BobSolar, Electro-Guru

[MountainBikeRoamer]

Originally Posted by Flux

The Bogart Engineering battery monitor he recommends is pretty interesting as well.

It has a connectable PWM controller that reads from the monitor. Has a built in Lifeline AGM profile as well as many others. Probably 350 for the whole setup including all the monitor wiring. Might be a fine way to go as they are integrated and pull voltage right from the battery terminals.

They look pretty slick, no? Really impressed with the Bogart stuff.

Amongst all the reading on that HandyBob Solar page, there is mention that he and the owner of Bogart Engineering are now friends (and are surely comparing notes on ideal charging strategies.)

That relatively-new SC-2030 PWM solar charge controller that Bogart offers (and that interfaces seamlessly with their Trimetric TM-2030 battery monitor) sounds like it incorporates a good measure of the "ingredients" that HandyBob stresses are important. (Temperature compensation, for one, and also making a point of spec'ing the charger be located as close to the battery as possible, for instance....)

Flux, I've been thinking quite a bit about your comments about how it might make sense (in some instances) to completely isolate the house batteries from the van's starter/alternator circuit, and let the solar setup do 100% of the charging for the RV systems, in order to get "smarter" charging of the house batteries.....do you think that this Bogart charge controller could be set up to do "double duty" and somehow mastermind the overall charge input to the batteries if there were *two* charge voltage sources? (Both solar and occasional alternator input)?

[Flux]

I couldn't say about the controller being able to control and alternator output. You could put it to them

After reading up on the charging profiles of AGM's, they do fine bulk charging from an alternator, but it's that last 20% where they seem to need something smarter. My thought was to be able to disconnect the alternator from the charging circuit when the battery is already at 80% and let the solar finish the job properly. I also though about being able to disconnect the loads when running and let the alternator provide those and again, let the solar do the job of handling the battery properly.

Another big take away from that article is that you need to understand your system and spend time running and monitoring it.