 All right, it's the middle of the night right now and I just woke up with an idea and I'm just gonna barf it out on camera, so I don't forget On the solar snarler Replace one of the flexible solar panels with one glass solar panel that has a higher voltage than the flexible ones And that'll solve a bunch of problems. That means I can keep the batteries at the full voltage and And I can charge them through the glass one Which will be a higher voltage so it'll be able to charge them and then I Can run the batteries in parallel with the solar panels the flexible solar panels without risk of damaging the batteries right So I barfed out some gibberish about solar panels and batteries at 3 a.m Here's what I was talking about Well, first I'm running a 48 volt system on the boat because I'm getting a free motor That's 48 volts all my other boats are 24, but since I'm getting this free motor. I'm making this one 48 So here let me just I'm gonna draw this so it doesn't get confusing Okay 40 excuse my upside-down writing 48 volt system is generally 48 volts up to like about 56 Yeah, about 56 volts now the solar panels I have The flexible solar panels are 28 volts each like maximum voltage So two of them together is 56 volts. So I have my solar panels here They are also 56 volts a 56 volt thing can't charge something very well up to 56 volts Sure, you can leave them connected to each other for like four months and it would eventually get there. However When the voltages get close together the electricity flow slows down a lot and then eventually stops So you need a higher voltage to charge the batteries so my first Thought was well, I could reduce this because I'm making the battery banks, right? so if I leave out a couple cells and I'm gonna have to confirm these numbers, but it's somewhere around this I'm using lithium iron phosphate batteries, but I could leave out a couple cells and get down to like 50 volts or something like that and this would be like 40 42 to 50 volts But then the maximum voltage is what we're concerned about here so then the 56 volts because there's a six volt differential here the electricity is still gonna flow and I can charge the the batteries to 50 volts Now the problem is I'm not gonna connect 12 solar panels I'm not gonna connect all 12 of these solar panels to those batteries because it's it's gonna be a waste They're not gonna be able to force the electricity in there fast enough and even if they could they'd like melt everything. I Just want to so I'm gonna do what I usually do I'm gonna take two solar panels. Let's say these two here Those ones will charge the batteries and All the rest of these will just go directly to the motor This is a marvelous diagram here Now the thing is When okay the the batteries also go directly to the motor, right? so there's going to be times when I'm I'm powering with the batteries and the solar panels and that means these two will also be connected and If the motors using all the electricity from the solar panels, then it'll also get electricity from the the batteries however, if it's not using all the electricity from the solar panels some of that electricity is gonna go into the batteries and Could overcharge them This is a problem. So my first thought was okay. I put a voltmeter on here and I make sure it stays at 50 volts or less That means I have to pay attention What if I'm not paying attention or what if some some idiot is come comes over and starts messing with switches on the boat when I'm Not there I need to plan for non optimal situations, right? So I don't want to have this situation where I could blow up the batteries so what I thought of last night was Okay, we keep this 56 volts jup These two solar panels can't charge it all the way point over there now Because they only go up to 56 volts. So I take one of these solar panels out say this one and Make it one of the glass ones which is slightly longer. This is totally not to scale So this left to be a little bit longer Now this will go up to say this is a 36 volt instead of a 68 So that's a six volt difference. No an eight volt difference. So I get eight extra volts So it's not 56 anymore and now it's 64 volts going into the 56 that will charge it all the way with these two solar panels and Then if these are connected to the motor and this 56 volt is connected to the motor and the motor is not using all the Electricity this 56 volts could flow into the battery But only up until this reaches the maximum of 56 it won't overcharge it boom And yes, there are also complicated Computerized solutions to this which I'm not using because it is not useful in What if I'm out in the water and the computer dies like what I'm dead stranded because this tiny little chip no This is this is a good way to do it. I Think I want to steal one of these solar panels Let's see open circuit voltages 40 The rated maximum weight rated voltage 31 yeah, so it would be 31 to 39. That's that's enough It's gonna be a meter or less. Oh, it's lately over. No Oh There's one I can get a good look at right here. Oh, no, it's right on Yeah, it's dead on a meter so it will fit with no space My flexible solar panels are one meter actually 99 centimeters by 138 centimeters and the glass one is one meter by 168 so 30 centimeters extra in this middle row Totally fine. I think I Better confirm that I actually have The solar panel frame stop some way of just attaching a glass solar panel in there and then another chunk of this Flexible Well, I guess I could just do that Just a recess a chunk in this is only like a Two or three centimeters the thickness of the glass one Yeah, it should be fine. I can't just make it all in one shot I was gonna be so nice just all flat super simple thing, but yeah, that's not that Yeah, I mean other than being a tiny bit more irritating to build I don't see any problems with this at the moment I'll let it dwell in my head for today. I think it's a good plan. I don't see