REGULATOR

I google Steca and up came Solar Panel Australia why not give them a call as I assume they would experts in the field of solar...I'll even give you the website..

www.solarpanelaustralia.com.au

Now how easy was that...give google try next time, you'd be surprised what info you can get.

Thanks. Been googling everyone, but they really don't want or can't give me an answer - distributerjust said . . . 'we don't connect this facility'.
Ted

Can't quite picture what you mean but my steca 15A is pretty straightforward. From memory it has positive and negative holes to screw in from your solar panel, clearly marked "Input" and the same marked "output". So the solar panel's positive lead goes in the Steca "Input" positive hole and its negative lead goes in teh negative marked hole you screw them tight. The "Output" leads go to your battery terminals.

Hope that makes sense.

Steca has 3 terminals , l/hand, + and - is for solar panel imput .... middle terminals +and - go to battery .... r/hand terminals + and - generally are connected to a terminal block from which you connect all the power using equipment ie: lights /fridge/tv ect ect , that way the Steca reads input from solar panel and amp "draw" from all items "connected " ,ONE major point is that you cannot connect a charger /generator to the Steca 20 , ,if you want to recharge other than solar you must disconnect the Steca ,otherwise the fault code will become fault "16" , not even in handbook ,tis the code for missuse so NO warranty claim.

Hi if it is the PR 2020 let me know your email addy and I'll send you the manual for it. From what I can gather there are 6 screw terminals. 2 for solar, 2 for battery and 2 for load (consumer items)

For heavy draw items such as invertors they should be connected directly to the battery.

Peter

Hi Merylin

We stock BP Steca products. Try this link...

a href="http://www.stecasolar.com/en/art/uid_kategorien/0000581/id_matchcode/up_solarladeregler/id_artikel/0000092/bop/0/chksum/4fb3b55e8148d5d3226210db61141597/beetools.html">STECA



It is quite simple. Battery in....Solar In....Load Out...

The charger and car charge circuit must NOT go through the reg !

Regards

Derek.

The handbook for this regulator can be downloaded from:-

http://tinyurl.com/vf5zj

Take note of the section in page 6 headed "2.3 Grounding" It is important not to
earth more than one of the negative terminals. If you do you will short out one
or more of the current shunts. These current shunts are what the metering in the
unit uses to measure the solar panel and battery currents. Short these out and all current values will be shown as ZERO. The state of charge (SOC) readout will be
useless also as it uses the shunts for its calculations. You can however use these
regulators in a positive earth installation and earth all the +ve terminals (this
is because they were originally designed for telephone installations.)

If you connect anything to the battery like chargers and heavy loads (inverters)
you will upset the SOC readings. Reason - this type of controller measures the
charge and discharge current into and out of the battery through the current
shunt - if you charge or discharge the battery in any way other than through
the controller then its SOC readings are meaningless. The reason that these
very expensive controllers are employed is to be able to measure the SOC
isn't it? If you are going to connect anything directly to the battery then you
may as well use something cheaper like a Morningstar Prostar.

PeterD