Morningstar 45 amp charge controller

niel

Re: Morningstar 45 amp charge controller

although the sunforce may be unfamiliar to me on reliability, given your situation, if it works go with it. if it fails we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
i hope things turn around for you soon.

joeaksa

Re: Morningstar 45 amp charge controller

Neils,

I have already told the seller (not NAWS) that I will be returning it. With the duff display do not want it and do not mind spending another $100 to get something that I can rely on.

Thx,

Joe

niel

Re: Morningstar 45 amp charge controller

ok in that case yes, get one of the pwm controllers like a c40 or tristar 45 as 5 80w pvs will not be needing the higher amperage capacity of the 60a versions. get the bts too if you can. this is around the $150 range. if you can do more for a bigger or better cc then by all means go ahead, but you will still be limited with the amount of power you have available from pvs, at least for now.
i figure you'll be around 22 or 23a with 400w of pv and that would be about minimal to float charge a battery bank like that at a 1% rate.

joeaksa

Re: Morningstar 45 amp charge controller

A new question about this controller.

I got the TS 45 and it seems to work fine but differently from the others I have used in the past.

I have at this time (just a beta test rig) 3 80 watt GE panels hooked up to the system.

With the old controllers (a smaller Morningstar to start with, then the one that puked last month) the panels would charge the batteries at a higher charging voltage. Same everything but changing the controller.

I called Crown batteries and talked to them about the CR-225 golf cart batteries that I am using. Right now I have 8 of them hooked up to make a 12v bank. Crown said to charge them at 14.4 max. This is what I set the DIP switches on the TS45 for according to the manual.

The old controllers would push 13.7-13.9 volts into the batteries and they would always end up being around 12.8v or so the next morning, so seem to be holding their own just fine.

With the new TS45 the voltage going into the batteries is a bit lower and no where near the 14.4 that I assumed I would see. I checked the system this afternoon while full sun was on the panels and was only seeing 13.5 volts at the batteries.

Are my 8 batteries too much for the three panels? I do not at this time have anything hooked up to the system on a regular basis, am still testing things before taking it out into the boonies.

At times I do hook up the 12v back yard path lights to the batteries to cycle them up and down a bit and in the morning the batteries are never below 12.4v. Just checked the batteries now (its almost 9 pm) and they are setting at 12.8 with nothing hooked up. The yellow light on the TS45 is showing, which is pretty much in line with what the manual says.

Thanks,

Joe

mike95490

Re: Morningstar 45 amp charge controller

joeaksa wrote: »

I have at this time (just a beta test rig) 3 80 watt GE panels hooked up to the system.

I called Crown batteries and talked to them about the CR-225 golf cart batteries that I am using. Right now I have 8 of them hooked up to make a 12v bank. Crown said to charge them at 14.4 max. This is what I set the DIP switches on the TS45 for according to the manual.

What's the voltage specs on the panels:
Vmp
Voc

What's the AH of your battery bank (I don't have a handy link to look up how you connect 8 CR-225 batteries for 12V) ?

If you have 240 STC watts, that's only 192W harvested. Not very much for 8 large sounding batteries.

Are your panels in series, or parallel ?

joeaksa

Re: Morningstar 45 amp charge controller

mike90045 wrote: »

What's the voltage specs on the panels:
Vmp
Voc

What's the AH of your battery bank (I don't have a handy link to look up how you connect 8 CR-225 batteries for 12V) ?

If you have 240 STC watts, that's only 192W harvested. Not very much for 8 large sounding batteries.

Are your panels in series, or parallel ?

Panels are Parallel, running 12v into the controller.

Amp rating on the batteries is 225, so am assuming that 8 of them would be 1800. Math and electronics is not my forte.

Sounds like I need to hook up several more solar panels!!??

Thanks,

Joe

Cariboocoot

Re: Morningstar 45 amp charge controller

According to the rough* calculations, you have too many batteries for 400 Watts of panels.

400/12 = 33 Amps max which is 5% (min charge rate) of 660 Amp/hrs.

Batteries: 2 6V 225 Amp/hr in series = 12V 225 Amp/hr Times four banks (8 batteries total) = 900 Amp/hrs.
For a good charge you'd want approximately 1000 Watts of panels for that. Also, the charge rate should be 45 Amps minimum (5%) going towards 90 Amps (10%) which is beyond the capacity of almost all charge controllers so you'd want to split the panels into separate arrays and use to controllers.

There is also a problem with wiring this many batteries together: keeping the wires equal length so that some of the battery hook-ups don't have greater resistance than others. I suggest that for now you separate what you've got into two "dual banks" of four batteries each, and switch between each from day to day too keep all equally charged.

*Rough calculations don't include actual, real-world numbers on Vmp or efficiency losses etc. They just get you "in the ball park" to know what sort of situation you're looking at.