Thursday, May 31, 2012 at 10:59
Bob, with everything I have read on these pages I had been leaning toward MPPT as
well. Infact I bypassed PWM regulators because of the comments here.
I got into solar about 9 months ago as part experiment and part knowledge building. In that time I have learnt a lot, coming from an electronics hobyists background.
I recently acquired a new van (secondhand) and it was already fitted with a Steca PWM regulator and an 80 watt polycrystaline panel. I thought I will swap the existing regulator over for the spare MPPT regulator with LCD display I have.
I did that and found that I liked the stecca better as it had a "tank style" guage for a battery level display. To clarify, it has a good liquid crystal display which displays everything you need to know, each item in turn at the press of a button, probably like your plasmatronics.
What I found was that under most normal circumstances there is very little difference between PWM and MPPT in operation, as observed during operation. I also found that the poly panel works very
well also. (I have a folding 160 watt Mono setup as
well) Meaning there is not much difference in the panels either in normal operation from my observations.
I swapped back the Steca and I will be staying with the Steca PWM in the van.
I am more than happy with it
As a further comment, I was showing my mate, who has not gone solar yet, how good it is and inadvertently connected the batter supply to the solar panel input on the reg and, of course, blew the input transistors. Trying to find replacements was proving impossible so I bought another Steca look alike off ebay.
When I opened up the new Fangpusun (Steca look alike) and it proved to be nearly exactly the same inside. the only difference was the identifiers on the transistors. Otherwise the circuit is exactly the same. The rating of the input transistors apparently determines the rating of the regulator.
In summary i would stay with the PWM if your happy with it, and, Poly panels are not as bad as they are made out to be.
I added this in case someone is wondering if the Steca look alikes are as good as the Stecca, in my experience so far, they are.
Re my sig line, I guess you would be right in suggesting most on here would relate to that.
Cheers, Bruce.
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