Finally I gotten around to wire up the 10W solar panel (shown below) I have laying around. I will probably get myself some higher wattage panel in the future. For the moment this should be sufficient for the land-based receiver. One thing I noticed when shopping for solar panel is that I was told by most, that these panels are extremely durable outdoor, unless something drop smack onto them. For marine usage, I have my doubts. Will need to look more into this. There are also flexible panels. Maybe they will prove to be useful.

A solar panel alone is not really useful with the output voltage changing and all with sunrise and sunset. What is needed is a charge controller. A charge controller just regulate the output voltage for the purpose of charging a battery and powering a device when the sun is up. The load then draws the power from either the panel or the battery depending on the amount of sunshine. I went out and got myself a, 'one hung low' (hemm expression sounds familiar), 30A charge controller (shown below). The charge controller has a 'key' button to switch between a few modes. Basically this particular controller is meant for lighting purposes. It turns off the load (lights) when the sun is up and turns on the load for a set number of hours after the sunlight diminishes. These modes are EXTREMELY bad for the ocean platform as you may imagine. So I switched to a mode that continuously power the load. After I set it to the permanently powered mode, I disconnected the panel and battery. Fortunately the controller does retains the setting if it is completely powered down.

I wired the panel and a 12V SLA battery to the controller and commenced testing. More on this in the upcoming project log.