Solar Systems

[Nix]

Four year update - all good! Solar panels, controllers & batteries doing well, very reliable and I'm sure has already paid for itself so very pleased.

Only real issue I've found is in the LVD for the immersion where, in certain conditions, the voltage bounces from high to low very quickly causing rapid on/off switching at the relay plus, if the voltage happened to drop below about 22.5v with the bouncing, the board lost it's program setting entirely which meant repeated resetting of parameters. This was an annoyance. Got in touch with the LVD supplier and had them take out the delay (about 10 secs) that was programmed in. This helped enormously but still didn't resolve to my satisfaction. So now I've developed my own board and program which is nearly ready to test. Used an Arduino Uno board and had to refresh my memory for C++ programming lol!

Anyway, no regrets at all and I'm more than happy with the set up. Batteries do start to act tired after a while but so long as you don't overwork them and make sure you equalise every now and then, they just truck on. Again, DOD is VERY important if you want your batteries to last.

Did try an MPPT controller (really come down in price now!) which improved actual power charging but resorted to my original expensive PWM controller as it had automatic equalisation at the end of every month and was more programmable.