pianotuna wrote:
Hi Niner,
I would have gone to 250 watts with a 150 amp-hour battery bank. What you have now will work well so long as you are "lean" on inverter use.
Myself, I'm an energy hog. Using the Magnum as a charger means that the solar is doing just about nothing in the bitter winter. Perhaps as it gets colder that might change--but I'm sans RV until March 6, 2015.
The controller is not even PWM, unfortunately. MPPT not PWM not
What inverter? You mean that little 175 watt one that the only thing I run off of it is a 22 watt 24" Samsung TV with a 14v brick? Or all my LED lights?
Bought a Camco Olympian Wave 6 heater, so the forced air heater and fan is now out of the equation, for the most part, except on the coldest of nights, but the fan is so noisy, I'd not be able to sleep anyways. Now if I can keep my water pump turned off when not in use, I should be OK. Or I should acquire a new, thick down comforter instead to snuggle under.
I can assure you it is PWM. I know, I ran it with both an amp meter to see amp input, and an RC charger meter, and both the volts and the amps jump around when you set the charge voltage to 14.8 or 15.0V. The idiot doing that test was using the Charge controller with only a very small panel 60W I believe, in cloudy weather, and at a 13.5V setting, in essence, using the charge controller more only as a power supply, in his test. He also claims there is a variance. Of course there is a variance from amps coming off the solar panel, which is what he is measuring with his Fluke Meter, and what is being measured by the device, which is what is going into the battery once through all the charging circuitry. I measure battery input, in V and in Amps, with the RC charging meter, and the measurements going into the battery were well within margin of error, matching what the LED display shows as amps and volts output.
There will always be a slight loss of power running electricity through all of that circuitry in the Charge Controller, nothing is free.
If the sun won't give me what I need for electricity for free, I can always vaporize and burn some hydrocarbons with any of my Honda Generators and my Mega Watt S350-12 to give things a head start first thing in the morning. A man's gotta have options, and a plan B. :S
