Solar Cynergy Panels

Not brand, I meant mono or poly.

Her panel in a kyocera and ive done voltage at the panel, at the controller and at the battery, seemed to be fine. Have to wait and see what's up.

Almot

8a off of a 230w 24 panel with a MPPT charger in bulk early on when the batteries voltage is low, I see that between 5:30 and 6:00 AM before the sun fully breaks the horizon. By six I'm seeing 10a and climbing.

The concept is that when the 12v panel is in low enough light, its voltage can be too low to charge the battery. Low voltage for a 24v panel is still above 12v and the buck converter can use that excess voltage to create amps.

I do the check the batteries voltage at rest thing every morning. Well as long as I get up before first light that is. If I can see well enough to take the dogs out at 5:30, it's probably too late. The system will be awake and reporting less than a amp but still a reading would be off.

What are the panels? The answer can be there too.

AlbertaNewbie wrote:

She's got the local gopower Guy coming out to look at it.

I'm looking forward to hear what this guy will find.
Who knows, maybe he'll find nothing wrong with her setup, and thus will disprove recent findings by BFL13 ;) which findings were, as I recall, that PWM was just 10-15% below MPPT, and at certain battery levels there was no difference at all.

Almot wrote:
8A from 230w panel doesn't sound like "low light" to me.

AlbertaNewbie wrote:
The ts-45 has full logging with readout on the display. Vmax, vmin, ah, Watts, and a few others, not surehow many days it logs, but I've seen up to 19 days.

TS 45 or TS MPPT 45?

She's got the local gopower Guy coming out to look at it.

Mine's a ts-mppt-45 with the logging features.

To put my system into context it is capable of doing 19amps with load and low battery in full sun. I should correct the earlier post as it's a 250w panel.

8A from 230w panel doesn't sound like "low light" to me.

Something was wrong with her GoPower PWM controller or setup. I have a small GoPower inverter, bought it only because it was cheap and my loads are very low. Not too many people have GoPower controllers. It has an interesting "power boost" feature, though no temp compensation, no adjustable setpoints. Still, missing features don't explain 0.1-0.3A when your MPPT unit was running 8*180/230= 6.3A, prorated to 180W panel.

AlbertaNewbie wrote:
The ts-45 has full logging with readout on the display. Vmax, vmin, ah, Watts, and a few others, not surehow many days it logs, but I've seen up to 19 days.

TS 45 or TS MPPT 45?

The ts-45 has full logging with readout on the display. Vmax, vmin, ah, Watts, and a few others, not surehow many days it logs, but I've seen up to 19 days.

Almot wrote:

AlbertaNewbie wrote:
when comparing my sisters go power 180 w pwm system with batts at 12.4v in early morning/low light and my 230w with ts-45-mppt and batts at12.6v at the same time about 10' apart in a group camp, she was getting 0.1-0.3amps and i was getting 8amps.

There shouldn't be such a difference. Something is wrong with her PWM setup. Faulty controller, faulty panel, dirt on the panel, poor contacts, 24V panel (yes, I've seen people doing this), - don't know what else.

Quote, that's what I thought but all of the voltages in full sun check out and it performs as it should. Only low light it has issues.

Almot wrote:

JiminDenver wrote:
You don't need any of that to know you are not getting enough AH's, you will know when the battery dies. ;)

It appears that many owners are using exactly this latter method :)

Seriously though - to keep an eye on battery SOC, you can try different methods (beside SG measurements, obviously).

LED indicators on controller will tell when it's reached Full (or Float, whatever).

If in the evening it's not Full and you are in doubt whether it reached Full or not while you're were away, then you need some SOC counter. Can be a monitor like Trimetric or Victron, or a data log that you can retrieve from controller memory where it says that Full was reached at some point today. My controller keeps full log of charging stages for a month and automatically displays today's entry in the evening. I don't know whether TS 45 is keeping such a log, and/or whether this can be read on that single-line display that they offer, or you need a laptop for that.

And, of course, you can put a cheap V-A meter on the wall and check rested voltage in the morning.

My not very educated friend is using the last method with some variations: he put V-A meter on the wall, right across the door so he can see it any time. He can see voltage climbing slowly before noon. If he missed Absorption/Float transition and voltage is low in the evening, he goes to the obscure nook where controller is sitting (it is always in some obscure nook, this is where it belongs, I'm serious) - to see if LED indicator is steady green (=Float) or blinking green (=still charging). If it's blinking and he "doesn't like" the voltage, he cranks the generator up. Like I said, he hasn't got much education and is doing what he can. Better than doing nothing at all.

Yup, you can break it down to the easiest solution possible. I've found that solar does such a good job of charging that it's boring :B. I have analog meters which are easier to read at a glance, for me, and a check on them will let me know if all is working. Lately, I press a button on the Victron since it's located a foot higher than the analog meters. :)

AlbertaNewbie wrote:
when comparing my sisters go power 180 w pwm system with batts at 12.4v in early morning/low light and my 230w with ts-45-mppt and batts at12.6v at the same time about 10' apart in a group camp, she was getting 0.1-0.3amps and i was getting 8amps.

There shouldn't be such a difference. Something is wrong with her PWM setup. Faulty controller, faulty panel, dirt on the panel, poor contacts, 24V panel (yes, I've seen people doing this), - don't know what else.