My 200W, MMPT system could not recover "full charge" in bad conditions.

[rickst29]

And so, maybe it's time to add a 3rd panel.

My 2619 (finally given a name: "The Rogue", in honer of its now-discontinued MPPT Controller) was unable to recover from a tough night during the following charging day (today). The day was pretty severely compromised by smoky conditions from the fires burning in CA. (We were in CA, along the Eastern Sierra).

The #1 factor in compromised Solar Charging was the smoke. The #2 factor was: the length of effective charging day in August, has probably declined to about 7 hours under the best of conditions (maybe 30% less than the "length" of effective Solar time available in late June and early July.)

But the real killer was my power usage. Overnight, my usual loads were perhaps roughly doubled by running an air cleaner continuously, at about 40 watts.

As usual, I ran the CPAP continuously (without humidifier; maybe another 30W - but only 15W average over the "discharge" day, because I sleep barely half the length of the non-charging portion of the mid-August days. The Compressor Fridge ran at an average of about 30% cycle time from the end of the previous charging and travel day for about the first half of the night - that's another 30 watts for half the night, followed by maybe 5 watts average until the charging day began. (I'll SWAG an average of 20 watts continuous). And "phantom loads", my home-built external fridge fan (continuous) plus evening lights, probably averaged another 5W over the night.

To summarize: my "typical loading" is up around 40W through a night which starts warm, but the continuous air cleaner usage DOUBLED that figure. 80W/12V is a bit less than 7 Amps, and run in "discharge mode" for about 14 hours consumed about 90 Amp Hours. That's basically 1/2 of my battery bank, and my mid-AM reading (12.2V) agreed with that figure (as a rough estimate, without getting into finicky details).

The unpleasant surprise, though, was failure to charge on the road - with Solar active, AND the TV connected via Bargeman. Driving through smoky sun for the "prime" early afternoon hours, the battery got home at only 12.8V, far less than I had hoped for. I plugged it into the wall, and the Converter jumped into action, and fired up it's fan. I would not have managed a second day under such conditions, with the air cleaner running. Bummer!

(Update 9/23/2015: I have designed a solution for failure to charge from the TV, http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ad.php?t=16761).