oldtrack123 wrote:

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Ron-D wrote:

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I think its harmless banter. John ,although I understand where your coming from ,look at the post count its been a very interesting debate  ,by two well educated guys that hnow each other well.theres not a lot of tec info but heaps of entertainment, just my view and I could be wrong...

-- Edited by Ron-D on Wednesday 23rd of May 2018 05:32:42 PM

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 Hi Ron 

Glad you see it that way  

But I think Terry will win out 

I'm loosing my stamina & concentration & loooong posts like Terry's are getting beyond me,

Too much having to read backwards & forwards & type correcting

Age is starting to take it's toll, but still cannot complain too much with 90th birth day coming up this year

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 O T ... Bloody hell, I hope that I have your level of comprehension if I an lucky enough to make it to 90 & beyond.  At my relatively young 77 YO I am acutely aware of my fast failing ability to comprehend what I read. The ability to scan, understand and recall data from large complex documents was one of my strong points in my working days.  That skill is long gone.

Peter ....  Now you are starting it up all over again.  But even from my relatively limited knowledge base, I would have to agree with you.

Kebbin wrote:

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I just see one selling a product and the other giving information. A low voltage installer arguing with an Electrician over the way he views electrical matters. Just why were you kicked off the other forums Terry?

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 Hi Kebbin 

I'll answer for Terry

Those Forums   were /are heavily moderated  & a thread such as this would been quickly locked

 A short holiday  would  be given to the worst culprit &  too many repeats  & holidays does lead to expulsion

Some members of this forum are also on one of those forums & will know what I mean .

Interestingly enough  it has been quite a while since anyone has been put OFF but some do  still get a short mandatory rest period..

I must admit I did have one very short holiday  quite  a time back , I'll give you a guess as to the other party was 

When did that happen???   around  the time the other party  joined this forum

oldtrack123 wrote:

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Kebbin wrote:

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I just see one selling a product and the other giving information. A low voltage installer arguing with an Electrician over the way he views electrical matters. Just why were you kicked off the other forums Terry?

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 Hi Kebbin 

I'll answer for Terry

Those Forums   were /are heavily moderated  & a thread such as this would been quickly locked

 A short holiday  would  be given to the worst culprit &  too many repeats  & holidays does lead to expulsion

Some members of this forum are also on one of those forums & will know what I mean .

Interestingly enough  it has been quite a while since anyone has been put OFF but some do  still get a short mandatory rest period..

I must admit I did have one very short holiday  quite  a time back , I'll give you a guess as to the other party was 

When did that happen???   around  the time the other party  joined this forum

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:lol: Very kind of you to answer for me Peter, I think we would be neck and neck with the "lawn mowing practice" from one forum. For those that really want to know, I had a run in with an admin member who was trying to change a thread direction and information supplied to follow his view point by deleting posts he didn't agree with and as a result I was banned for life and a number of members from the same admin team quite the forum as well, one a very long term admin member. A lot of the truly knowledgeable folk no longer post on that forum as a result but I did qualify for my name to be added to the dirty word list so no one could even mention my name in a post

The only other forum I was banned from is no longer running. A certain admin member who is no longer with us took offence to being caught out telling untruths on the forum when I posted the false information posts on the open forum

So 2 forums out of 30 plus isn't a bad track record, although I've had to trim back the number of forums I post on due to lack of time and difficulty in keeping up with the questions asked on each forum.

Oh, and Peter, I don't believe your last holiday from here was when I joined this forum back in Feb 2012, I think you might have had a few more since then

T1 Terry 

rockylizard wrote:

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Gday...

Those scrotums get bigger every day.

Cheers - John

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Nah, gotta be the bladder hasn't it, I thought one needed the capacity and the pressure to win such a competition  

T1 Terry

T1 Terry wrote:

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Peter_n_Margaret wrote:

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laurieoz wrote:

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Where is the truth in all this!

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The truth is that unless the actual voltage out of your solar panels is very accurately matched to your battery requirements, a good quality MPPT solar regulator will out perform a good quality PWM solar regulator every time.

And that is from someone who has had a good quality PWM solar regulator (the same brand as Terry promotes) on his rig for 13 years.

If I was buying a new solar regulator again, would I buy PWM again? NO I would not, because that would restrict my choices of solar panels too much.

 

Cheers,

Peter

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Back on topic, I'd like to see an honest report on the performance of your solar array and PWM controller when recharging a lead acid battery pack and then matched to recharging a lithium battery pack. No change of solar or controller, just the energy storage medium. As Peter Oldtrack suggests, part of the perceived advantage seen with an MPPT controller could be related to the higher internal resistance of a lead acid battery pack and actually nothing to do with the controller function at all.

The perceived lower harvest rate of a PWM controller compared to an MPPT controller when charging a lead acid battery pack appears to vanish when the same system is coupled to a lithium battery pack so an honest report from a well established sceptic of both lithium batteries and PWM controller abilities might shed some clearer information in one direction or the other.

 

T1 Terry

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Hi Terry 

 I had given up, but I think  ,at last ,you are beginning to see the light  

It is the combination  of LAs,[ ifairly wide SOC  voltage]Solar panels  MPP, & the MPP reg

Just as in your setups   with Lis [ narrow  SOC voltage range ] solar panels with a lower MPP with little excess to convert & therefor NO gain from a MPPT reg

I actually thought you would have carried out just such testing very early in your experimenting

T1 Terry wrote:

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I thought this might be a chance to settle a few issues one way or the other. No point in me posting results because some don't want to believe them so I thought if Peter did the tests it would be independent and from a member of the other side rather than the lithium choir :lol:

A plotted graph of the batteries under a load till down to a deep discharge and then the rebound after the solar charging commences to show just how long the battery voltage remains low enough for the MPPT to be an advantage and at what charge current to battery capacity ratio this advantage ceases.

 

At what battery voltage would you consider the MPPT advantage over a PWM controller stopped where 12v nominal panels were used to charge a 12v battery?

 

T1 Terry  

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Hi Terry 

I would love to do a comprehensive comparison check using both PWM &  MPPTs with LAs ,but not under the limited factors you suggest .

  But  true comparison done under a range of fully controlled conditions simulating the range of conditions that one could expect in actual  use &  using a range of panels ,not just panels whose MPP give little to convert .

Unfortunately,  I do not have the money to spend  setting  up such a set up ,. nor the physical ability ,remember I am fast approaching 90 & am having short term memory problems[ especially with putting things down ,then not being able to find them]

But Since you claim to have done comparisons & would  I hope under a full range of controlled conditions , you could produce those 

figures, or  I  would expect still have  the necessary equipment to conduct them 

I doubt you would deliberately fudge the figures

Cupie wrote:

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I thought that before I unsubscribed from this thread I would repost a comment that I made on my first posting to it way back on page 1.

 

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"I was worried that you were about to start up yet another one for the Tech heads debating, no arguing, about the relative merits of pwm v mppt."

....................................................................

 

Looks like my worries were well grounded.

 

 

'Enjoy' the rest of the ping pong.

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Ron-D wrote:

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Are you saying I created a monster cupie,it was not my intention all I wanted was to get to the truth about mppt Regs compared to pwm ,on this site we only ever received a one sided view from a techie that promotes his stuff With massively long posts..

and his view that mppt Regs are a waste of time and money is ridiculous if you have a serious look .

I still personally think this is just harmless banter and entertainment look at the post count some ones enjoying it...

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 Hi Ron 

This is somewhat in defense of Terry 

I doubt that he ever set out to do a full comprehensive test of La's & Li's  under a full range of conditions ,using both types of regulators

Having followed his posts ,on other forums,  from when he got his first set of Liths , it seems his concentration was on getting the optimum results for Liths 

I believe he has done a good job  with his Liths setups ,after a lot of trials using different types of equipment

I will even go as far as saying ,IF anyone wants to go Lis ,Terry would be the first person to consider

But  it is sad that has blinded him to any other options 

ps  I do understand why T1 gets the results he does ,even simple electrical theory explains it ,  but as you may have gathered T1 , seems to have an aversion to theory

"I will even go as far as saying ,IF anyone wants to go Lis ,Terry would be the first person to consider

But  it is sad that has blinded him to any other options 

ps  I do understand why T1 gets the results he does ,even simple electrical theory explains it ,  but as you may have gathered T1 , seems to have an aversion to theory"

Why thankyou Peter for the thumbs up but I'm not blinded by others opinions or have an aversion to theory, quite the opposite actually. What I have an aversion to is the B/S put up by MPPT sellers and the blind faith those who should know better have in their nonsense spiel. I can't accept any information given to be fact until it is verifiable so I went to the trouble of improving my education so I could reliably and repeatedly test any given information to verify its findings. I'm not the only one to go against the flow when it comes to the optimum type of controller for RV and battery charging systems. There is solid research conducted by the engineers at both Plasmatronics and Morningstar that indicates not all climates suit MPPT solar control and in the Australian climate where snow on the roof and solar panels isn't common, PWM wins every time. To say these people are blind fools really stretches anyone's credibility and puts those that should know better is a very difficult position.

What I was suggesting was to actually gather genuine data about battery voltages while charging and solar panel MPPT points as the panels heat up under the Australian sun, then use these genuine figures in the same equations used to support MPPT superiority and see if the sales pitch still holds up.

T1 Terry   

Peter_n_Margaret wrote:

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A reasonable test would be to put (say) 1,000W of solar on an RV roof, half connected via a good quality MPPT regulator and the other half connected via a PL controller.
Set both controllers to identical charge parameters.
Feed the MPPT controller to the house batteries via a shunt connected via a PLS to the PL controller.
The PL controller will measure both inputs separately (as INTERNAL and EXTERNAL inputs).
The MPPT controller will be at a slight disadvantage because of the shunt, but I would expect it to be minor. Maybe Oldtrack123 Peter could comment?

So 2 sets of identical panels under identical sun conditions charging exactly the same batteries with the same loads. Not too hard to set up and might shed some information. Only good for the particular panels used of course, so not relevant to other panels.

Terry, Julian has done a lot of work on this subject (from both a theoretical and a practical perspective). He shared some on a forum but you probably did not see that. I would trust his technical ability. His conclusions were clear.

Cheers,
Peter

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I did exactly the test you are suggesting yrs ago and posted all the results on the now closed CMCA forum. It was poo pooed by Julian, Dr Brown, Collyn Rivers and many others as nonsense and I must have been doing something to skew the results.

That is why I am suggesting someone from the other camp carry out the testing and record the results. Julian is already a lithium convert even though he attacked me so savagely when I first put up my findings it back in June 2011, so that puts him out of the race as far as being in the lead acid battery camp. If you really respect his technical ability and honesty I can't see why you continue to support lead acid battery technology, but I guess only you can answer that question. Sadly Julian was blinkered when it came to objective testing the viability of PWM v MPPT in Australian conditions, any findings that went against his theoretical views would have put all he believed into question and he wasn't willing to go down that path, a sad affliction suffered by just about all engineers these days. Fortunately there are still a few about who can look at things objectively, those at both Plasmatronics and Morningstar came to the same findings, MPPT for battery charging only suits very cold climates and not the climate associated with Australian conditions when the sun is shining and that is the time frame when solar needs to work at its best.

T1 Terry

T1 Terry 

Peter_n_Margaret wrote:

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You really do have a chip on your shoulder don't you Terry?

We are NOT anti lithium and you have a completely twisted view of why I and others have a conflict with many of your views and your postings.

If you have not worked out why by now, clearly you never will.

Cheers,

Peter

 

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Seems to be the case then Peter. The attacks on that now closed and sealed forum were quite savage by all concerned and I'm certain many looking from the outside would agree.

All water under the bridge, if you are not interested in doing the data recording then so be it, I just thought it seemed a good solution to a number of long standing arguments.

T1 Terry  

I Think Peter Wright gave up because when he looked at it closely, he realised the big job it was to do it correctly to get real results 

Not just some panels sitting in the sun simulating panels on the roof of a van!!

I think Peter of P&M  will understand what I mean.

vik351 wrote:

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I have a set of panels doing nothing at the moment on a set of wheels ...!!!

vik...& expensive 

 

 

 That is only one set of panels  ,panels with varying specs would also be required.

 Then understanding all that , look at a full range of  operating conditions & Australia

Panels :

Designed mpp

MPP @ varying  panel temps [ big differences between Tassy  & NW Australia ]

 

Panel irradiation [light intensity on panel] varies greatly at time of day & location

Panel combinations [series  & parallel]

 Battery :

Battery types 

Battery state of charge  voltage[very important when comparing MPPs to PWMs ]

 Controlling all the conditions so all the test can be done under exactly the same  controlled conditions 

I could go on ,but the above  gives some indication of how real comparative tests need to be carried out' 

It is not just a question of changing regulators for a day or two & see which performs best 

Australia is a big country with widely varying  conditions .

What happens in  one location throughout the year ,say Tassy ,will be  totally different  to the northern parts 

Now rather  than try to do all that, I am prepared to accept reputable makers claims &  then knowing the theory,  understand the likely outcome .

That brings me back to the conclusion that T1 has experimented with regulators , panel types /combinations  combined with his LI batteries  ,that leaves little for a mppt to work on

The story would  be different with  with LA battery. whose SOC voltage varies over a far greater range   when in use . Of course if you only used  say 10% of their capacity @ anytime  the SOC voltage would not drop so much  & the advantage of a mppt would be  reduced ,if using parallel panels