I have never bothered pushing the button on my inverter that tells the state-of-charge of the batteries before as I have always had a Tri-Metric Meter
that does that. Out of curiosity I did it this trip and the inverter (Xantrex 1500, old school) showed 100% full when the meter only showed 80%.
Anyone else notice this?
One a different note, on arrival I always clean my panels by dusting them with a dry mop. One day, after doing this, I washed them and picked up over
2 more amps from two 200 watt panels. I'll be washing them from now on.BigWooo - 1-25-2016 at 06:53 AM
I'm not certain, as I don't know the Xantrex inverter, but it's common for some devices to have an accuracy of only 5% (some 10%). If that's the
case, when your inverter reads the batteries are at 95% it may actually indicate its "full". Twenty percent seems a little much, but that's an old
inverter. It may be "normal". I bet you can find an owners manual on line and see how accurate it's battery reading is.
The best way to tell if your batteries are under or over charging is to use a hydrometer.
[Edited on 1-25-2016 by BigWooo]willardguy - 1-25-2016 at 09:49 AM
hmmm...is the shunt properly programmed? is the charged voltage setpoint on the tri-metric lower than your charger/inverter setpoint? (it should be)
as far as cleaning the panels, my guess is the difference was from time of day, time of year, outside temps, remember a cool panel will be more
efficient than a hot panel....
[Edited on 1-25-2016 by willardguy]Santiago - 1-25-2016 at 10:33 AM
as far as cleaning the panels, my guess is the difference was from time of day, time of year, outside temps, remember a cool panel will be more
efficient than a hot panel....
[Edited on 1-25-2016 by willardguy]
The difference was before and after cleaning; I was curious if here would be much of a difference.larryC - 1-25-2016 at 10:44 AM
Jim
I am not familiar with exactly how your inverter measures battery SoC but a lot of the modified sine wave inverters just use battery voltage to
indicate the SoC, so that when your batteries are being charged and are up to say13+ volts the inverter would show them as fully charged. The
Trimetric on the other hand measures amps/amphours into and out of the battery and won't show the batteries fully charged until all the amphours are
put back into the battery bank. That may be the reason for the discrepancy. I would trust the Trimetric and just use the inverter as a guide.
LarryBob and Susan - 1-25-2016 at 11:13 AM
I think the Tri-Metric Meter is your charge controller...
mine is an outback...
the outback metered battery voltage is always .3 volts higher
than my Trace/Xantrex inverter
remember voltage is only an indication that the batteries can be charged
don't trust either
use only as an indicator...
I always chose the lower number
I wouldn't worry about it...if the meter is at 80% then its still charging the batterieswillardguy - 1-25-2016 at 11:20 AM
