24V Charge Controller & Battery Monitor Options

[loonwheeler]

In the planning stages of adding solar to my 24V house battery system. Plan is for ~400W of solar and need some advice on options for charge controller & battery monitor options. In addition, I would also like to add the ability to monitor on board tank levels such as diesel fuel, fresh water, and grey water tanks.

I have the opportunity to get a good deal on the Blue Sea VSM 422 (PN 1800) which can monitor several batteries and tank levels which seems like it would be a nice all in one package / display. In addition I could add a MPPT charge controller (Blue Sky, Morningstar, Victron, Midnite, etc) to suit my needs. On the other hand, I am also interested in the offerings from Bogart Engineering (SC-1 & TM-2030) which is PWM technology but has some interesting advanced options when used in combination. With this second option I would supplement with purpose built tank monitors which unfortunately adds more displays to my existing panels. I would prefer to have a cleaner look when it comes to displaying the state of the various on board systems.

Seeking the advice from those who have more experience. What would you do? Is the Blue Sea VSM a capable enough battery monitor for most? In contrast the TM-2030 has many customizable options which makes it an attractive option but using the PWM SC-1 PWN charge controller at 400W may not be able to squeeze as much watt hours out of the panels.

 

[Joe917]

We bought our truck with an all in one computer controlled tank and battery monitor, state of the art 1994!
The battery display could only be read from close up, the Trimetric can be easily be read from any distance.
You could only view one thing at a time, so to check everything you had to cycle through the whole display. Individual displays allows level checking at a glance.
After 20 years parts of the system had failed(gray and black tank monitors). Non integrated system parts would be easy to replace.
Blue Sea makes good stuff, is the all in one system the way to go? can you see all info at once? Battery info from your dinette?
We scrapped our system and went with individual monitors, Trimetric and http://www.wemausa.com/
The Trimetric allows for tracking days since fully charged and days since equalized as well as state of charge. Any quality monitor should have these features.
As for solar charge controllers Morningstar is hard to beat.

We have 630W solar 520A/hr batteries(Trojan T145) Trimetric monitor, have been full time with this truck 2 years.

 

[loonwheeler]

Joe, all very good points. In this case the display screens of the VSM 422 are user configurable and up to 5 different items being monitored can be displayed on the screen simultaneously. Alarms are built in so many of the systems can be monitored in the background and provide both an audible alarm as well as a visual alarm. Integration sure does have its drawbacks. If a monitor system lasts 20 years, then I would be a very happy customer. Technology and features advance and even before 20 years I may be motivated to sell or upgrade.

I assume you are using a separate MPPT charge controller for your 630W solar system in conjunction with the TriMetric? Do you get days since equalized information only when combined with the SC-1 charge controller?

 

[Joe917]

Morningstar MPPT60
The Trimetric is the older model (2015 I think),monitoring and alarms are independent of charge controller.(days since full charge and days since equalized)
The battery display should be big enough to read at a casual glance.
Our integrated system was so fully integrated that if it failed the Webasto and water pumps would become inoperable, not good.

 

[Rando]

I am not sure why the Trimetric gets so much attention in the RV world. It seems to be a fairly antiquated device with an archaic user interface. I recently purchased a battery monitor and after much research ended up with Victron BMV-700 with the bluetooth dongle so you can view all your parameters on your device as well as the display. As far a I can tell, it does everything the trimetric does, plus more and is far easier to use. The Victron stuff seems to be far more popular in the marine world.

 

[loonwheeler]

Agreed that the IU of the device could be considered quite dated by today's standards. It's possible that it is a popular device due to the integration options with the charge controller?

 

[dwh]

Nah, the Trimetric has been popular with the off grid solar crowd since long before he added the charge controller.

American made, not too expensive, excellent customer service, tons of features and massive documentation that is practically a college seminar in itself.

Sure, you gotta LEARN something about what's going on to set it up and use it...but that's half the fun.

 

[Rando]

It does kind of have that back woods look - designed in the mid 90's and never updated.