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Peter Owens avatar image
Peter Owens asked

Float current with load on SmartSolar

Hi I searched but didn't seem to find what I am looking for.


I have a 75/10 SmartSolar, 50W panel, 35Ah Duracell AGM running a 12V industrial gateway (300mA draw).


So far all is working great I hooked it all up yesterday late in afternoon and got to absorption stage.


Overnight it was obviously drawing down and this morning it started in Bulk. Then went to absorption and now it has maintained Float for awhile.


But what I notice now is that while in absorption or bulk, the 300mA load would have been supplied by solar panel current. Now solar current is 0 (and I have sun) but battery is supplying all the current and matches what the load is. Now why would the controller convert available power to run the device vs making the battery do the work?

current limitfloat
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2 Answers
Peter Owens avatar image
Peter Owens answered ·

And here are my battery settings, nothing to go by from Duracell so I used Lifeline



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Peter Owens avatar image
Peter Owens answered ·

So Day 2 looks to be much the same. Morning, went right into Bulk, hit Float by 10:30am. Now it has seemingly shut off solar other than 1-2W, and I have a constant 0.3A draw for my gateway.


It is flicking back and forth between bulk and absorption but panel isn't doing much to keep up with load. I have plenty of sun on panel.


Is this just the normal charging method? I guess I would expect the controller to allow enough watts to handle the load needed and stay in float mode as long as possible.


If it did switch to bulk, then why isn't panel putting out?


Top power produced today was 41W and I know it can do more than 2 W right now.


Maybe I just don't understand it. Anyways seems to power my device just fine, I'm averaging 49% float time daily.




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