ewarnerusa wrote:
Wow, it is working great! I'm shutting this test down as the water is getting hotter than expected and I'm not available for continuous monitoring. 66F to 130F in a couple hours. I realize this is just a tiny volume compared to 6 gallons, but this little sucker is cranking out heat just using current that the battery isn't needing for absorption charging. Panels are harvesting 15 amps, looks like between 7-10 amps are going to the diversion load element, the remainder is going to maintaining the batteries at absorption setpoint, the laptop charger to run the laptop in order to monitor stuff, and any other camper parasitic loads (not that there is much, it is sitting in storage at home).
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Laptop hooked to the SCC to monitor things. Interesting that when wired up for diversion load, the charge current shows 0. I believe this is because the panels are not actually hooked to the SCC in diversion load mode. They are hooked directly to battery and SCC monitors battery voltage, allowing anything in excess of charging setpoints to flow to the diversion load.
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Full current from panels right now is 15 amps:
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It's too bad we can't get a water temp gauge into the hot water heater. When you finally hook it all up, I would recommend putting a temperature operated shutoff in line with the heater. The last thing you want is it to get too hot and blow your safety relief valve.
