Thinking on getting a charge controller to install now to maintain the flooded cells in my banks (2 Big deep cycle for the house side, 1 has gone bad already, and 2 automotive sized for starting the Perkins). I will of course be replacing these later but I would like to have something nice for the new
batteries in place Before the investment. I'm studying on the LiFePO cells but at this point haven’t convinced myself to bite that bullet so will probably go with 4-6 6 volt golf cart for the house for now.
The shore powered
charger that came with my
boat died last weekend so I'm thinking I should just get the charge controller for now and feed it with an automotive
charger till I add
solar probably 4-600 watts and wind/water gens later.
I'd like an
MPPT that can be programed for two or three banks of different types of cells/batteries a
remote display would be a plus, Low voltage cutoff might be nice as well.
Am I missing something?
Or maybe I'm better off with simpler
single bank controllers for redundancy (2 is 1 - 1 is none) I suppose the only drawback would be wall space to mount them and which ones would get how much
power from the varied
power sources.
Speaking of that cant we just tie all the power sources to a main buss through diodes and feed the charge controller/s from that?
I see lots of brand names of charge controllers batted about in old threads but what are the ones to get today?
Can Y'all help me decide? I'd rather stay away from the L'cheapo chinese unreliable brands but don't need to break the bank with all the way top of the line either.
Also what are your favorite online sources for ordering things of this type.
Thanks,