I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Skyko

I know there are some older threads but they are not very recent.

For our 24V battery bank in an RV, with 1000 watts of panels (probably wired 2s2p for 78v open circuit 62v max power). We are going to use a Magnum 24V input 4000 watt output hybrid true sine inverter.

What MPPT controller? The only reason I was leaning toward Outback is because I saw they are produced a few miles from me and seem to have a good reputation. This is a silly reason though, because I don't have any information on which model is better for our situation.

So...benefits of one over the other with Outback FM-60 or Morningstar TS-MPPT-60

So far I have:

1) Outback model has a shorter name and is thus easier to type

vtmaps

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Skyko wrote: »

So far I have:

1) Outback model has a shorter name and is thus easier to type

Can you type C L A S S I C ?

--vtMaps

BB.

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Here is a link to the Midnite Classic product line:

MidNite Solar Charge Controllers and Clippers

You probably could also look at Rogue too--A very nice controller too (and none of the "extra price options" for LCD/Remote Temp Sensor/digital computer adapter, etc.):

http://www.roguepowertech.com/products/controllers.htm

-Bill

Cariboocoot

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

1000 Watts on a 24 Volt system will be capable of >30 Amps, which leaves out the Rogue and the MidNite Kid.

You could use the Morningstar 45 Amp MPPT controller @ $410 This does not include a display which is another $90. There you're at $500.

You could use the Morningstar 60 Amp MPPT controller @ $515 Again the display is optional so you'd be at $605.

You could use the Outback FM60 @ $515 which includes the display.

You could use the MidNite Classic 150 Lite @ $500 which has no display ($168 for the graphics panel).

You could use the MidNite Classic 150 @ $610 which include the display.

You could use the Xantrex/Schneider/Conext XW MPPT 60 @ $480 with 2-line display.

Frankly I doubt you'll need the extra functions the Classic provides. The XW looks like a great deal (and is not fan cooled so no fan noise to consider). The Outback is known to be extremely dependable. At this point I'd probably pass on the Morningstar units and pick between the XW and the FM.

zoneblue

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Brand is a personal choice, youre just going to have to do your own reading on that one. But for 1000W PV at 24v (and little to no growth expectation) id be weary of using a 60A+ controller, its overkill for you, and their tare draw is considerable. [1]

Best you also check your inverter tare, thats a big old inverter you plan on using, and with minimal pv/battery to support it. Another easy mistake to make [2].

[1] I worked out recently that at CL150/1000W/24V a full 10% of production is consumed by the controller tare. That calc is lurking in my sig.

[2] Bigger is better right, after all it wont be working as hard and will last longer? Wrong. Get only the size inverter you need for your load. Bigger inverters have higher tare, increase the risk of accidental catastrophic bank depletions, and will volt sag on small banks anyway.

Cariboocoot

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

zoneblue wrote: »

Brand is a personal choice, youre just going to have to do your own reading on that one. But for 1000W PV at 24v (and little to no growth expectation) id be weary of using a 60A+ controller, its overkill for you, and their tare draw is considerable. [1]

Best you also check your inverter tare, thats a big old inverter you plan on using, and with minimal pv/battery to support it. Another easy mistake to make [2].

[1] I worked out recently that at CL150/1000W/24V a full 10% of production is consumed by the controller tare. That calc is lurking in my sig.

[2] Bigger is better right, after all it wont be working as hard and will last longer? Wrong. Get only the size inverter you need for your load. Bigger inverters have higher tare, increase the risk of accidental catastrophic bank depletions, and will volt sag on small banks anyway.

This is only true to a point. The Magnum MS4024 draws 25 Watts, 7 in search mode. An Outback VFX3524 draws 20 Watts, 6 in search mode. A Samlex SA-2000K draws 36 Watts, 7 in search mode. So much for the "smaller inverter automatically uses less power" notion.

Nor are the charge controllers any great power gobblers, as the MS 45 will use as much as the MS 60 (2.7 Watts - hardly 10% of 1000 Watts), and are both comparable to the other MPPT units. Whether or not they are powering a display (particularly with the backlight on) or cooling fan will be the big power consumer (so in this case the XW wins out). The smaller Rogue and Kid use less, but will be clipping power at full output which is likely to be a bigger problem.

zoneblue

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Cariboocoot wrote: »

1000 Watts on a 24 Volt system will be capable of >30 Amps, which leaves out the Rogue and the MidNite Kid.

Yeah 1000W, its an awkward size. Midnite said this week that they will likely sell a fan option for the kid which will allow it to run at 40A. In any event, id still be inclined to choose the Kid over a classic for this install. The reason? state of the art controller, half watt tare that will possibly make up for the occassional current limited peaks over 30A. Flat panels, heat derated, not gona run at 1000W anyway.

You could use the Outback FM60 @ $515 which includes the display.

FM tare is around 2W, which is better then classic, but careful you dont end up needing mates, hubs, ad infinitum else your back to square one, on both tare and price. Your choice of inverter will factor there as a single ecosystem will always be better for integration.

Cariboocoot

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

zoneblue wrote: »

Yeah 1000W, its an awkward size. Midnite said this week that they will likely sell a fan option for the kid which will allow it to run at 40A. In any event, id still be inclined to choose the Kid over a classic for this install. The reason? state of the art controller, half watt tare that will possibly make up for the occassional current limited peaks over 30A. Flat panels, heat derated, not gona run at 1000W anyway.

I always include standard derating doing the calculations. In this case the smaller controllers may clip 2 Amps peak, or 48 Watts of power. That's not to be sneezed at. I run my 60 Amp controller on 700 Watts with current around 23 Amps peak and it has no problems at all keeping 232 Amp hours of battery up. And yes the cooling fan comes on from time to time, but due mainly to the ambient temperatures getting toasty rather than the current flow.

FM tare is around 2W, which is better then classic, but careful you dont end up needing mates, hubs, ad infinitum else your back to square one, on both tare and price. Your choice of inverter will factor there as a single ecosystem will always be better for integration.

You only need a MATE if you have an Outback inverter; the controllers do not require it. And you only need the HUB if you want to connect all your OB equipment to share data. Again, not required. Integration is not the vital thing some would have you believe it to be. The $300 cost of the MATE is the biggest negative for the FX inverters, and it is inadvisable to try and run one without it as the factory default settings are rarely right for your application.

Skyko

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

The positive for the Outback is it has a integrated lcd

But the Morningstar has built in Ethernet and you can use free software to do a lot data dumping and check settings.

The Morningstar also seems to come with a battery temp sensor.

vtmaps

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Skyko wrote: »

The positive for the Outback is it has a integrated lcd

But the Morningstar has built in Ethernet and you can use free software to do a lot data dumping and check settings.

The Morningstar also seems to come with a battery temp sensor.

The Classic comes with a battery temp sensor, and has many features that may prolong the life of your batteries. You can terminate absorb charge with end amps with Midnite's battery current sensor the WhizBang Jr. You can also program the Classic to skip days of charging if the SOC is high. The firmware on the Classic is easy to upgrade. The Classic also has some fantastic software, the 'Local App' and a My Midnite Online monitoring software. You can control the classic from you computer.

Do some more research before you spend your money...

--vtMaps

vtmaps

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Cariboocoot wrote: »

The $300 cost of the MATE is the biggest negative for the FX inverters

I consider that a Positive (not the price, but the fact that it is an optional purchase). If the controls were built into the FX inverter, then you would have to buy 4 sets of controls if you were stacking 4 inverters. It's also a plus that I can put the controls (ie the Mate) in my house and keep the inverter in the garage. I do agree that the Mate is necessary for virtually all FX systems.

--vtMaps

Cariboocoot

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Hence why I wrote "The $300 cost of the MATE is the biggest negative for the FX inverters."

zoneblue

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Hence why I wrote "The $300 cost of the MATE is the biggest negative for the FX inverters."

But if you want ethernet logging you need a mate, right?

Cariboocoot

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

zoneblue wrote: »

But if you want ethernet logging you need a mate, right?

Actually you need a MidNite Classic; Outbacks were never meant for ethernet connection (the MATE networking is proprietary). There was a company run by a forum member (Tallgirl) that made such comp interface for the OB, but I'm not sure it's still around. The FM will log 128 days of data on its own. It does have an RS232 port and can be connected to a computer (I don't think the protocols are restricted, unlike with some companies).

From OB MATE description: "The MATE and MATE2 include a RS232 port with DB9 jack for connection to the serial port of a PC computer. Through the use of optional WinVerter software you can perform such operations as data logging and graphical display of the system's operation and performance."

Not ethernet, but same result.

I don't use computers on my system, and often wonder why people are obsessed with monitoring on that level. I suppose everyone needs a hobby. :roll:

DMJ72

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

How noisy is the classic? To me in an RV this a deal breaker. The FM60 can be a jet plane!

I would recommend the Tristar MPPT 60, not only as an owner of said product, but it seems to be the logical choice here... as an RV is an enclosed liveable space. Also its said the Morningstar's MPPT harvest is better than the FM60.

Skyko

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Wow I just looked at the MidNite Classic 150, nice. It looks like a slot machine!

It has Ethernet, comes with battery temp cable, and is made in the USA.

In fact, it is also made a few miles from me in Arlington, WA...the same city Outback Solar is in. What is up with that? Arlington is a two bit seaside town...how could they have two of the top MPPT controller manufacturers a few blocks from each other? What is the history here?

Cariboocoot

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Skyko wrote: »

Wow I just looked at the MidNite Classic 150, nice. It looks like a slot machine!

It has Ethernet, comes with battery temp cable, and is made in the USA.

In fact, it is also made a few miles from me in Arlington, WA...the same city Outback Solar is in. What is up with that? Arlington is a two bit seaside town...how could they have two of the top MPPT controller manufacturers a few blocks from each other? What is the history here?

The guys who started MidNite started Outback before.
That's why both companies build such good products: solid engineering by the best in the business.

Vic

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

The brothers Gudgel were founders of Outback Power, and MidNite Solar, were active at Trace/Xantrex, and were important at Spectro Acoustics, and so on. Many of the exact details are unknown/forgotten to/by me.

On the MidNite Forum there have been some discussion of some of the history of Solar-oriented companies in the PNW, and some of the career tracks of Robin (a sometimes poster here), boB (a fairly frequent poster here), and Halfcrazy, who is the Tech Support manager at MidNite ... More later, if I can find it ...

Some stuff on Spectro here:
http://midniteforum.com/index.php?topic=474.0

Later, Vic

vtmaps

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Vic wrote: »

The brothers Gudgel were founders of Outback Power, and MidNite Solar, were active at Trace/Xantrex, and were important at Spectro Acoustics, and so on. Many of the exact details are unknown/forgotten to/by me.

Here's a refresher: http://www.hardysolar.com/inverter/inverter-history.html

--vtMaps

zoneblue

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Cariboocoot wrote: »

From OB MATE description: "The MATE and MATE2 include a RS232 port with DB9 jack for connection to the serial port of a PC computer. "

Serial isnt so good if your controller is far from your computer/network. Although theres hackable ways around that.

Mate3 has ethernet. http://www.outbackpower.com/outback-products/communications/item/mate3

Skyko wrote: »

Wow I just looked at the MidNite Classic 150, nice. It looks like a slot machine!

The aha moment. BTW Outback products are made not in arlington but in india.

DMJ72 wrote: »

How noisy is the classic? To me in an RV this a deal breaker. The FM60 can be a jet plane!

I have heard them side by side. The FM does sound like a jetplane, your right! While Midnite does have fans, they come on in stages and they are a good deal quieter. Hardly notice mine, and its about 5m from my desk.

waynefromnscanada

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

zoneblue wrote: »

I have heard them side by side. The FM does sound like a jetplane, your right! While Midnite does have fans, they come on in stages and they are a good deal quieter. Hardly notice mine, and its about 5m from my desk.

Not familiar with the FM, but the MX had virtually no natural convection cooling and almost totally relied on fan for cooling. The Midnight however is quite different in a way that really pleases me. The heat sink for the main switching transistors has solid, molded heat transfer fins (for lack of a better word) that project into an external "chimney" which then creates a natural convection airflow to assist cooling. Beyond that, again unlike the MX, the whole Classic enclosure is of heavy aluminum that also acts as a heat sink. There are of course fans (very easily replaceable if that's ever required) that will assist the convection cooling if needed.
The Morningstar by the way has an awesome design as far as dealing with heat is concerned, and instead of using fans, has an excellent, large finned heat sink which I have yet to see get more than just barely warm even at full power, and it's completely silent, just like Morningstar's awesome TS-300 inverter. Other manufacturers could definitely learn a thing or two from Morningstar when it comes to dealing with heat and noise.

mmag

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Cariboocoot wrote: »

I don't use computers on my system, and often wonder why people are obsessed with monitoring on that level. I suppose everyone needs a hobby. :roll:

How much tare load does data monitoring take? i never really understood the data monitoring for off grid unless its not a full time residence, i assumed it was more of a grid tie tool.

Cariboocoot

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

mmag wrote: »

How much tare load does data monitoring take? i never really understood the data monitoring for off grid unless its not a full time residence, i assumed it was more of a grid tie tool.

Mostly a matter of what the computer you use is going to eat up, as the controllers themselves use as much whether they're connected to a comp or not.

Monitoring grid-tie makes sense because you want to check against the utility's numbers and see the whole solar/load/grid relationship.

Monitoring off-grid is a bit obsessive-compulsive after you get the system working because its really a works/doesn't work situation. The numbers from production are totally dependent on consumption and the only relationship you'll see is the bad one of using more than you produce (deficit charging = "doesn't work").

zoneblue

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

The blackbox uses 2.6W, which includes (and actually is mostly) the 5 port switch that connects it into the local network. Im working on a way to remove the switch, which would get it down below 1.5W. For that you get 1second data stored for life, the ability to go back and figure out why something didnt go right, to catch problems before they get out of hand, and kill your bank.

Like you say everyone needs a hobby. How many Wh does your hobby use?

Cariboocoot

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

zoneblue wrote: »

Like you say everyone needs a hobby. How many Wh does your hobby use?

Ooh! New catch phrase! I love it!

boB

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Skyko wrote: »

Wow I just looked at the MidNite Classic 150, nice. It looks like a slot machine!

It has Ethernet, comes with battery temp cable, and is made in the USA.

In fact, it is also made a few miles from me in Arlington, WA...the same city Outback Solar is in. What is up with that? Arlington is a two bit seaside town...how could they have two of the top MPPT controller manufacturers a few blocks from each other? What is the history here?

Hey Skyko ! That's great ! Come on by MidNite some time and we'll give you the big nickel tour !

boB

RandomJoe

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

mmag wrote: »

How much tare load does data monitoring take? i never really understood the data monitoring for off grid unless its not a full time residence, i assumed it was more of a grid tie tool.

In my case the tare load is 0. The computer would be running anyway, as I have it doing other things as my home server. I'm not 100% off-grid here, but if/when I build the "dream home" out of town and go fully off-grid I'd have the same logging - though likely with a lower-power computer. I'm currently running a small x86 PC - 20-25W or so - fine for the present setup but quite a load 24x7 off-grid. I can easily drop that to 5-7W with an ARM SBC at the cost of some speed (not a concern for the logging) and convenience (x86 is much easier to me).

No, the logging isn't necessary. It's largely just a hobby thing for me, but it does come in useful on occasion. In my case I am probably in the "extreme overkill" territory - I record deltas to the DB, so steady-state there's a single entry every 10 seconds. If things change rapidly though, I can watch them at 3-second intervals (as fast as the data comes from the Mate). I originally thought I'd be pruning the DB every few months but just over two years on the DB is only just under 300MB - so why bother?!

The computer also logs my weather station in a similar fashion, and is the control point for my homemade home automation gadgets that monitor / control a variety of systems. (As well as the more usual stuff - media server for audio/video, backup drives for other machines, so forth.)

Skyko

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

boB wrote: »

Hey Skyko ! That's great ! Come on by MidNite some time and we'll give you the big nickel tour !

boB

Cool thanks. During the spring/summer we bike from Snohomish to Arlington on the converted railroad trail. I didn't mean to put down Arlington (I actually read in my mind Anacortes when I saw the address because we had just launched our sailboat there).

On the Midnite Classic 150, does it draw 2 or 3 watts during sleep mode, and why? I don't know which processor you guys are using, but there are plenty of Arm variants that can sleep on milliamps or even microamps and still wake on Ethernet activity or a change in input voltage.

3 watts over a 10 hour night is 3% of a KWh battery pack. I would like to see something more like 0.1 watt in sleep mode. I will still buy the Classic, just curious.

boB

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Skyko wrote: »

Cool thanks. During the spring/summer we bike from Snohomish to Arlington on the converted railroad trail. I didn't mean to put down Arlington (I actually read in my mind Anacortes when I saw the address because we had just launched our sailboat there).

On the Midnite Classic 150, does it draw 2 or 3 watts during sleep mode, and why? I don't know which processor you guys are using, but there are plenty of Arm variants that can sleep on milliamps or even microamps and still wake on Ethernet activity or a change in input voltage.

3 watts over a 10 hour night is 3% of a KWh battery pack. I would like to see something more like 0.1 watt in sleep mode. I will still buy the Classic, just curious.

Yes it does draw that much while sleeping. This amount will be reduced even more but there are actually 3 processors in a normal Classic, not just one processor.

So are you a programmer type person ? That would be great !

The Ethernet is the biggest reason for night time draw. If it can sleep most the time and then wake up when it needs to call into My Midnte, OR, wake up when it gets called
from an application, that would certainly work. Will look further into that. Thanks !

I live in Everett. For many years I had to drive to Arlington to get to Trace Engineering from Seattle. I did NOT want to actually move to Arlington. I don't particularly care
for the smell of chickens and Everett was more or less kind of central and not too far from all the activity. Arlington is also too far from Dick's Drive In !

boB

zoneblue

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

The classic may be sleeping, but the uP isnt, its doing checks for input, ground faults, log rotation, ethernet logging, wbjr SOC logging, running aux ports etc etc.

Like i said way back at the start classics are not designed for 1kWh packs, but tens of kWh packs. The same rule applys to inverters, big inverters draw 30W doing absolutely nothing. There aint no way round that unless you want to design and build one yourself.

Skyko

Re: I really can't decide...Morningstar or Outback?

Well it is worth a couple of watts to go with the Classic and have that awesome Slot machine look. :-)

I will probably get mine and try to put quarters in the top vent and fry it.