diy solar

diy solar

Cost saving controller brands. Best bang for buck

Stewfish

New Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2020
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316
I'm looking for a cheap solar controller and it's just to run some stuff at camp. I'm looking for the quality of something similar to MPP. There's guys in Australia that have been using MPP all-in-one inverters to run houses for 10+ years. I feel like that quality is good enough for the small project I have.

I noticed that once you get above 30 amps the price starts jumping really quickly and I need to do 5 to 6 solar panels, 250 Watts each at 38 volt into 12v batteries. I believe that's 100 amps or 120 or two 60s. It will be in a solar shed for camp.

So far I'm kind of leaning towards getting makeskyblue and replacing the fan with a high quality fan since they are only like $20 and then add another fan at the other side of the venting to pull air through also and decrease the duty on the fan. That seems to be the only failure point of those inverters and my cost would be $300 delivered from Amazon.

I would get the MPP all-in-one but to get the parallel 12v 80a ones I would be close to $900 before shipping.and the next highest model.was 24v and next lowest model was 40a and not parallel able. The generator/grid option would be perfect for camp though to also charge when we have that running for large loads. I just find it hard to spend $1000 to.run some 12v lights and a water pump for our propane camping hot water heater shower.

It seems like doing up to 30a is $40 from many companies like Renogy. Once you get a lot higher then "price per watt" gets cheap. I can put 8000w worth of panels into a unit that's about $1000. Just seems odd its close to that much for just 1250w.

Let me know what other cost saving brands there are so I can do research.
 
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No ideas for brands? It's to charge our "already have" 4 golfcart batteries in 2s2p (12v) to run the pump for our propane camp shower instant water heater, lights, charge stuff, keep the 12v stuff in our RV going like the motherboard for the propane fridge, screen and fan for the propane heater, roof fans, and other 12v stuff. We don't need to run the generator much at all if the batteries are charged. I already have the panels and wanted to put them to good use.
 
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How about something like a PIP 3024MSXE? You could rewire your batteries to be 24V, run a 24v to 12v converter for your current items and you would have 3k of 230v/50hz power for other stuff. Wire the panels 3S2P (or 3S3P would be better) and you are looking at ~1.5-2.2kw of recharge per hour at ~114v, ~13-20a. You could run 10-12awg wiring from the panels to the controller. You could also charge the batteries with the generator if need through this unit.

I don't have any idea what is available down under, just throwing out ideas :)
 
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