dumb question about charging batteries

I'm sorting out some panels for my vehicle and wondered: when you use a solar panel to charge a battery, where does the energy that is created from the panels go when the battery is fully charged?? If I put a hose in a bucket the water overflows when the bucket is full. what happens to the 'extra' electricity when the battery is full? I am not too smart on physics....

Hi Imadogman, Inbetween your solar panels and your battery, you put a regulator. The regulator's job is to monitor the battery and to reduce the voltage coming from the solar panels which is somewhere about 20v, down to about 13.5v that the battery needs to charge. Once the battery is fully charged, the the regulator cuts the power that's being converted from the solar panels to the battery and the power that's coming down from the solar panels, just does nothing. It's like if you had a 240v volt plug plugged into a wall socket, with a couple of wires coming out of it, one for active and the other for neutral, unless you have a device that you join onto the socket, no power gets used, even though the plug is plugged in and the socket switch is on. In your case, the panels are generating power, but the regulator has switched the connection to the battery off, so the generated power does nothing, effectively going to waste.

Hi Imadogman
With the panels you can just draw the power you need by adjusting the load.The regulator does this for you automatically and also charges the battery in 3 or 4 stages.You can also select the type of battery and the voltage.
There is an output also for your load (whatever appliance you use) and it will automatically shut down to protect the battery from under voltage.