Tonight, a mystery.

A while ago I bought a voltmeter to keep track of my system here. Today it was reading 13.1v though the 3 does not show up well in the photo. I’ve been a little unimpressed with the power supplied by my 35AH battery and have been wondering just what is going on. Thus I’d ordered a voltmeter with a built in battery meter since an actual ammeter was more expensive.

Trying to fit the new meter was just a little fraught. Not only was it longer than the old voltmeter but it was also lacking any thread on the last half inch. Nit yo worry though. A 3/4 inch cable tie came in very handy. So the old voltmeter was out and the new one was in.

Pressing the button though revealed somewhat of a mystery. The battery is reading almost in the red. It should be in the green having been charging all day and not being used. 

Thinking about it, I’ll probably switch back to the old voltmeter tomorrow and solder some probes to the new meter. Then I can put the meter directly on the battery as opposed to on the output from the charge controller. I’d thought that as I can see the voltage on the controller dropping, it might be a good place to put a battery meter. I’d thought it was a direct connection. I might be wrong though.

There are several possible answers to my lack of power.

• The charge controller is complete garbage.
• The Harbor Freight battery is garbage.
• There’s something draining the battery.
• The meters are all cheap pieces of junk.
• Putting the battery meter in the charge controller output was the wrong thing to do.
• A combination of factors.

Tomorrow I’ll start by switching the meter back and putting probes on my fancy meter in order to see just what is going on. I’ll try the probes on my battery directly and see what happens. In fact I might make use of position two on my battery kill switch and dedicate it to my battery meter. I will get to the bottom of this!