge per day so if the battery is low it will take 2 days to fully charge or longer if like me you have two batteries in parallel.
Just need to wait until we get more sun in spring to give it a try as get pratically nothing from the panels at this time of year.