Solar controller question

[NateHanson]

I just hooked up a Morningstar SunSaver 6 charge controller with my 50W Kyocera panel. The controller has 6 lugs - two for the battery, two for the panel, and two for "load". The first four are obvious. The load lugs have me wondering. Why does the controller want the load connected through the controller? Is this for supplying power to loads in the absence of a battery? The literature didn't explain it.

I didn't hook anything up to the load lugs, and I don't plan to. But my computer scientist crew this weekend had various theories about why he thought it would be more efficient to have all loads going through the controller. (He also spent a while trying to explain to me why the apparent wind created by running the engine, didn't "count" the same way as an apparent wind due to sailing, when predicting whether the wind would still be directly on our nose if we turned 45 degrees. )

Anyways, does anyone have insight into these "load" lugs?

Thanks, Nate

 

[Guy Stevens]

No

The load lugs are for something that you would want to run when the sun was shining only.

There is no good reason to hook them up on your boat unless you are doing something really strange a cool.

There are three engineers in a car at the top of the hill. On the way down the hill the car catches fire, they all jump out shortly before it explodes. The electrical engineer says, "damn there must have been an electrical short that caused that fire". The mechanical engineer says; "The heat of the brakes must have caused something to catch fire under the car." The software engineer says; "Lets close all the windows and try it again"........

Guy

 

[NateHanson]

Thanks Guy.

 

[tdtrimmer]

Solar Controller Load Terminals

I recently installed a 65 watt solar panel and a JUTA controller with the three terminal sets as described by Nate. I tried connecting the entire house load to the load terminals figuring the controller would measure the total amp hour usage. This was not the case. The controller only measured 1 amp max load even though there was a load of 5 amps on. When the solar panel was not connected or at night the load would measure zero. I wrote the controller distributorr without success. Guy's comments related to only using the load for powering appliances directly from the solar panel seem correct based on my experience. Apparently these controllers are designed for use with a simple self contained solar panel, battery and small load system.
Tom
S/V Mistress
1981 E38