new to the forum

[john.b]

Hello to all members and many thanks for allowing me to join your forum.
Solar is new to me and have just been playing with it for a few month now, i live on the west coat of Scotland UK so the sun can be a little hard to find some days, my partner and i rent a farm house out in the countryside and have been hear for the last 10 year or so, i bought an LG 300 watt panel to start with and a PWM charge controller but after reading about MPPT bought one of these and wow what a difference, my battery bank is 540 AH but is mixed flooded, sealed and AGM which i know is not a good idea so will be changing this in time. i'd also like to add a turbine and i have a small stream runs down the back of the house which i've started to build a water wheel for, i dont expect to much from it but it's an interesting project.

I hit my first problem the other night after installing some DC lights which brought me to the forum so will post my problem up and maybe someone will can help.

Take care
john

[NEOH]

Mixing Flooded and AGM is worse than "not a good idea".
But OK, continue with you story ...

[john.b]

Hi Neoh
After finding out this is not good i no longer charge them as a bank, i have two AGM strapped together one new sealed and one flooded on there own, the AGM and flooded are old although still seem to be in great condition holding a good charge, the idea was to work them out or into another system and build up the solar bank with some the same as the new sealed one.
Thanks for your input anyway, i'll post my 12v light problem in the off grid section

[AzRoute66]

[...] i have a small stream runs down the back of the house which i've started to build a water wheel for, i dont expect to much from it but it's an interesting project.

I understand the aesthetics of a rustic water wheel. But, depending on head and flow, if your primary purpose for a 'interesting project' there is power production you will probably want to research more on 'micro-hydro' power.