I was recently give a Solar Regulator that had been thrown out; its made by Go Power! Electric Inc.
Doing a quick check I determined that the possible reason it had been tossed is it had a short across the Solar inputs ... not knowing how these regulators work I decided to do a bit of reverse engineering. To my dismay it appears that this device shorts the solar panel out when the battery is deemed fully charged. Because they also have a pair of blocking diodes this would certainly stop the charging however I wonder if this is potentially damaging to the solar panel.
Attempting to find an answer to that by reading specifications on PV panels; most specs give a short cct current, and an open cct voltage and specify that the operational voltage/current is somewhere in the middle of that. Being that they provide a Short cct spec sort of implies they can be shorted.
To make a long question short;
I am trying to understand; A) Why shorting a panel is an acceptible way to shut off the charging B) Is there a Solar Cell Equivalent CCT (similar to a battery) that can be used to mathematically predict the characteristics of the cell. C) Why shorting out a cell doesn't fry the cell