I decided on a 100 watt Renogy panel, along with an appropriate cable to connect it with. It has been here for several days because I realized that it is far too large to mount where the little 25 watt panel is without major redesign of that mount.

I decided to order a simple set of angle mount brackets for it and to mount it to the ground, probably on something else attached to the ground, a couple of treated lumber 2x4s or something. It will be a few more days before they arrive.

Meanwhile, I noticed when looking at one of the other cameras that the gate camera was down. That lead me to check the Gate AP and sure enough, it was down as well.

I retrieved the voltage logger. With several days of logs, I can confirm my suspicions that the 25 watt panel cant provide enough power to run the camera and AP during the day with enough left over to gainfully charge the battery. The battery voltage trends downward over six days until the charge controller sheds load. The deep cycle marine battery just extended the time that the system could tolerate the undercharge conditions.

It appears that everything remained powered up until the ugly bit of charting near the end. The small charging peak on 11/24 corresponds to a rainy cloudy day with a little bit of sun in the afternoon. The really flat part near the end shows both a couple more cloudy rainy days and the weirdness that a fairly deeply discharged battery can display.

Once I saw this chart, I thought it might be better to connect the new panel. Perhaps even laying on the ground, it can charge the battery better than the small panel.

Today is a cold and mostly cloudy Sunday. It took less than 30 minutes to unbox the panel, cut the connectors off one end of the cabel and connect it up to the charge controller. The controller was “stuck” in the E01 state, so I disconnected the battery and the solar panel to clear the error. When I reconnected it, the solar panel was outputting 12.9 volts at 1.4 amps, which is about 18 watts. It was enough to power up the AP and camera. Even laying flat on the ground in cloudy weather, this panel is providing almost as much as the old panel is even capable of.

A little later, I saw that the sun was valiantly trying to come out. At that point, the charge controller reported that the panel was puting out 12.4 volts at 2.6 amps, which is 32.24 watts. While I was looking at it, I manually tilted the panel towards the sun and got it up the 3.3 amps for a peak of 40.92 watts.

I am cautiously optimistic.

I do need to solve some installation issues. The cable from the panel needs to be protected from the elements and the weed eater and right now, it’s just coiled up on the ground. Once mounted, the panel being low to the ground may be subject to mud splatter in heavy rain, so keeping it clean may become a thing.

Interestingly, there is no reason I can’t connect these two panels in parallel. Solar panels will operate at essentially whatever voltage they are connected to and the resulting amperages will sum. In practice, it is unlikely that I would ever get an actual 125 totals watts from these two panels, but they will add together. The wiring from the 25 watt panel is currently just sitting there unconnected inside the battery box anyway.