160 Amp solar Tracker 5

[Branch Gordon]

I have the 10A Solar Tracker 5. It sounds like then with just a 10A model I am limited to just this one panel...

That's good news that I can upgrade later to a larger unit...

Branch,
I do not know what Solar Tracker you have so I can not answer the question, If it is a tracker 5 then you can supply the load to the batteries. If you look at the drawing you can see that it splits the battery bank for two 12 volt systems, but we are talking a big system. I only run 12 volts at home and use a tracker 80 amp, I always use the biggest tracker then I can always add more panels if I need them. Only the tracker 5 systems will let you do this, as the tracker will supply the load not touching the battery unless it drops out because of clouds, then the batteries must supply the load. So what charger do you have? If you have an older one it can be upgraded to a 5. But if you do this I would go bigger like to a 40 amp that way you could always add more panels. What ever Tracker you have you have lost no money if you did upgrade it to a bigger unit, but you must order through Energenx to do this.Upgrades are possible but only if it's done like I said, you can never have enough power with solar.
John

[John_Bedini]

Branch,
I do not know what Solar Tracker you have so I can not answer the question, If it is a tracker 5 then you can supply the load to the batteries. If you look at the drawing you can see that it splits the battery bank for two 12 volt systems, but we are talking a big system. I only run 12 volts at home and use a tracker 80 amp, I always use the biggest tracker then I can always add more panels if I need them. Only the tracker 5 systems will let you do this, as the tracker will supply the load not touching the battery unless it drops out because of clouds, then the batteries must supply the load. So what charger do you have? If you have an older one it can be upgraded to a 5. But if you do this I would go bigger like to a 40 amp that way you could always add more panels. What ever Tracker you have you have lost no money if you did upgrade it to a bigger unit, but you must order through Energenx to do this.Upgrades are possible but only if it's done like I said, you can never have enough power with solar.
John

[Branch Gordon]

So..I have the 10A Solar Tracker...and bought this panel a couple weeks ago: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Grape-Sol...i_src=17588969

It puts out 7.81 amps. I am using a 12V inverter.

Question is...will I see any charging benefit to wiring additional panels in series? If I wire any more in parallel obviously I will go over the max amperage tolerated by the solar tracker.

Or would the only benefit be to wire two of them together if I was using a 24V inverter?

p.s. OCV is 37.2V

[John_Bedini]

The Solar Tracker can run split loads and still charge the battery. this is how you would do it. This is a 24 Volt System it.


The limit is the solar panels that is what you must consider.
John

[Chuck Hupp]

Yes 50 amp load on half the batteries and still supplying full charge. As long as your panels can supply it. This is not the largest unit that can be done.

[Tom C]

Branch,

its a tracker 5, that is all they are building now. its a linear regulated amp so as your inverter or whatever device pulls a load the current is diverted from the battery. when the load exceeds the batteries charge needs the battery begins to supply what the tracker cannot. the charging is not paused because of anything in the tracker, its just a matter of the load. you put your loads right on the trackers output posts.

Tom C

[Branch Gordon]

So, I bought a solar tracker 5 I guess it was last month. It was in the solar tracker 3 case...but was told it actually was the upgraded version inside. So I should be able to apply a load to my batteries like you did in the vid, and the tracker will pause charging?

Just wanting to confirm so I don't tear it up. The documentation i received with it didn't mention anything about this...

Here is a short Video on the solar tracker 5.
http://youtu.be/y93IwhOGWB4

[John_Bedini]

Here is a short Video on the solar tracker 5.
http://youtu.be/y93IwhOGWB4

[John_Bedini]

I thought I would add one more thing here. The Solar Panels must have a high open circuit voltage as that type of panel would work the best. I have tested many Solar Panels and they do not put out what they say they do. Solar Panels are laboratory rated, kind of sucks. I waste 1Kw here every day even in cloudy weather. My batteries are at full charge and can run my lights all night long, I can run 10 days without any Sun. I use a small sine inverter to run all computers and test equipment and some lighting. My office is off grid. I have built detector circuits for light control, when the light outside is gone the lights come on and stay on until I turn them off. This type of solar charger I have been testing for two years just to see which one gives the best performance, the Tracker has beat the MPPT chargers hands down for power into the batteries. As I said all the chargers are just copies of other chargers and all do the same thing, keep your batteries dead. This is why you must have a back up generator because your batteries never get charged with an average charge from MPPT chargers. So Here they are all built the same have at it, series pass.
John


Not often you will ever get this diagram but you can see you cant get much current from that fet, you can buy this chip from TI ( Texas Instruments)

[John_Bedini]

Yes Liner Regulators require a voltage higher then what you want to work with. You have narrow window. Series pass is what you want. You can do this many ways. Switching regulators are mostly used with inductors. You can find a few on the Internet. But they do not give the charging you need. Most of them cut off at 13.8 volts, they considered this as the battery being charged, but it is not charged at that level. Also take an example from a Harbor Fright controller this is a very standard circuit used in most of them just copy circuits.

The Liner Regulators must be designed for the lowest drop out and the lowest loss in the devices. I changed all the chargers to what works the best for the simple fact that all the Fets were coming from China and they do not meet spec and fail right away. The devices in the tracker must go through high current burn in if they fail we get a new batch to burn. The one thing that is important is failure with chargers, you just cant have that. The charger must be designed to survive any condition. I over built the trackers as I did not want to see them back, I want peoples batteries to be charged and last them.

Off Grid cost allot of money and you can not have a failure as you depend on the power. The Amplifier shown in the picture is built from K series Liner Regulators as they are amplifiers inside except they work with current instead of voltage and you can balance this if you know the circuit into a class A Amplifier good to 1 MHz band width, and that Amplifier is 5 times louder then a class AB amplifier even if it is less then 50 percent efficient.
The heat sinks are not meaningless as the devices must be cooled to room temp. One of my first jobs at TRW and Acoustic Control was Series pass liner regulators, then we did not have what we have today. But for TRW it was Government Military Supplies they could not fail under any condition in the field, so the Tracker is designed the same way, and you can even get more power under pulse if I add the circuits to control them.
John B

[John_Bedini]

Branch,
Sorry, but it depends on how the circuit operates and yes the Wakefield keeps the devices cool. This unit has real good efficiency considering the Solar Panels and cable losses. I have had no complaints except for the fan that must be used. Most of then are in Russia in Siberia, they operate in the extreme cold. They are mounted by the batteries away from everything. The tracker adjust to the load so the batteries are always receiving a charge, so working under load. If you had a power transformer about 70 pounds at the proper DC filtered voltage you would have a very high current supply. We cant go any higher with the switching supply so l-16's batteries charge real fast then float at 22 amps to top off the charge. This is an industrial type Solar Charger, it can do pulse but we have not put that circuit into it yet. The Trackers work under load, meaning the power increases to the rate of the solar panels, so that is the only limitation.
John B

I had to look up what a linear regulator was, as I wasn't familiar. So, does the tracker take the input, regulate the voltage so it is a steady constant voltage, and then amplify that? So instead of high voltage spikes you have one continuous high voltage? And is this regulator adjusting to the load (batteries)?

I am reading there is a lot of waste heat usually with linear regulators coming from the transistor. Is that what the huge fan is for?

[Branch Gordon]

I had to look up what a linear regulator was, as I wasn't familiar. So, does the tracker take the input, regulate the voltage so it is a steady constant voltage, and then amplify that? So instead of high voltage spikes you have one continuous high voltage? And is this regulator adjusting to the load (batteries)?

I am reading there is a lot of waste heat usually with linear regulators coming from the transistor. Is that what the huge fan is for?

[John_Bedini]

To all,
Again this is a liner regulator amplifier, does not use Moss-Fets as they would fail under the power needed at a DC voltage level. This is very close to what the government may use in the solar generators in the field. They use fold up panels that use low light so they can charge on cloudy days.They do not average anything, they just push the power right to the batteries. I have said before in another posts that the devices are all selected high power P devices each one is rated for 16 amperes at 15 volts and 7 amps at 30 volts the panels must be able to push the charge regulator to over 35.3 volts for a 24 volt system. At 12 volts the panel must push around 20 volts. cooling is done using a Wakefield type wind tunnel arrangement this also cools the emitter resistors fusing is done by a fuse wire and internal current clamping circuits within the liner amp circuit. Comparator circuits show the state of charge on the battery. The main thing with off the grid is you must push the batteries as fast as you can so you can have reserve power at night. A battery of 12 volts is not charged at 13.8 volts, it must be at 15 volts to be charged. If your system only reaches 13.8 volts then your batteries will sulfate and become useless over a short time.
John B

[Chuck Hupp]

Nope. Not mosfets.

[Chuck Hupp]

Here is a audio linear class A amplifier that John built. Basically the solar charger circuit. Just one of the many things you can do with linear power amplifiers. You can hear this unit at the conference in June.