Dean M's posts

I know of Redrok thats where Im going to order my led tracker. No where on that site have I seen anything even remotely close to a homebrew lamante solution for solar panels. Im not asking you catch my fish for me but can you be a little more specific. Thx in advance.

A few months now I have been at over 4 . Been adding 1 or 2 a month. Gel cells are expensive and thats what im using due to having my setup in the house. Up to 8 for about a month now. I found this link in another post on here and they are saying you are good up to eight doing it like I done mine. Did find out off that I have my charger hooked up to wrong terminals though I thought you shouldnt hook it up to same ones as inverter but guess I was wrong.

http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/batt_con.html

Never heard that not to say its not true. I have 8 100 amp hour 12v batteries in my bank. Have the positive for inverter and charger on opposite ends than their negs. Thought about it pulling off one battery more that the rest and killing that battery so did it that way so it has to pull through the bank and charge through the bank also. You have any links to that data?

What would keep you from stacking more than 4 batteries? 

Ive been building my own panels and I been wondering if there is a product out there that I could use to laminate my panels like the pro panels rather than using Lexan and sealing it. My panels look and work great and are well sealed just looking for the more professional look if it is possible and not overly expensive. Thx in advance.

Just figured it out. The c9 capacitor on the board has a poor connection. Accidently bumped it and noticed power output doubled. Re-soldered and all is well. I guess they have no QC dept. Thanks for input though.

No on that controller you can terminate the pv positive under the battery terminal pos (at the controller) and the controller will give you a read out of the current coming off the array. Tech support guy had me do, that pretty cool little feature to test panels output even though would be nice if the controller actually worked with my panels lol.

I have even hooked up just 1 panel by itself and have the same results of 1/3ish current output.

I currently have a Sunforce 30 amp charge controller and bought a Blue Sky 2000e 25 amp 12v mppt controller. After swapping out the charge controller I was getting only around 1/4 the amps I was with the sunforce. My friend also has the exact same setup as I do. The panels are 5 30 watt panels and 1 65 watt self made panel. You can jump the positive from the PV over to the positive on battery and see you have 13 amps but when connected through the mppt it shows 2.8. I have contacted tech support they said it could be the panels? Is it true that these controllers only work with certain panels/brands? It seems like to me that voltage is voltage if the controller is getting 17.6V from a source what could be different? Any ideals or similar situations?