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offgrid View Drop Down
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Posts: 5290 		Direct Link To This Post Topic: SOC
    Posted: 25 Jul 2020 at 3:53pm
I like the firewood. Now there you have some stored kwh. If that's a couple cords of oak then its about 15,000 kwh. It would take your 300 watts of PV about 40 years (roughly its useful life) to produce that amount of energy. Too bad its so heavy and its hard to convert to electricity....

Maybe make a producer gas generator and take it camping instead of the solar LOL


Anyhow my suggestion is to load up your batts a little. At 14V you're not really getting any useful work out of your two PV systems.....just changing water into H2 and O3....
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Posts: 1676 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Jul 2020 at 3:23pm
Well, I am impressed with the HQST panel. It showed open circuit voltage @ 18.9v Renogy @ 25 feet from controller. My solar field is pumping power. HQST 100W currently 14.0v @ 5.2A shown by SCC.  200W suitcase currently @ 14.0v @ 10.2A shown by SCC.

My stand/tv rack design needs a little tinkering. Legs are too long and 3/4 inch pipe is just a little flimsy in camp mode. It's fine on tv rack. Nothing glued up. I might take it apart and fill frame members with spray foam to see if that stiffens them or just redo with 1 inch pipe. I could move them to the edges, but it fits better on my tv rack like this and I think it looks better.
2014 RPod 178 => MyMods and Buying Habits
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fwunder View Drop Down
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Posts: 1676 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Jul 2020 at 5:14pm
This should be fun to play with. $80.00
2014 RPod 178 => MyMods and Buying Habits
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Yes, those are wild ponies dining on grass while dumping tanks!
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Posts: 5290 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Jul 2020 at 4:19pm
+ 1 for Morningstar. I used to work with the founders of that company back in the late 80s/early 90s at another solar company. Great guys and excellent high quality products. Can’t say enough good things about them.
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Posts: 345 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Jul 2020 at 12:17pm
As I sit on the shores of Lake Michigan near Charleviox, MI. under clear skis and my panels collecting much sun...I think everyone has diagnosed your problem with your first charge controller.  I have a Morningstar which gives you the option of manually setting many of the set points which limits or even eliminates the equalization of the battery (ies) if that is your desire.  Hopefully your controller will supplement your camping memories. 
Jay

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Posts: 5290 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Jul 2020 at 7:03am
Short term is fine, long term damage is possible with too high charge voltage settings, read the battery university link I posted. And you'd have to keep a close eye on the water level. 

In the old days charge controllers were just a simple high voltage disconnect, maybe temp compensated if you were lucky. You fiddled with the set points till you got a little battery gassing but not too much. Flooded batts were just fine with that approach. 

Now with everything having a microprocessor or two all the mfgs try to one up each other with "features" and "charge stages". You need different settings for AGM and gel batteries, and of course for Li. But for most folks its probably TMI (too much information) as you suggest. Especially that spurious amp hour production number is misleading because it makes it look like you have a stray load somewhere. 

I would just set the controller on gel batt charge mode so the equalize stage is defeated and see how that does for awhile, especially if you are going to also be running the new controller. I didn't like the warning that you have to shut off loads once a month to equalize or it might get stuck. 
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Posts: 1676 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Jul 2020 at 6:43am
Originally posted by offgrid

My sense is that there is nothing actually wrong with either controller. Renogy just changed their software at some point and modified their equalization algorithm. The new ones are not pushing the battery voltage up as high, at least not at the same time as the old ones are. 


The obvious question, for me, is...

Is there any harm in charging flooded batteries @ 14.7v for any length of time? Perhaps most controllers don't have digital readouts so neophytes like me don't try to over think the process?

fred
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Yes, those are wild ponies dining on grass while dumping tanks!
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Posts: 5290 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jul 2020 at 6:42pm
Just note that that array voltage number really doesn't mean much. The array will sit at the battery voltage when it is connected. In electrical engineering parlance, batteries are considered a voltage source and soar arrays are considered to be a current source. IOW, the battery can suck up or provide any current asked of it, at least for a short period, so it sets the voltage for the whole system. The 18V is probably the open circuit voltage of the array, measured during the portion  of the PWM cycle when the controller has shut off current flow to the batts. 

My sense is that there is nothing actually wrong with either controller. Renogy just changed their software at some point and modified their equalization algorithm. The new ones are not pushing the battery voltage up as high, at least not at the same time as the old ones are. 
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Posts: 6289 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jul 2020 at 4:43pm
I'm glad the new controller is working out.
StephenH
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Posts: 1676 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jul 2020 at 4:19pm
Have to conclude for the day. Got some good thunder boomers moving in.

For the last couple hours under partly cloudy skies the controller was reporting as above (13.7v @  0.1-0.5 amps) . That's float. I think it's working exactly they way we all would expect it to.

I have to conclude that there is an issue with the first edition controller. I have opened another ticket with Renogy, but the controller is well past its 30 day warranty. It was probably doing the same in the beginning, but I just didn't know any better than to notice or care. I also used it so little that no damage was done to batteries.

Thanks to everyone who contributed. Hopefully, we all learned a bit.

BTW, I did get my hydrometer today and all six cells of batteries specific gravity measured +1.275
2014 RPod 178 => MyMods and Buying Habits
2008 4Runner Limited 4.0-liter V6
Yes, those are wild ponies dining on grass while dumping tanks!
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