TechLuck - Green Energy Forum - A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more!

Aric Dyson YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 10	Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more! Reply #12 - May 2^nd, 2013 at 10:00pm With regards with this solar charger controller? Where can I buy this kind of controller? I can't wait to get and buy this stuff hope you can help me. Keep posting
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andrew_paul111 YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 3	Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more! Reply #11 - Nov 16^th, 2012 at 1:55am Wow! It is great news...
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electron

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Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more!
Reply #10 - Oct 13^th, 2012 at 9:20pm

rgjohn wrote on Oct 13^th, 2012 at 8:11pm:

Do you think that the load (bulb) outputs of 2 or more of these controllers could be connected to the one inverter load?

Batteries are such pain in the ass!

I understand what you mean. You really have to buy them all at once so they have the same lifetime.

This controller switches the ( - ) leads so that makes things a little strange. I think if one output was on and the other was off it might send -V into the "load" mosfet depending on the battery voltages so I don't know if that would be a good idea.

You might be able to build a circuit to do what you want with a bunch of mosfets, start out with two and go from there.

Problem is if one mosfet goes out the others would have to take on more current and if they are not rated to the full output needed for your inverter, you will pop mosfets.

You are right about the diode 0.7V (typical) voltage drop, it would make the inverter shut off sooner, but it would work.

Easiest way is to always buy all the batteries at one time and have as few as possible.

There are some new types of batteries coming out, we have to hope the price will start dropping on those soon.

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rgjohn

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Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more!
Reply #9 - Oct 13^th, 2012 at 8:11pm

electron ... thanks for looking into these little controllers. My question (if you have time to answer):
Do you think that the load (bulb) outputs of 2 or more of these controllers could be connected to the one inverter load? I run a very low cost solar system and the hardest and costliest thing is the batteries. I don't like running batteries in parallel, particularly second hand ones so would it work if I had separate pv panel(s) and one of these controllers for each 12V battery bank? Then take the outputs of each controller to the one inverter. Would they interfere with each other?
I suppose an alternative to connecting the outputs could be isolating diodes between the positives of the banks and the inverter input. The diode voltage drop would be a problem and maybe it would interfere with the battery voltage sensing by the controllers.
What do you think?
At the moment I have 3 banks of 2x6V 200Ah batteries. These 3 banks in parallel worry me as if one cell goes it will take out the lot if it happens when I'm not there for a while. So I'd like to have 3 sets of panels running 3 controllers into three seperate 12V (2x6V) banks.
cheers
John

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jack YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 2	Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more! Reply #8 - Jul 24^th, 2012 at 7:21pm it looks so good
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electron

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Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more!
Reply #7 - Jul 15^th, 2012 at 11:59pm

soundbyte wrote on Jul 15^th, 2012 at 9:31pm:

Have recently bought one of these controllers and it worked well for about a week.

It now does not light the solar panel led and so will not charge the battery.

Now looking for a schematic to check what has failed.

If any one could help with a schematic that would be much appreciated.

Thanks

There's two main mosfets for charging, look at the bottom of the circuit board and you can figure out which two are in the charging part on the (-) leads. The other one is the same type of mosfet but it's used for the "light bulb / load" output.

There's your spare mosfet!

Check the mosfets with a ohm meter, they mostly fail SHORTED, so it may be easy to find the problem.

Do some basic stuff, check the transistors and diodes on the board, they would be the easiest to replace. The surface mounts chips are a pain to replace and hardest to figure out if they are bad unless they are totally dead.

Sometimes with a little patience you can bid these at $5 with free shipping so there comes a point where it's not worth messing with and just call it spare parts.

If you do find out what went bad you want to think about why it went bad so it doesn't do it again, did you have a surge? Is there something in the circuit that could send higher voltage pulses down the wires?

It may help to add a capacitor near any device that you think may be sending spikes down the line.

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soundbyte

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Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more!
Reply #6 - Jul 15^th, 2012 at 9:31pm

Have recently bought one of these controllers and it worked well for about a week.

It now does not light the solar panel led and so will not charge the battery.

Now looking for a schematic to check what has failed.

If any one could help with a schematic that would be much appreciated.

Thanks

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electron

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Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more!
Reply #5 - May 8^th, 2012 at 9:52am

I ran a test with this charge controller and a 300W Grid Tie Inverter connected to the same solar panel and the results are good.

I hooked the GTI up as usual, direct to the solar panel. The grid tie is the 14V to 28V input type.

I also hooked the charge controller to the same two wires from the solar panel, it was now in parallel with the GTI.

The 12V battery was hooked up to the two terminals for the battery. ALWAYS hook up the battery first!

When you do this what happens is the battery will go to about 14.7V (or where you adjusted it with the little POT inside the controller) and any leftover energy will now go to the grid!

Some energy is always required to keep a battery charged so this is a good way to keep a battery charged for emergencies. The rest can lower your power bill.

If you run down that battery, the solar power goes to charge it up first, because the GTI won't kick in till it sees 14V.

SOME IMPORTANT POINTS:

The battery (-) is switched on and off by the solar controller, so the battery can NOT be connected to your whole system if the solar panel is also part of that system.

So if you do this that battery and any loads you want to drive with it should be separate, or your panel has to be separate. I hope that makes sense.

Second thing, depending on how you set up your earth grounds, you want to check and make sure the GTI's ground and (-) are separate and floating, they generally are but just check that and make sure if you going to have the solar panels separate from the ground on the battery.

Third thing, you should use a 50W or better solar panel so the voltage can come up enough even with the GTI running that there is some voltage left to put a little into the battery to keep it topped up.

If it's confusing, just draw it all out.

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electron

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Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more!
Reply #4 - May 8^th, 2012 at 9:36am

Paul wrote on Jan 4^th, 2012 at 7:03pm:

Bought one of these circuits to regulate the battery charge for a old diesel AC generator with a 24volt control panel, the rectified "DC" supply voltage was to high and blow the two controlling IC, so I reversed engineer it by drawning a schematic of this PCB to find out how it work, I replaced the IC U2 (Cmos schmitt trigger NOT gate x 6) and U3 (Oprational Amplifier x 4) to get it working again. I found that the U2 component was a high-voltage gate that only Texas Instruments make, its rated up to 20volt and the U3 rated to 32volt max, the way they get round this is to use 15volt breakdown diodes "zener diodes" to adjust Q2 base a NPN transistor which supply the IC with there power.

The pot W2 adjust the supply isolation voltage turning the charging N-Channel mosfet Q6 off by turning on NPN transistor Q1 on via an optical coupled isolator transistor U1..

This forum I found when I when looking for a schematic without success, so desided to share my finding for anybody else that may be having problems, in short make sure your supply doesn't go above 28 volts otherwise may get some problems.. if it does you could try adjusting the the supply mosfet to isolate at lower potential from 28volts its mean't to isolate at, the charge LED will pulse then go out when it is fully isolated..

It would be great if you could post / attach your schematic, even a scribbled down one would be good to have.

U2 is a HEF40106 Hex Inverting Schmitt Trigger
U3 is a LM324 Op Amp

The datasheet I got on the Hex inverter was from Phillips.

One of the things I noticed is that the "load" output will flip on and off very rapidly when it gets near the voltage it should turn off. They could have done a better job on that, but most people won't use it anyway.

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Paul

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Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more!
Reply #3 - Jan 4^th, 2012 at 7:03pm

Bought one of these circuits to regulate the battery charge for a old diesel AC generator with a 24volt control panel, the rectified "DC" supply voltage was to high and blow the two controlling IC, so I reversed engineer it by drawning a schematic of this PCB to find out how it work, I replaced the IC U2 (Cmos schmitt trigger NOT gate x 6) and U3 (Oprational Amplifier x 4) to get it working again. I found that the U2 component was a high-voltage gate that only Texas Instruments make, its rated up to 20volt and the U3 rated to 32volt max, the way they get round this is to use 15volt breakdown diodes "zener diodes" to adjust Q2 base a NPN transistor which supply the IC with there power.

The pot W2 adjust the supply isolation voltage turning the charging N-Channel mosfet Q6 off by turning on NPN transistor Q1 on via an optical coupled isolator transistor U1..

This forum I found when I when looking for a schematic without success, so desided to share my finding for anybody else that may be having problems, in short make sure your supply doesn't go above 28 volts otherwise may get some problems.. if it does you could try adjusting the the supply mosfet to isolate at lower potential from 28volts its mean't to isolate at, the charge LED will pulse then go out when it is fully isolated..

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« Last Edit: Jan 4^th, 2012 at 7:09pm by Paul »

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SinurnowRonCZ Ex Member	A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more Reply #2 - Dec 4^th, 2011 at 6:25am Isnt Nevada Solar One a 64 MW facility? And isnt the proposed Ivanpah facility 392 MW? I guess these are not solar arrays, but solar-thermal. Still its the same in principle, no?
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Katty YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 10	Re: A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more! Reply #1 - Nov 5^th, 2011 at 3:14am wow its really nice. thanks for the post. tell me how far is it feasible?
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electron

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A Little Solar Charge Controller that may be able to do more!
Aug 11^th, 2011 at 6:02pm

This is one of those 12V / 24V 10A Solar Charge Controllers you see on Ebay for around $15. Model "CMP12" or "CMP12/24".

Taking it apart you find that it's a really simple circuit, just a couple of ICs and some mosfets. This is NOT a PWM charge controller, just simple on/off.

The surprise is that there are three RU6099R mosfets. They are rated at 90A !

The TO-220 package limits them to 75A though, which is still pretty high. 60V max. .006 ohms typical on resistance.

And there is room for 3 more on the board!

One of the mosfets is for switching on and off the load, "light bulb". If you were not using the load, you could use that mosfet as a replacement spare.

I am thinking that with a little beefing up of the circuit traces on the bottom side by adding some bus wire and more solder, and maybe adding more metal to the heat sink, you could make this into a nice 20A to 40A controller!

You couldn't build something like this for $15.

It's possible that not all of these have a overrated mosfet in them, but this one did so if you get one you will need to check the mosfet part numbers before you make any further mods.

But the circuit board does have places for more mosfets connected in parallel, and better mosfets are available online.

The two regulating mosfets are connected in series so that one acts like a diode but is turned on during operation so that you don't have a diode voltage drop during the day! Very nice. Pics of the insides, with the solder side of the board follow.

Other parts of interest:
Varistor -Voltage Dependent Resistor MYG 14D 471K
A pot for adjusting something?

The specs (from ads):
1. over-load protection
2. short circuit protection
3. protection from the lightning strike.
4. under-voltage protection
5. over-charging protection
6. Dimensions: 10 x 9.5 x 3.7cm ( 4 x 3.7 x 1.5 " )
7. Temperature Compensation: -20�C ~ +60�C
8. This product has been certified by CE
Rated voltage： 12V or 24V Voltage of stop power supply *10.8V or 21.6V
Rated charging current： 10A Voltage of resume power supply *11.8V or 23.6V
Rated load current： 10A Voltage of *14V or 28V
Full Charge Cut : 13.7V/27.4V
Low Voltage Cut : 10.5V/21V
Working temperature： -20 ~ +60�C Temperature coefficient of voltage stop charge -3mV/�C/cell

Thanks to "brownbrve" for the pics!

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cmp-12-24-charger1.jpg (57 KB | 168 )

cmp-12-24-charger2.jpg (64 KB | 158 )

cmp-12-24-charger3.jpg (74 KB | 158 )

cmp-12-24-charger4.jpg (58 KB | 151 )

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