Tristar Remote Meter or is my TriMetric Enough?

AlbertaNewbie wrote:
The meter shows panel voltage, ah, Watts at panel, Watts at battery, voltage at battery, the daily logs, vmax, vmin, current amps to battle.......well worth the $100.

AlbertaNewbie, when you drive "The Highway" - there is only one highway in Canada, everybody knows this :) - road signs show all kind of info. But you only need to know how far is Bannf (or wherever you are going), and whether there are any speed limits.

I don't have a Trimetric so people will correct me if I'm wrong about its features.

Controller shows volts and amps at the battery, and so does Trimetric.

Controller doesn't show net current or AH in or out, but Trimetric does. To me this latter Trimetric feature is not important because, like people said, if Full stage has been reached at least once a day, this all doesn't matter, and in my system they are full 9 days out of 10.

Volts at the panel before controller - Trimetric wouldn't show this, yes. I have these panel volts on controller, but, with my controller being MPPT, those volts are so different from volts on the battery that I don't know what to do with this data :)... Volts before PWM controller - can't say, let PWM users explain if this is important (or why $5 voltmeter can't be used for that).

Volts after controller the controller display also shows, and so does Trimetric.

The only thing that Trimetric doesn't show - among those that I would think to be of at least "some" use - is the log of charging stages and peak wattage achieved. Without Trimetric, this daily log would tell whether battery was ever Full. And Trimetric will tell you this - by counting AH in and out. Btw, even if there is no display and no Trimetric, LED indicators on TS 60 would tell this if you look at them.

There are data in controller log that Trimetric won't gather in the same way as controller does - like peak wattage from panels. This is the wattage that panels achieved at some moment (when you maybe didn't even need it), it's not indicative of daily energy harvest.

If you are hitting 14.2+ volts at least once per day I would not add any additional monitoring unless you want to make a hobby out of it.

The meter shows panel voltage, ah, Watts at panel, Watts at battery, voltage at battery, the daily logs, vmax, vmin, current amps to battle.......well worth the $100.

alliemac9 wrote:
I really have no idea how much power the panels were putting out in various situations. I have the TriStar PWM 60A controller and a TriMetric.

I've built my system the other way around - with a controller that included display providing more information than I will ever need. So buying Trimetric doesn't look unnecessary so far. Still, me thinks ;) ... that if you multiply the Amps "In" on Trimetric by 13V, you will get the power (=watts) that panels are putting out. It is possible that owning a Trimetric would've led me to a fantastic discovery that would've proved grade school science course totally wrong, but last time I checked, Watts=Amps*Volts.

Strictly speaking, this would NOT be the "power the panels were putting out", but the "power that panels are getting to the battery after all the losses in wires and in controller", but this is usually what users want to know. And, mostly, not the power but AH for the day.

alliemac9 wrote:
My question is whether I would understand more if I bought the TriStar remote meter?

You would get a little more data. But I don't think these data would make a difference.

alliemac9 wrote:
I guess it doesn't really matter how much available juice there is coming from the roof if it is enough to keep things full, but this trip was pretty light on the electric usage and I anticipate more usage on future trips.

Yes, it doesn't matter, if batteries are full. As to more usage in future, Trimetric provides a better information about usage than that single-line display.

alliemac9 wrote:

Does the remote meter provide any info on the power generated by the panels separate from the power being fed into the batteries?

Mostly, a time-picture. You will see what charging stage was reached when, in case if you missed the info provided by blinking LED indicators on controller. And you will see peak power (=watts) that solar array supplied to controller at the moment when conditions were the best - not sure how valuable is this info. And few other less significant numbers. At least, this what TS MPPT 60 would provide on display. Not many people are using TS PWM 60 with display - when solar array is so big that you need 60A controller, it's usually better to go MPPT and 24V panels.

Sorry for long post.

Theoretically all the power made by the panels is fed into the batteries. In reality there are some losses in the wire and controller. Either way, the TriMetric is only showing if you have a net gain or loss and how big it is. The TriStar meter will tell you how many watts the array is making and would be very good information to have.