Thanks Jay, This came up because I was looking at the summary on the Mate during charging and it showed that one of the stacked slaves had 0.0kw charge power. Strangely enough, the ac charge current showed 16 AAC. This is how I got on the subject with tech support. They said that the 0.0 kw charge power was perfectly normal because the charge controller was trying to reduce the charge current by drop operation of one of the stacked inverters. I always figured that the slaved stack would rise and fall in unison to meet the current demand. I do have them running at variuos "power save" levels so I suppose it is possible that entire chargers are being dropped, but I thought that was only for managing the on/search mode on larger stacks. I am guessing that this is more a matter of reporting errors in the mate. Mark Frye Berkeley Solar Electric Systems 303 Redbud Way Nevada City, CA 95959 (530) 401-8024 <http://www.berkeleysolar.com/> www.berkeleysolar.com
_____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of jay peltz Sent: Monday, June 21, 2010 2:05 PM To: RE-wrenches Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Outback Charging Method HI Mark, I can't speak to the issue OB tech says here, although it doesn't seem to support what I see in the real world. One issue I have seen a lot of is the inverters getting hot, and then derating the current output. I especially see this with them mounted in the normal outback model. In a side by side mounting ( Midnite or custom) they run much cooler. In the past I have actually taken out the foam filter and side screens (when I don't have to worry about debris getting into the inverters) and this has both increased air flow substantially and also the charging rate for systems with large batteries and generators that run for many hours at high charge rates. Hope this helps, jay Peltz power On Jun 21, 2010, at 1:49 PM, Mark Frye wrote: I just got off the phone with Outback technical support in which my understanding of how the charger works was challanged. In my situation, the AGS Volt Start conditions start my generator and a charge cycle is initiated. I always though that during the bulk phase, the chargers try to operated at a constant maximum current, limited by the charge ACC input limit in order to raise the voltage to the absorb set point. At that point the charger changed to a constant voltage mode and tapered off the current. The tech said that the charger will actually taper off the current before then, as the actual battery voltage approaches the absorption set point voltage, as part of a single current curve, based on voltage, running from the start of the bulk cycle to the end of the absorption cycle. So long as the charger rating is large compared to the battery size, I expect to see the charge current a constant maximum all the way up to the absorption set point. So if I don't see this, I am looking for a problem somewhere. Not so according to technical support. Any thoughts? Mark Frye Berkeley Solar Electric Systems 303 Redbud Way Nevada City, CA 95959 (530) 401-8024 <http://www.berkeleysolar.com/> www.berkeleysolar.com _
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