Salvo,
Unfortunately, the mppt charge became a wash, as cloud cover only increased as the day went on. I was hoping to try out the new Tracer 3215bn on a 65% soc bank. I ended up switching to paralleling my new 40a vec1093dbd with the pm4b-45 for 85a, which went very well, and as expected.
However, I did manage to solar charge for two hours, from 11am to 1pm, under mostly cloudy (whitish-grey)skies. I checked panel Isc occasionally, and compared it to what the mppt was getting to the bank, amp wise, and the mppt was definitely doing better than what the pwm would have passed thru. Obviously a much more controlled comparison needs to be done, but my initial observations apparently speak for themselves.
One example was at 12:45, when there was a break in the clouds. Isc was right around 10a (x2), so say 19a - 21a pwm, but the Tracer showed 9.7a @ 30.9v at panel array, and 22.5a @ 13.4v to the bank. Now that does work out to >100% eff., but that's only because the Tracer rounds up voltage quite early. But I was doing a 12v on 12v, so eff. should be quite high.
About 10 minutes later, heavy clouds rolled in, and the Tracer showed 3.1 panel amps @ 31.6v, and 7.6a to the bank. Not sure what Isc was at that moment, but likely less than 3.8a (x2). One thing is for sure though... amps took a much bigger hit than voltage.
Tomorrow I'm doing another Tracer run, weather permitting, of course. But in order to do a proper side by side, I'll need to reconfigure some wiring and split the bank... this will be forthcoming, I assure you. So far, I'm liking the Tracer mppt.
