[RE-wrenches] Tri-Star MPPT

[Brian Teitelbaum]

William,

What does the PV array consist of? What size and type, and how many, modules?

Which TriStar? 45 or 60A?

What controller did she have before the upgrade?

The high charging voltage might be a sign of sulfation. Depending on her load profile, that 8A charge rate might have caused chronic undercharging. In a 5 peak sun-hour location, that's only 40Ah/day of charging capacity.

Brian Teitelbaum
AEE Solar

From: re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of William Miller
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 1:13 PM
To: RE-wrenches
Subject: [RE-wrenches] Tri-Star MPPT

Friends:

I have a customer with a new Tristar MPPT controller.  The customer has some older L-16 batteries mixed with new and she thinks the controller has damaged her batteries.  I am trying to convince her that the batteries were already damaged and mixing old with new is a bad idea.

I removed the worst batteries from the array, leaving one string of older batteries with reasonable SG readings.  The CC still acts strangely:  When programmed to charge the L-16 batteries, the battery voltage shoots up to 30.2 volts and the batteries boil a lot.  The green light on the controller blinks at variable rates, at one moment fast, the next slow, the next solid.

I believe the client started with bad batteries, 6 are 4 years old, 2 are 1 year old.  She is convinced that the CC damaged her batteries.  She replaced panels and CC recently, installing the Tristar.  I believe the old PV system charged at such a slow rate (8 amps) that the battery deficiency was not apparent.  The higher charging rate has emphasized the problem.

Any one have any thing to add to my theory?

Thanks in advance.

William Miller



[cid:image002.jpg at 01CE87A8.28D5F890]
17395 Oak Rd. Atascadero, CA 93422
www.millersolar.com<http://www.millersolar.com/>
805-438-5600 voice*
*Note: above number replaces cell number

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20130723/610f251c/attachment-0003.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 3493 bytes
Desc: image002.jpg
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20130723/610f251c/attachment-0006.jpg>