Monday, June 25, 2018

Version 1 Solar Charger and Load controller


Above shows the basic diagram of how a charge controller should be wired up. On each of the connections, there is a switch to allow for closing and isolating a section of the charge controller. On the picture on the right is a prototype on how it all planned out. In addition, the left picture also includes 10 amp fuses on each of the sections of the charge controller to prevent any short circuits or overloads from damaging the components.
However, in the version one, the bus bar used was an aluminium bar, which proved to cause too much resistance in the circuit. This large resistance caused for a drop in voltage and create inaccurate voltages read by the charge controller. The bar shall be replaced with a more electrically conductive material to increase efficiency. As well, the current size of the project is too large, so version 2 will be condensed down. Even though this circuit had power losses. For 2 years, the circuit had run smoothly and resulted in 3000 accumulated amp hours in charging and 2000 accumulated amp hours in discharging.