Mark F.,
Your 1.) is more susceptible to shading. Your 2.) is most robust, redundant, and easily re-configurable to bypass failures. Your 3.) is part of a Battery Management System (BMS) industry holy grail; active balancing.
Passive cell balancing bleeds off and wastes energy during the charging process from already-fully-charged cells, allowing runt cells a chance to continue suckling.
Active balancing redistributes energy from the healthy fat cats to the runts during charging and discharging and at idle. This "always on" nature of active balancing can drain a pack when it sits unused.
There is a new IC chip on the market that I know very little about:
http://cds.linear.com/docs/en/press-release/LTC3300-1.pdf
Maybe several of our inventor/tinkerers could use it in there creations?
Carter's field tested and affordable 24v (nominal, more like 30V at peak power efficiency) panel based MPPT 48v system is the attractive middle ground.
Whatever you choose, it's hard to go wrong with solar panels. Shades of "more perfect for you", or optimization, is the angst.
Anyone here sorry they went solar?
Mark Stafford
--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, Mark F <mark.internet@...> wrote:
>
> I am considering putting solar on my boat.
> I would like to use a 48 volt propulsion bank.
> As I see it I have a few options.
> 1 - build an array with 4 12 v panels in series and find a 48 volt charge controller
> 2 - take each panel and connect it to a 12V charge controller that is then connected to each battery.
> 3 - connect 4 panels in parallel to one charge controller and build a circuit that cycles from battery to battery.( possible detects lowest voltage battery and charges it first - hopefully keep batteries balanced)
>
> Has anyone built a 48 volt panel array?
> If so which option did you use, or is there a better way.
>
> When I search the net everything seems geared to 12v or 24v not 48.
>
> Thanks for any info
>
> Mark
>
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