Setting up trimeric to work with solar panels
OK, so just finished my panel install. Was reading how the trimetric will automatically reset the SOC to 100% at night when really it might not be at 100. So I Googled it after doing a search on here...
Forum Discussion
So I have had a E-meter for many years - like 18. It is basically the first meter, before the TriMetric came out.
What is happening with mine is like this. I might be at say -85 AH after a night of running things, and the satellite dish is the most popular. The solar will charge around 20 amps per hour at noon. I can easily collect 100 AH.
The E-meter will give you back power at a 'discounted' rate, so it 'attemps' to figure out how in-efficient the battery is. Say at noon it where -60 and charging at 20 amps per hour with no other loads. At 1 pm, it might read -45. This is because while 20 AH went into the battery, the meter figures that 5 AH is lost.
At the end of the day, normally by say 5 pm, the meter starts to read very close to -1 or -2 AH, and within the hour, starts reading +1 or +4, and might read +18 at sunset. It is telling you that enough amp hours went into the battery bank to totally fill it, and that some of those amp hours are just boiling away your water.
Just like your gas tank, or fresh water tank, no matter how much you put in, you start drawing it down as you take power out. So when you start using more power than the solar is putting in (say I take a shower and leave the 7.5 amp water pump on for 15 minutes solid time) this will reset the battery to -0.1 AH and keep going negative until it starts charging faster than you are consuming the power.
You would not want it to start at +18 AH and start counting backwards from that 'artificial' number. And by the meter knowing how many 'extra' amp hours it takes to fully charge the battery, it can better calculate the 'discount' rate that it counts down the energy going back into the battery bank. So if it knows that if you are at -80 AH, and it will take 108 amp hours to get to +18 AH, it will next time discount the amps going into the battery by about 22% - 25%, knowing that the extra energy is boiling away water in the battery.
I hope that I explained it the best that I could!
Fred.
What is happening with mine is like this. I might be at say -85 AH after a night of running things, and the satellite dish is the most popular. The solar will charge around 20 amps per hour at noon. I can easily collect 100 AH.
The E-meter will give you back power at a 'discounted' rate, so it 'attemps' to figure out how in-efficient the battery is. Say at noon it where -60 and charging at 20 amps per hour with no other loads. At 1 pm, it might read -45. This is because while 20 AH went into the battery, the meter figures that 5 AH is lost.
At the end of the day, normally by say 5 pm, the meter starts to read very close to -1 or -2 AH, and within the hour, starts reading +1 or +4, and might read +18 at sunset. It is telling you that enough amp hours went into the battery bank to totally fill it, and that some of those amp hours are just boiling away your water.
Just like your gas tank, or fresh water tank, no matter how much you put in, you start drawing it down as you take power out. So when you start using more power than the solar is putting in (say I take a shower and leave the 7.5 amp water pump on for 15 minutes solid time) this will reset the battery to -0.1 AH and keep going negative until it starts charging faster than you are consuming the power.
You would not want it to start at +18 AH and start counting backwards from that 'artificial' number. And by the meter knowing how many 'extra' amp hours it takes to fully charge the battery, it can better calculate the 'discount' rate that it counts down the energy going back into the battery bank. So if it knows that if you are at -80 AH, and it will take 108 amp hours to get to +18 AH, it will next time discount the amps going into the battery by about 22% - 25%, knowing that the extra energy is boiling away water in the battery.
I hope that I explained it the best that I could!
Fred.
