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beachman
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# Posted: 27 May 2020 05:11pm
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Got to the cabin and got the panels set up (have to take them in as near the water - potential ice damage, and potential breakage from trees, etc...). Got everything hooked up and turned on the charge controller - nothing. It is a Blue Sky 2125iX I think and about 5 years old and appears to be toast. The back connection fell off and it sparked when I tried to attach it again. 12 volt system with two panels at a little over 500 watts (in parallel to keep at 12 volts). Looking at a Renogy Rover Elite 40 amp MPPT CC which is good for 520 watts at 12 volts. It looks like a reasonably priced replacement until I go to a higher voltage system in a couple of years. Any comments on this choice?
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Nobadays
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# Posted: 27 May 2020 06:31pm
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Here is s good video comparing several budget charge controllers... diysolar Renogy has a pretty good reputation so you probably wouldn't be going wrong with that SCC.
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Bruces
Member
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# Posted: 27 May 2020 07:31pm
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I have a renogy rover 40 amp unit and it has been just perfect .I will be buying a few more ,and another to concider is the Richsolar ,it’s the exact same unit as the renogy ,a little cheaper ,and you can put a larger wire into it .I am in Canada ,and I got my renogy for about $145 plus taxes before the beer virus hit ,I think the prices have gone up because of supply ,so you may wish to wait a bit if you can .Also the richsolar unit has a poor users manual with it ,just google the renogy one and you will be good to go .
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Bruces
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# Posted: 27 May 2020 07:43pm
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I just noticed you are interested in higher voltage systems down the line ,the renogy handles over 1000 watts on 24 volt ,and I am currently feeding mine with 36 volts currently @510 watts on 12 volt ,it has been perfect but is not big enough for my other 640 watt panels so I will need another controller or two .
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Brettny
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# Posted: 28 May 2020 08:31am
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If your pannels output 500w and the CC is good for 520w I would get a bigger charge controller. That's just to close to the limit. Or you can split the pannels and use two smaller charge controllers. At least this way you would only loose half your charging capabilities. Or you could just get a bigger cocontroller that does all the voltages you could ever need.
Have you looked at EPever charge controllers?
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offgrididaho
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# Posted: 28 May 2020 10:38am
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If you have two panels have you considered re-wiring them in series and using MPPT controller? Unless your pair of panels has shading issues, then you might consider two smaller controllers (one for each panel) as noted above.
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beachman
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# Posted: 28 May 2020 12:24pm
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Thanks for all the comments. My plans down the road will be to probably go to 48 volt system with up to 6 panels quite far away (larger wires). This will be in a few years when my current batteries are starting to die. I think I will go with the Renogy Rover 40 amp cc in spite of the smaller wire openings. They say they can handle AWG10 so I should be good on connections if careful.
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Brettny
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# Posted: 28 May 2020 01:16pm
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If your going to 48v and a longer run you really should be looking at a charger that takes 150v or 200v. There not going to cost double the money.
Series or parallel pannels dont matter. The 40a charge controller is only going to put out 40a no matter what the input. One reason why you series pannels is for a long wire run or small wires between the pannels and charge controller.
The 100v input on many of the lower end cheap controllers can be very limiting with higher output controllers. You dont need to parallel pannels just to keep them at 12v. Most likely your charging at 14+ voltage so should be running them in series.
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beachman
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# Posted: 28 May 2020 03:10pm
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Brettny, thanks for the update. Always thought the panels were 12 volt and I am charging 2 6 volt batteries in series. Thought if I tried series for the panels, it would produce 24 volts and I would be short a couple of batteries to make the system 24 volts along with a new 24 volt inverter. Right now I have the 2 panels in parallel attached to AWG 10 wire for about a 40 ft run. The panels are about 29 voc at 8.3 amps each. I produce almost 17 amps in full sunlight, about half the day (shaded). The system has worked very well, until my cc crapped out.
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Brettny
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# Posted: 29 May 2020 11:21am
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If your CC is set to output 12v then no matter what your pannels output the batteries only will see there set max charging voltage.
There is a voltage calculator online that will tell you the wire loss on 29vdc at 8a and 10g with 40ft of run. Generally you want high voltage on longer runs like 40ft.
I believe that renogy will take 100v input so you can even series one more of your solar pannels. But upgrading in the future may be an issue with the 40a output.
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beachman
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# Posted: 31 May 2020 12:11pm
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Thanks again. I think this cc auto reads the incoming voltage (can auto adjust for 12 or 24) and I am not sure if it would try to use 24 to charge the 12 volt system (not sure if I can set this as I don't yet have the unit). I know about the voltage loss and have a calculator to do this - but thanks for the reference. I agree that a future upgrade may be a problem with the 40amps and possibly a higher voltage.
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