Solar Controller (cheap china)
I started w/ accidently getting the winning bid on a $130 100 watt panel. So then I had to buy a cheap china $11 10 amp controller, right ? It all worked great, so great infact, I bought another nea...
Forum Discussion
Almot wrote:
RJsfishin, the performance of this charging system is a big unknown. When green light starts blinking, it could mean 80%, or 90%, or God knows what. The voltage shown during the charging process, doesn't show accurately the SOC. This is not the voltage that battery will output when charging stops.
RJ knows all that.
My controller does that blinking too, but I have no idea when, because the controller is up by the batteries where I can't see it. Don't care.
The Trimetric tells me the "cheap China" controller is consistent in how it works very day wrt the battery bank. The time it takes to get to its absorption set point of 14.6 and start the two hour absorptions stage depends on "morning SOC" and the size of the battery bank.
Luck of the draw how much sun you get that day and whether that is enough to reach 14.6v and hold that for two hours and then drop to 13.8v Float for the rest of the sunny part of the day.
Which is all about the size of the battery bank, the "morning voltage SOC", and the size of the array. And any usage you may have in AH that day. Oh, and location , location, location (latitude). Oh, and time of year, time of year , time of year. Oh, and what the weatherman says today is supposed to be like.
None of which has anything to do with how fancy your controller is. You do need to get your set-up at least half right for wattage wrt to your daily usage and battery bank size for your location and time of year for being able to 'do it all' on solar (mostly) but the controller has little to do with it. It is just supposed to keep the batts from over-voltage.
