Please help me with solar setup
I have been reading a lot about solar on here and finally decided to take the plunge or come to the dark side as some would say. Sunny side makes more sense, but whatever. :) We do not use a lot of...
Forum Discussion
BFL13 wrote:
The time to stay at Vabs before dropping to Float voltage "depends" It depends on how long it takes to do the absorption stage on your size of battery bank with your size of solar set with how much sun you are getting that day.
My routine with the Solar30 when I was using 12v panels was set it to 14.8v and leave it there. It would get the batts to that in the afternoon sometime on nice days. When camping I don't drop to Float since there is no need to with my routine. Battery usage brings voltage back down later in the day and then it gets dark.
If you have a big solar set and a small battery bank or don't use many AH, you might hit Vabs by mid morning, so now you might want to drop to a Float voltage. No big deal to reset the controller when convenient. Just push a button.
I would set it to a Float voltage when not camping and the batts are already full before "storage" if I didn't have shore power to do the Float using the converter.
You can be a "controller snob" or just get what works perfectly well and ignore the snobs :)
This is exactly what has been working for me. It's all a balancing act with amps in and adding enough replacement amps daily to cover what your amps out was, getting the battery as full as possible, daily. Water usage just comes with the territory. If you can't access your batteries easily to add water, then that is just plain old poor engineering design failure.
