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Connecting the charge controller

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Sunking View Post
    ... As for RFI, then if you run into that means you have a cheap PWM controller, the batteries are huge capacitors that will filter out any line noise. Radiated noise can be a issue but battery location has nothing to do with that.
    That was one of my main concerns also since I do shortwave monitoring from 160-10 meters. The good news is that I have not detected any noise from the small inexpensive Morningstar Sunguard or Sunsaver pwm charge controllers - and that is with portable antennas only a few feet away from the CC. Once I spun across the bands with the morningstars, the old on/off shunt cc's went into the trash. (saved for recycling anyway)

    I was hesitant at first since one of my radio emergency power books mentions an option on one of the morningstar controllers has a jumper to turn it into a plain old on/off controller should TELCO users observe any noise. This kind of cast a question about pwm, and left this reader thinking that only old-style on/off shunt controllers are the way to go when dealing with HF monitoring. But I figured that this is just a duty-cycle on/off switch operating much faster and more efficiently than the old on/off shunt type, and not doing any sort of mppt conversion. Perhaps the author hasn't tried one first-hand.

    Once operating from my much larger antennas, new noises would crop up from time to time, and I was certain it was due to the new CC's, only to disconnect them and find the new noises are NOT coming from the morningstar themselves, leaving me on a rfi hunt external to the solar setup.

    Result - I am running a MUCH better charge controller with the morningstars, with no noise that I can detect on my Icom receiver without using any sort of ferrites or filtering. I have no first-hand experience beyond the low-current sunguards or sunsavers, so can only speak for those that I do have.
    Last edited by PNjunction; 07-14-2012, 03:58 PM. Reason: typos

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    • #17
      Originally posted by PNjunction View Post
      .. Result - I am running a MUCH better charge controller with the morningstars, with no noise that I can detect on my Icom receiver without using any sort of ferrites or filtering. I have no first-hand experience beyond the low-current sunguards or sunsavers, so can only speak for those that I do have.
      replying to myself: not a good sign.

      Note: The author of the emergency power book may have been referring to the Morningstar Tristar pwm, where telcom users experiencing any noise from the LOAD terminals may convert back to an on/off type as a temporary measure. I think in that case, the first measure would be to NOT tie your loads to any CC's load terminals, run from the battery directly, and return to the pwm setting as discussed many times elsewhere here.

      Oddly enough, this makes me confident in the tristar pwm should I want to go beyond the sunguard or sunsaver series for my HF monitoring.

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