alliemac9 wrote:
Thanks for all the thoughts...I ordered the remote meter. I think we would like an understanding of the watts being produced. This trip really wasn't the best test of the system - we never saw batteries below 95% so we were pretty much always full. As a result the Ah reading on the TriMetric basically just corresponded to how much load we were drawing, since the batteries were full. We were curious to see what the panels could produce and we never really tested them - they always stepped up relative to our (minor) loads.
12gen: when you mention power going directly to loads, are you saying your inverter is hooked in prior to your battery bank or something? Our (400W) inverter is connected to the battery, so when we used it, we saw the load show up on the TriMetric as it went negative, then we saw the charge controller start pushing power through to create positive Ah and eventually balance it out to around 0 Ah net.
I think his setup would tie direct to battery as mine does. Certainly the trimetric would show some load, however I know once my cc goes into absorb mode after the load kicks in the cc is providing 100% of the amps to run the invertor and I don't see laod in/out of the batt at all.
