By 9 am today our 640 watts of solar had overcome yesterday's 84 ah deficit from a cloudy day. After turning on our big inverter and the ice maker we're still making a net positive 8 amps.
Doesn't it seem reasonable we can let it run all day as long as we shut it off before the sun gets lower in the sky?
You can use any appliances as long as the batteries are charged and the solar is making more amps than you are using.
Interesting phenomenon. Once the batteries went into absorption the solar stopped bringing in energy. This resulted in a net negative charge with the icemaker working. Since were going to be gone today I shut the icemaker off but I'm assuming that if I had left the icemaker running it would happen eventually drawn down the batteries to the point where the charge controller would allow power back to the batteries.
Am I thinking correctly?
I'd rather not experiment while we're away From the coach today.
Not sure how your system works. On mine at home it was down to 50 watts and on float. I put a glass of water in the microwave and it jumped to 850 watts which was more than the microwave used, When the microwave shut off it started tapering back down.
My guru buddy mentioned having to put a load on the batteries to bring the SOC low enough to allow bulk charging on large battery banks.
I have a me-rc charge controller currently that it's standard non adjustable mode is 80% SOC to allow bulk charging.
Purchased but not installed yet a me-arc controller that the SOC is adjustable up to 99% to allow bulk charging.
Plan to add it and the auto gen start and the power trace solar controller at the same time as a larger panel setup.
Maybe if you have a magnum setup you can swap your controller to the ARC?
Maybe other systems have adjustable SOC cut in points like the ARC?
Try an experiment when you will be home a few hours: Wait until system goes into float and system shows hardly any watts or amps incoming (batteries pretty much charged, and system is slowing charge rate to protect the batteries).
With sun hitting the panels, now turn on every 12 volt light and see how the watts/amps from solar in increases to match load. You can also load the inverter at this point with your ice maker and or a 3 minute microwave run. The solar charger should increase the amps and watts to match the load - as long as within system design capability.
More info from today. Coach recovered about 70ah of deficit from yesterday by 10 am. I turned inverter (Xantrex 3012) on and fired up the ice maker. Net incoming amperage decreases with load to about 10amps net positive.
About 30 minutes later I find that the 100amp breaker from the charger controller to the batteries (Outback Flexmax 80) had tripped...same as yesterday. 80 amp breaker from panels to charge controller ok, yesterday and today.
Ice maker working fine with Solar offline, albeit with 18 amp draw.
Curious.
Maybe you exceeded the 60 volt rating?
The 100 amp breaker in question lies between the charge controller and the batteries.