>>950333
>408 watt motor
>20 amp hour battery 20*12=240watt. (Briefly, not actually for an hour.)
>50W peak output.

290w of power at your peak solar and peak battery, and that falls off to almost nothing after the battery is dead. That's not even full power of your 408 watt motor. You won't be able to charge and move with it, you could spend 4 hours in peak sun charging the battery, and then get an hour of movement at half power.

>>950357
its a 20AH battery; it can run at 240W actually for an hour

>>950333
1.21 gigawatts

I'm aware I can't CHARGE and discharge the battery at the same time. But the regulator does allow you to divert all energy from the panel straight to the motor, while also discharging from the battery. Im not sure if you took that into account, but assuming you did, what would you recommend would be a 'do-able' wattage of solar panel/battery combination?

Assuming im only going to be using the 408 watt motor for maybe 20 minutes at a time before stopping again; allowing charging. 100 watts and 30 amp hours maybe?

>>950380
>I'm aware I can't CHARGE and discharge the battery at the same time
why not?

>>950382
Because batteries don't work that way. You can combine the outputs from different sources but you can't actually charge a battery like that.

>>950394
>Because batteries don't work that way.
yes they do
you most certainly can charge a battery while it is discharging
where do you people get this shit from?

>>950374
Shit tapers off and there's losses all over your system, so you're not actually going to see perfect run times.

You're not going to charge and discharge the battery at the same time because your solar panels are totally inadequate to the task of moving a boat.

If you want renewable energy for moving a boat around, get a sail.

>>950396
how so?

if device_draw >= rate_of_charge{
energy will cease going into the battery and if the device draws more power then energy will leave the battery at a rate that will compensate what the charger cannot supply}

if device_draw == rate_of_charge {
energy will just flow into the device and the battery will stay at its current charge.
electric may flow out of the battery but immediately be put back in from the charger. total power in all the systems stays evened out}

device_draw < rate_of_charge{
the device will leech off of the charger, the batter will charge at a slower rate}

device_draw > rate_of_charge{
battery will deplete over a longer period of time that if it was not on the charger}

>>950382
you can charge and use the battery at same time.. see mobile phones

>>950496
Only if your charging current is greater than your discharge current.

>>950496
>>950396

You are NOT charging and discharging the battery at the same time.

That doesn't, on a fundamental level, make any sense. The battery's terminals are each, electrically speaking, a single node. In order to "charge and discharge" the battery at the same time, you'd need current flowing through each node (terminal) in both directions, implying two different voltage potentials at each node.

This is impossible. You can't have a node (which is simply any electrically contiguous piece of material) at more than one potential at the same time.


What's actually happening when you do something like charge a phone and use it at the same time is simply that the power supply plugged into the thing is powering both the phone itself and the battery charging circuit.

In relation to the OP, if the motor is off or under very light load, the panel will supply both the motor and the battery with power, spinning the former and charging the latter. If the motor is drawing more power than the solar panel can provide, the battery will share the load, draining slower than it would if powering the motor entirely on its own.

If you're actually trolling, I would expect a 50-100W panel to be sufficient for that on its own. For reference, 200W is about the limit of what a human's legs can manage indefinitely. I don't intuitively think lazily moving around in a small boat/canoe would take anywhere near that much effort if you were doing it manually, but, of course, your experience may vary.