question

solgato avatar image
solgato asked

MPPT’s powering solar catamaran

Not so much a question but just an update on the performance and behavior of my MPPT 75/15 on my solar electric sailing catamaran.

When I first joined this community, I was worried by the behavior of my MPPT’s when testing my boat in the driveway as I was expecting them to work a certain way and was questioning whether they would.

I have since had a chance to test my boat under load on the water in different solar conditions and am happy to report the system is working as I had hoped and expected.

What I was primarily concerned about was if the MPPT’s would switch from Float to Bulk while underway if my motors were drawing a heavy load, and they do. On a nice sunny day with fully charged bank, I can cruise off of just the sun and the MPPT’s stay in Float, then on days like today when it is overcast, the MPPT’s switch to bulk to try to keep up with the load demand of the motors.

Also worth noting is how convenient it is to use the BMV712 to find my zero point by throttling back until I see “Infinite” as the value for time remaining. At that point I know I’m running purely on sun and not drawing from my bank.

To recap, my system consists of two strings of panels (300W each/600W total) each feeding a MPPT 75/15 in parallel which are networked with a BMV-712 to charge a 24V FLA bank which powers a pair of brushless electric motors.


MPPT Controllers
2 |3000

Up to 8 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 190.8 MiB each and 286.6 MiB total.

1 Answer
Paul B avatar image
Paul B answered ·

Cool and thanks for the feed back

2 |3000

Up to 8 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 190.8 MiB each and 286.6 MiB total.