Summer Only

The Solar Charge Controller is responsible to properly charge the batteries when solar energy is available.  The GenaSun GV-4 controller, which is used for summer only experiments,  is a very efficient charge controller that uses the MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) to maximize the power available at the solar panel, increasing the efficiency by 10 to 30% over traditional solar regulators.  It also uses very little power in low or no light conditions.

Rechargeable batteries are used for summer-only and year-round polar seismic experiments. For summer-only experiments, due to the roughly continuous sunlight, stations can be powered solely with rechargeable batteries.

For PASSCAL Polar experiments the preferred rechargeable battery is an AGM (Absorbent Glass Mat) battery manufactured by Concorde Battery Corporation. Both the Sun Xtender PVX-420T and PVX-560T work well for a summer deployment where only a limited amount of storage is required for cloudy days.

Primary batteries are usually not necessary for summer only deployment due to the ample amount of sunlight available.