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Sulfation: The formation of more or less permanent film of lead sulfate on the plates. Lead sulfate is a product of the discharge process; there's no way to avoid the formation of PbSO4. However, if the sulfate is not promptly converted back to lead oxide & lead (+ve & -ve plates...

A Google alert brought this forum to our attention. We're a small team of physicists, chemists, & electronics engineers. Happy to answer any general questions relating to our products here, as well as questions relating to solar (PV, thermal), battery, energy storage & related fields. For...

For lead acid batteries: If the two batteries are of different capacities, the resulting series combo will have the lower Ah. Once the lower Ah battery fully discharges, the higher capacity battery will continue current thru the lower capacity battery. Since there's no electrolyte in left...

We recommended a panel Voc of 21V since the SC-2030 is a PWM type controller; going up in voltage does not result in higher charging currents. Max input voltage of the SC-2030 is 55V. There are other aspects to battery charging than the common PWM or MPPT question. For example, our controller...

The maximum current the SC-2030 can tolerate is still 45 Amps. However, we have noticed that many customers do not install the controller the way we specify. For example, some customers install it in cramped spaces, without air space below, above & the sides to promote natural air circulation...

Our battery monitors are spec'ed at +/- 0.2% for current magnitude and +/- 0.1 % for asymmetry (positive vs negative direction). However, 99% of what we ship falls in the 0.1% range.

You can easily get 2x runtime with your setup, since you have the capacity to recharge the batteries after each night using your generator & solar power. No need to live by the "don't discharge more than 50%" rule. What kills lead acid batteries is not the depth of discharge, but how long they...

The Pentametric is used several industrial items and we can't change things arbitrarily. We're working on a highly configurable BMS for lithium batteries. Our initial market is grid-connected ESS.

Precisely for this reason, we have partnered with Newpowa to design 30 cell "12V" 105 W panels for use on RV rooftops. These panels have an Isc of 7.5 Amps (vs 5.8 to 6.2 of other 100 W panels). When parallel connected, these panels and a PWM controller will deliver more current than the best...

There's an advantage to our approach of using the monitor to measure battery voltage, instead of having the charger measuring it. The monitor measures the voltage directly at the battery terminals. A charger sits upstream of the battery on a high current path and measures the voltage at a...

@mkaye, with the engine at slightly above idle (900-1000 rpm), measure the voltage across the engine battery, input to the SC-2030 and the its output. This will tell us whether the current is being limited by insufficient voltage or something else.

The version # is also displayed for a few seconds by the Trimetric monitor when it is powered on. The solar charger flashes its green LED n # f times corresponding to its version # (ver 8 & above).

Our customers have known this for several years! When the panel voltage is properly matched (& panels wired in parallel) to the storage voltage, a PWM (essentially what the Electrodacus + DSSR is) controller is better for small systems. Our SC-2030 solar controller consumes less than 5 Watts...

Partial (or full) shade & PV don't mix! Wire the panels in parallel to make sure a shaded panel does not affect the whole system. If series wired, bypass diodes may help, but not always. The MPPT algorithm can be easily fooled by multiple (local) max power points that may occur in such...

paper by Victron CTO (former?) - https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/White-paper-Which-solar-charge-controller-PWM-or-MPPT.pdf does not appear to consider DC-DC conversion efficiency

know any controller that uses amp-hrs counting to determine endpoints? :)

A Google alert brought this thread to our attention. We're a small team of physicists, chemists, & electronics engineers. Happy to answer any general questions relating to our products here, as well as questions relating to solar (PV, thermal), battery, energy storage & related fields. For...

We still answer phone calls & emails. However, it's hard to maintain 100% response rate, considering that we get a lot of spam calls & emails.

While calculating peak input voltage, don't use the Voc on the panel's label, since this is at 25 C cell temperature. Instead, estimate the Voc at the lowest temperature the panels are likely to see. Use the panels temperature coefficient for voltage for this calculation.

Run four sets of #12 or #14 ( depending on the run length) wires connecting the panels to + & - busbars near the controller. Then, a a 1 ft pair of #8 wire. Use a good voltage loss calculator to determine The PWM controller is going to reject the higher voltage, even if you preserve it with...

It is very difficult to find a material that is a good thermal conductor, while being a good electrical insulator. In most materials, electrical & thermal conduction is by electrons. The only exception to this diamond, which is a very good thermal conductor and a poor electrical conductor. If...

Yes, we do recommend the use of our controller on sailboats & vehicles. A Santa Cruz, CA based sailboat with our controller & monitor has sailed to New Zealand several times over the past 6-7 years. The controller was one of the first production items.

The Pentametric monitor is one of the first IoT (the first, of course, was a CMU vending machine). The Pentametric had ethernet capability in 2005.

No, you don't need a new charger. If the charger is used by itself (no TM-2030 connected), then use the AGM jumper settings. Our AGM profile is absorb @ 14.3 V & float @ 13.2 V. If you have a TM-2030 & SC-2030 connected, set P1 to 14.4V, P2 to 2%, P3 to battery bank capacity in Ah, P10 to...

Does your monitor & controller (without WiFi module) work together as specified? Are you able to see solar current & battery temp on the the monitor's display? This data is provided by the controller to the monitor. If not, this must be resolved first before the WiFi module is connected...

Any # of solar controllers or shore chargers (or any other DC charging sources) may be connected to the shunt and the Trimetric monitor will track the current from those sources. If a DC source is connected directly to the battery bank's negative side (bypassing the shunt), the Trimetric...

The TM-2030 is capable of managing two SC-2030 solar controllers, effectively doubling the solar current to 62 Amps. The TM-2030 can't manage other make/models of charge controllers and its serial port must not be connected to any controller other than the SC-2030. Doing so can (& very likely)...

Connecting two SC-2030's to one TM-2030 is useful only when the two SC-2030's are connected to similar solar banks. When the two controllers are connected to two different power sources, the duty cycle computed by the TM-2030 for the 1st SC-2030 may not be accurate for the 2nd SC-2030. In the...

Vmp ~15V, Voc ~17.5V. For PWM controllers, Isc & Voc are the relevant parametrs. As others have mentioned, PWM is as good as MPPT when the panels are at 40C or above. This is likely to be the case for most RV'ers (unless you're a ski bum boondocking in Aspen CO in January). We recommend the...

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