My old war wounds!

Yesterday I was out shopping and was rammed in the back of the ankle by a Walmart shopper crazed with blood lust who was attempting to drive one those electric shopping wheelchair things. Let’s just say the blood curdling scream of pain had the entire row of 30+ checkouts silenced so they all heard me remonstrate with the offender. Then getting the shopping home, one of Walmart’s high-quality plastic bags disintegrated and dropped a 10lb can of beans on my toe - hard enough to turn the entire toe black and to break the skin so when I removed my tennis shoe later, there was plenty blood visible.

Following that I fell over a casually discarded pile of garbage, going sprawling across a carpet from which I’d only just finished shoveling dog excrement. Let’s just say my skin touching that carpet is a nightmare so I ended up with a bloodied elbow, a bruised knee, a bruised thigh and a wrenched neck from that. Then, putting a frustrating folding nylon shopping cart away (which was playing as awkward as could be), I managed to wrench the nail on the same thumb that I broke the nail on a few months ago. It now looks horrible and is pretty painful.

So today I am pretty much hobbling around as though I’ve been thrown out of a plane without a parachute, landed in a tree, fought through 300 miles of territory with enemy soldiers shooting at me, kicking me and stumbling over rough terrain. Let’s just say there’s a lot of discomfort and I can’t bend down. It’s hard to walk, hard to get up from sitting, hard to sit and hard to turn my head.

Nevertheless, I picked up the mail yesterday and my charge controller had arrived. The second watt-meter was due to arrive today, according to eBay (whose figures sometimes work). Looking at the controller, it’s a great big very solid thing. It’s much bigger than my existing controllers and has a real heat sink on the back.

It’s twice the size of my other controllers. According to the display there’s a Bluetooth connection and a USB connection method. This is not referenced in the manual. There is a USB port on the side. Very puzzling to be honest. More so because I can find no information whatsoever on the controller online other than some YouTube reviews and copies of the manual. It wasn’t even possible to find any applicable apps for tablets or computers online relating to the feature.

The first thing I did was to set the controller up with my 5w panel and a 7ah battery. It worked and told me the temperature outside at that point was 42 centigrade. It’s all in Metric so for all you Fahrenheit lovers, 42 centigrade is 107.6F. I thought it was warm outside! So I had it going for about an hour then down came the rain so I had to rush to get it all under cover, nothing being waterproof.

Today I set to and installed the unit. It needed No 6 bolts and fortunately I had used No 6 bolts and No 6 rivnuts on the last controller. This one was bigger though so I needed to install more rivnuts in order to match up the mounting holes. As I could use one rivnut, I only had to install another three. That was a performance. I thought I knew where the mandrill for my rivnut puller was. I couldn’t see it. I hunted high and low to find it, scratching my head. In the end after drawing a blank I went back to the original container and found it hiding inside a bigger rivnut.

Putting the three holes in was a breeze using my step drill bit. Ideally I’d have used M5 rivnuts since I have a ton of them but couldn’t fit an M5 bolt through the holes in the charge controller. Similarly I couldn’t fit a No 8 bolt through (they’re similar in size). Fortunately I had spare No 6 rivnuts.

Having mounted the controller, connecting the wires was the next stage. That was the usual pain in the neck. The screws are pretty visible but where the wires are inserted is hidden. It’s too easy to open the screw a certain amount and put the wire in behind the clamp instead of into the clamp. This is a task for infinite patience and a small mirror - plus of course fifteen pairs of hands! So, I got the wires in place. The battery was switched on and that read the correct voltage. The solar panel was switched on and that read the correct voltage. Then The load wires were connected. Then came the fun bit.

Programming the device was nowhere near as simple as the instructions made out. There were extra steps involved or each time the thing would reset itself. I’m not sure even now that I have it set correctly. Reading around it seems that since it offers the options of... Sealed Lead Acid, Flooded Lead Acid, Gel and Lithium that I have to put it on the gel setting in order to charge my AGM battery. Then I had to raise the charging ceiling to 13.8v from 12.6v. While I was in there, I also raised the cutoff voltage from 11v to 11.6v. The bizarre thing was it was still showing me a 100% battery yet the battery is not full. The voltage is 13.4v not 13.8v and that will only run my fans for 30 minutes.

I missed a trick when I installed my ventilation system. I could have retasked the wires from the original student lights to power my fans when the bus was driving and just had a couple of relays to switch power from the solar battery to the bus circuits while driving. Still, at the time I put v1 of the ventilation in, I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I’d not even conceived having solar back then.

Returning to the bus after several hours, the overcast day had not helped much. At one time the new solar controller told me the panels had been producing 18.1v but when I checked, the battery voltage was 13.1v. Not desperate but given that I did manage to raise the threshold to 13.8v, it’s not awe-inspiring. It’s scheduled to be pretty overcast for the rest of the week. I’m thinking that perhaps if I get a really good sunny day then the battery voltage may climb. If it never reaches 13.8v then I’ll know the battery is suspect. Mind, the second watt meter between the solar panels and the charge controller would tell me a lot more. I’ll also check to see if HQST has some kind of plugin monitor I can put on the USB side of the charge controller.

I’m definitely narrowing the problem down. It’s unlikely to be a brand new charge controller or the idiot between the chair and the desk that’s the problem. Right now I’m going to say it’s too soon to be certain but as of right now it’s a sunlight or a battery issue. I can put in an order for a new sun and they can just bulldoze the old one but I think that might be a bit expensive.