List Price: $110.00
Sale Price: $86.50
Today's Bonus: 21% Off
This charge controller is doing a wonderful job keeping a 150Ah battery bank on my popup RV fully charged up. Previously I had been using 4 15W panels and a PWM controller which didn't do the greatest job of keeping the battery bank charged. That was partially due to insufficient amount of solar, but the simple PWM controller wasn't helping either. The battery bank is now fully charged up and I can run stuff during the day and still have plenty of power at night.
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The controller does the job, just as the prior reviews state on here, but is not RFI shielded. I have a 100w panel connected to a complete battery back up for my off-grid radio station. The problem with using these Chinese made solar controllers, is they put out RFI. This one is terrible and put out an S9 to S40+ on 40-30 meter bands, which wiped them out. The carrier is obnoxious and comes from the controller when the panel is connected. You can disconnect the controller from the battery bank and still have it generating the terrible RFI noise into your radio's receivers. I took a 24VDC 5A filter module and wired it between the panel and controller. This took the carrier from S9 to S3 on my Icom IC-7600 Transceiver. I then installed an MFJ 1142 RFI filter after the battery in-between the radio power panel and DC sources. This brought it down more, but the bottom line is that this is NOT the solar controller for you if running delicate electronic radio or sound devices nearby. Buy one that is made well. This one will work for regular "joe's" who don't know what kind of interference they have on their hands. But for radio station applications, forget about it, unless you have a box full of filters you can experiment with.73
N5TEN
Best Deals for MPPT Tracer1210RN Solar Charge Controller Regulator 12/24V INPUT 10A
I have been waiting for MPPT charge controllers to get under $100. I have read reviews of other MPPT charge controllers that would seem to indicate that some disreputable manufacturers simply slap "MPPT" onto the front of an old-style PWM controller. In this case, I am happy to say that this really appears to be a genuine MPPT charge controller.Test 1: Using a good meter and an oscilloscope, we could see the charge controller make tiny adjustments to the load that the MPPT controller would present to our 100 Watt test panel. The adjustments were observed as periodic, small changes in the voltage that the panel was producing. The panel voltage would vary constantly up and down by about plus or minus 0.15V as the controller continuously searched for the optimal power load for the panel.
Test 2: We measured that the power produced by the panel (power in Watts = Volts * Amps) was essentially the same as the power being put into the battery that was being charged. At 14V, the battery side of the controller circuit was about 3 volts lower than the panel voltage (about 17V). At the same time, the battery-side current was about 0.2A higher than the panel-side current, as one would expect if the controller was acting as a power conversion device.
The efficiency of the unit appeared to be quite good. The manufacturer claims 97% or so. We did not measure the efficiency, but we did note that the unit stayed basically at ambient temperature while connected to a 100W panel during our charging tests. The unit is heavily heat-sinked, but never got even warm to the touch, meaning that the panel power was basically all going into the battery and very little was getting lost in the converter. Our old PWM controllers would get pretty hot to the touch.
All in all, I would recommend this if you want to try a cheap MPPT controller.
Honest reviews on MPPT Tracer1210RN Solar Charge Controller Regulator 12/24V INPUT 10A
Pros: Works very well, especially with the optional meter. I live in a tent in the mountains and this controller has lived up to expectations for charging my aux battery.Cons: Overpriced considering the wholesale cost of the electronic parts. But as long as it works, I'm happy. I recommend it.
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