Hi this is Amy from the altE Store. I'm going to take a quick minute to show you how to
troubleshoot your solar system. Now I've got a little 12V solar system here, with a 12V
solar panel, a PWM charge controller, and a 12V battery. So I'm just going to show you
how to make sure that the solar panel is in fact going through the charge controller and
charging the battery correctly. So, a very important piece of equipment to have when
you are doing a DIY solar, is to have a multimeter. Now a multimeter is able to measure both DC
volts and DC amps, because you can't always get the full picture just based on volts.
So I've got two different meters here, one is set up as volts, one is set up for amps.
And so I'll be able to walk you through the whole system. So what I've done is I've got
my solar panel connected to the solar input of the PWM charge controller. And I've got
the output of my charge controller going through my amp meter. Now I'll show you how that's
set up. Now with a multimeter, generally what you have to do is you have to move the probe
over to the amp outlet. So you want to make sure you go to the amp socket here, and you
would set up your meter to measure amps. Now, very important, you want to make sure that
your meter can measure the amount of amps that your charge controller can put out. So
this one can actually measure up to 20ADC, and I've got a 6A charge controller, so I'm
perfectly fine here. You want to make sure that there's no way the output of your charge
controller is higher than what your amp meter can handle. OK? So, what I've done, is I have
taken the positive to the battery, is still going to the battery. The negative to the
battery, is going to my negative probe of my amp meter, and then the positive probe
is going to the wire that's going to my battery. So this is the negative. So what's happening
is it is coming from the charge controller, through my amp meter, to my battery. What
that does is that any current that's going to the battery, is going to be going through
my meter. So this way I can check to see if there is in fact current flowing. So the first
thing I'm going to do is actually measure the voltage from the solar panel into the
charge controller. So I just measure across my solar in, and I'm getting 13.3, 13.4 volts.
So this is great, it's a 12V solar panel, so measuring up around 13 that's really good.
And then going to measure across the battery out, again I've got 13.4, 13.5V coming out.
So the charge controller is correctly charging the battery. You've got the voltage correct.
Now I'm also looking at the current going through here. So with the current, I've see
I've got .88A going from the panel, and then it goes into the charge controller, and it's
coming out of the charge controller into the battery. So the fact that I'm reading almost
14V going to the battery, and I'm reading .8A. That's all really good. That tells me
that the system is working. Now I can also put the amp meter between the solar panel
and the charge controller, and confirm that that current is flowing. But knowing that
I've got current flowing from the charge controller, that does tell me that everything's going
nicely. So if I wasn't reading that, I might actually move it and just see if I can tell
where I'm getting some interruption. So just a real quick little way to ensure that your
system is in fact charging your battery. And I've got everything working right here, so, yah!
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