Solar trickle charging

[West1]

We mounted a 18 Watt Coleman solar battery charger on top of the wooden roof of the tractor... The tractor is a 60hp four wheel drive SAME.... The charger also has a small 7 amp charge controller to regulate the amount of current flow to the battery... Seems to work well... The PT2"x8" wooden roof was bolted onto the metal frame carriage... The solar frame also doubles as a place to store the cover tarps while the tractor is in use... This tractor is always used in the open field... never goes into the woods... So no problem with getting the collector knock off by tree branches.. Don't, as of yet, have a permanent storage building for this tractor... During the winter it is left out in the open field... Which is the reason for the protective tarps... We also have a smaller solar battery maintainer, trickle charger....maybe 10 watts or so which does not need a regulator...This one is used to keep the charge up on a small 12v car battery which is used to start the portable generators... The maximum current flow that I have measured with the little cell was about 350 ma.... So it just has a series blocking diode to prevent reverse current flow back to the PV solar collector when there is no sunshine...