How to set the load setting on my charge controller

[Jamiegsi]

Hi firstly any help would be great I have just bought my first house and I have recently installed a solar panel on my shed this is the spec so far

I have
A 20 w solar panel
A pwm 10amp charge controller
A 800 amp 12 volt car battery ( I will be getting a marine battery once I no which one to get and how many off them to get)

Currently I have bought a DIY fuse box which has 6 fuses

I have wired the fuse box to the load on my charge controller

I only have a car stereo wired up to my system so far as I'm still waiting for my inverter and my lighting to arrive

My question is do I wire my stereo to the load or straight to my battery same thing for my inverter as my charge controller has 17 settings but the only setting I can get any power out off the load on the charge controller is on setting 16 which is general use mode which is fine but it says in my manual that setting 1 is on plus 1 hour setting 2 is on plus 2 hours and so on until setting 15 which is on plus 15 hours but the load light on settings 0-15 doesn't give me any power ?


Any help would be great I have so many ideas I won't to do I just need to get the basics right then to get guided in the right direction I have no other people to ask my father has disowned me since I was a baby and haven't got any other guys to ask

Thanks in advance

[Sunking]

You do not use the load port on the controller. Straight to your battery.

Having said that your battery will soon be dead, and likely the new one will be shortly.

I can only assume when you say 800 amp 12 volt battery you are talking a SLI battery and 800 amps is cold cranking amps but does not say what AH rating. Being a car SLI battery I can only guess around 60 AH..

A 20 watt panel with PWM controller can only support a very very small battery of roughly 10 AH at best about 1 Kg. I would hold off buying a battery until you get enough panel wattage to support a real battery. Around 200 watts and a 15 amp MPPT controller.

[Jamiegsi]

You do not use the load port on the controller. Straight to your battery.

Having said that your battery will soon be dead, and likely the new one will be shortly.

I can only assume when you say 800 amp 12 volt battery you are talking a SLI battery and 800 amps is cold cranking amps but does not say what AH rating. Being a car SLI battery I can only guess around 60 AH..

A 20 watt panel with PWM controller can only support a very very small battery of roughly 10 AH at best about 1 Kg. I would hold off buying a battery until you get enough panel wattage to support a real battery. Around 200 watts and a 15 amp MPPT controller.

Hi thanks for the reply

I have the solar panel wired up to the 1st set off wires then I have the battery wired up on the second set off wires and I thought that the load is used for the things that you want to use the power for I don't have anything directly connected to my battery apart from the solar charge controller

I don't see how the battery will be dead shortly I have had it wired up for a few weeks now and I check the voltage daily and it sits about 13.4 volts

I no I will need to get a lesuire/marine battery at some point but the battery I have is just one I was given to test my system out

It is a 90ah battery quite a large one out off a jaguar (car)

So I would need to get 9 more off the solar panels that I have already got ?

I only realy wonted the solar system I have fitted to power a led strip light in my shed and a couple off low wattage led deck lights on my decking

[Sunking]

20 watt panel is just perfect to charge a cell phone in a day or two. You woul dnot get 9 more of them. You would just buy one panel of the right size and appropriate charge controller. But first you need to figure out what you are going to do with solar before you throw any more money at it. Right now you have a cell phone charger.

[Jamiegsi]

Ok I will have to look into it a bit deeper then I just looked at a few basic solar shed videos on YouTube and they had the same as me a 20 watt solar panel and a 10 amp charge controller, I will only be using the solar power to power a led strip light in the shed and 3-4 deck lights when I have a garden party so not that often at all I wired my old car stereo in just to make sure the battery was being charge back up I ran my stereo for 5 hours last night and I checked the voltage before I started drawing power and it was 13.4 and after having the stereo on for 5 hours it dropped to 12. 2 volts then after about 3 hours off daylight this morning the battery was charged back up to 13.4 again so it's not like I will be using lots off power, the deck lights will be used for about 5 hours max a week and that's about it, as I have just moved into my first house money is a bit tight for me at this moment in time that's why I just went for the basic 20 watt solar panel with a 10 amp charge controller, I think I will just keep checking my battery daily to see what it drops to and how long it takes to get back up to around 13.4 volts again, can you reccomend a deep cycle battery ?
Thanks for the help so far I was thinking if my power can last me for the small amount off power I will be consuming