SC-2030 Solar Charge Controller
Technical Manual
12-24 V systems, 30Amps max. Revised 02/07/2018
1. Description of the SC-2030 Solar Charger
What a solar charge controller does:
The purpose of a solar charge controller is to regulate the power from a set
of solar panels to provide proper charging to your batteries—not over or under charging them.
The SC-2030 Solar Charger
is a precision, high efficiency PWM (pulse width modulated) Solar Array Battery
Charge Controller. The objective of this design is to maximize the life of your batteries by allowing the flexibility to
adjust solar charging closely according to the way your battery manufacturer has specified.
High performance depends on being connected to a TM-2030 TriMetric Battery System Monitor.
With this
combination you get both high performance monitoring and charging of your battery system.
●
For 12 or 24 V battery systems: AGM, Gel or Liquid Electrolyte batteries.
●
Up to 30 amps maximum solar current. It will reduce output sufficient to protect charger if the solar output is
greater. Four 135 watt solar panels for 12V systems (eight at 24V) can be accommodated. It's also possible to
simultaneously use other chargers of the same batteries with additional solar panels.
●
Optional Temperature compensation. For this, order the TS-2 Bogart Engineering temperature sensor.
Recommended for use with “12V” or 24V solar panels. (see below
Where this controller is not recommended
)
●
If the TriMetric TM-2030 is disconnected from the SC-2030, it will do a much less flexible, but minimal, level of
charge regulation without receiving information from the TM-2030. See p.11, Table 3.
●
Recently (TM-2030 version 2.2 and higher) a manual equalization option has been added. See section 6.6.
In addition, it has two advantages not usually offered in solar controllers to better preserve the capacity of
your battery system
:
1. Amp hour counting:
Many battery companies recommend that when batteries are recharged they should be
overcharged, so that 104 to 120 percent of the charge that was previously removed should be replaced before going
into “float”. Most controllers don't measure this. When connected with the TriMetric, this controller measures the
amp hours used, and allows you to specify the correct amount of amp hour overcharge when recharging. The more
usual benefit of this is to insure that batteries are not
under
charged. However it is also beneficial to prevent
over
charging, in situations where solar panels are charging a lot during successive days but where very little battery
discharge is occurring in the evenings.
2. Finish current charging:
After the batteries are mostly charged, this controller has an optional “fourth” stage
that is beneficial for liquid electrolyte lead acid batteries, and this is also sometimes recommended for some AGM
types. This stage allows the voltage to go unusually high while it regulates the current to a specified level, to safely
get more charge into the batteries. This helps to maintain the capacity of the batteries, which often begins to
degrade with solar charged batteries because they don't get sufficiently charged.
Where this controller is NOT recommended:
For 12V systems for best efficiency this “PWM type” charger
requires what are often called “12 volt” solar panels that have 36 cells per panel. Or, with 24V systems you should
use “12 volt” or “24 volt” solar panels with 36, or 72 cells per panel. Many solar panels manufactured recently are
mainly intended for “on grid” application that have 60, 80, or other number of cells—that have voltages that don’t
well match 12V or 24V battery systems These panels are not suitable for high efficiency battery charging with a
PWM controller such as this one. For good efficiency, they will require a more sophisticated controller with
“MPPT” (Maximum power point tracking) capability.
