Recent content by LakeHouse

I don't think it was necessarily a recommendation for a 300A rating. But what you're suggesting (a high-ish rated Class T to protect specifically against a dead short) isn't unreasonable, as long as you also have another method of protecting against the non-short overload case. So breakers...

Well I stand corrected on the panel voltage! Voc over 200V is a new one to me. This actually seems about right. This is 1/2 to 2/3 of Imp, and with a setting sun is probably not far from what you should expect. This seems to a be a common problem... The easiest way is to get a clamp style...

The 150/45 and VRM are fantastic. I haven’t built the rest yet, and may not for a few more years. I actually wasn’t planning on using the transformer to step up, just center-tap 240Vac to get 120V split phase. Electrical utilities step ac voltage up and down with transformers all the time, so...

Something doesn’t add up here. You said there are four panels wired in parallel, so how are you measuring 170-190V anywhere? Maybe these are very different panels than I’m familiar with, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single panel Voc much higher than 60V. Are you 100% sure that your...

You shouldn’t need both fuses and breakers. But you should be sure that you have real confidence in the quality of those breakers, and that they’re non-polarized. On the forum you tend to see more class T fuses than breakers because the fuses are much cheaper than high quality breakers. I...

The resulting battery will behave a little strangely at the bottom end: you’ll have eight cells in the lower knee of the charge curve and eight still in the flat part. So you might have the BMS cutting off when the battery voltage is higher than normal, maybe around 47 volts (just as an example...

I’ve seen worse here on the forum that have recovered just fine. Hook up the bench power supply and charge with low current, maybe 2 Amps, until the cells are all back above 2.5V, then charge normally.

If you have enough solar panels, yes.

I assume you mean three panels in series… In which case, don’t do that. You’ll exceed the SCC’s 75V limit on even a moderately cool day. Two in series would be fine.

What you have there is fine: 40A, 3.65V, 5A cutoff. You could raise the cutoff to 14A (0.05C), but the difference it makes will be small.

No, the two can operate independently of each other.

My point was that it currently makes sense for manufacturers to ignore the old ‘standard’ entirely. Because other than maybe for some RV applications, there’s no reason to make nominally ‘12V’ panels anymore. As for why stop following a standard that isn’t useful, that seems to me the wrong...

I would just ignore those nominal voltages. Years ago when people where using PWM controllers, 'matching' panels to battery voltages made sense. But MPPT controllers are cheap enough now that there's really not much reason to use PWMs. What that's done is made it so that panels don't have to...

It looks like this is a 15s battery. Charging to 53.5V (~3.57V/cell) should be fine. Ignoring Solar Assistant for a minute... What does the inverter report for these settings if you use its interface? It's a 48V inverter, so you shouldn't even be able to set it to have those values. The...

lol, for everyone's benefit... If @timselectric and I disagree, personally I'd go with what Tim said!