Carlos – Can you plug the 13V panel into the controller to get amps off that panel? Either way – it sounds like you are cooking your 13V panel with your Renogy panel. Diode both, but particularly the 13V panel. If you can restructure your homemade panel to a higher V, I would do so and diode both. You mentioned a charge controller. If you are trying to charge a 12V battery, 13V is not going to do much for you. You might be better off dropping the 13V panel entirely unless you can increase your V (at the cost of homemade panel amps…). If you are charging 6V battery, then just diode.

I have a home made panel , delivers around 13 volts, not sure about whatts, meter hasnt arrived yet.

I purchased another one, Renogy 100watts and delivers 19.7 volts.

The new panel working alone shows in the controller a maximum of 4.5amps. When I connected both in parallel i got maximum of 3.5 amps.

What could be wrong , so they cannot work together?

We’re just beginning to look more at lead acid battery systems. For now, we have recommendations on which types of lead acid batteries work well with solar, see: http://blog.voltaicsystems.com/choosing-a-lead-acid-battery-for-solar-charging/

We’re working on building out more information on lead acid systems shortly. /jeff

i am thinking of project in which i want to merge two power source in a single lead acid battery one is the grid supply and other is the power from solar panel please any one can provide me the circuit diagram for this. actually i dont want to waste the solar power i am going to use 250 watt solar panel and a 12v 120ah battery for charging it i want to run 2 fans and 2 tubelight for 8 hrs in the absence of grid .

actually the problem in india there is a massive power cut we use to get a power cut in very 2 hrs for 3 to 4 hrs so the battery need atleast 8hrs to charge i want to use both in the presence of grid i want both of them charge the batery and in the absence of grid solar panel should do its work . actually the planning is not to waste the solar power while grid is available.

eg: it is like if a battery need 230v of supply to charge and if i am getting 120v from the solar so i want rest of 110v only from the grid, by which i can save the electricity bill based on this consideration can any body help me and what r the other equipment i should have while constructing this project

Laptops are very picky and want to be plugged into a wall. If you don’t meet their current threshold, they ignore the charge. If the Voltage fluctuates, they will often shut down to protect themselves.

That V60 is a niffty solution. Unfortunately, it is out of my price range for the foreseeable future.

Why doesn’t direct charging work well? What are the issues besides low voltage due to insufficient light?

Ok, if you need to charge a 19V system, you really need to go with a combination that runs through our V60 – direct charging from solar frequently does not work well. So either 3 x 3.4 Watt Panels -> V60 -> Dock or 1 x 16 Watt Panel -> V60 -> Dock The reason why we were pushing on direct charging the phone is that phones are much simpler (weight, $, size) to charge than laptop-sized systems.

The phone charges up whenever it’s attached to the dock, so what needs to be charged is the dock.

Hi Michael, I’m still a bit confused about the role of the laptop dock vs. going directly into the laptop or phone. It might be easier to call to go over this. You can call the main number here 212 401 1192 and choose tech support.