posted 1 hour ago
I truly grok the "heat and bug" seasonal limitations... (Sorry to the non-Heinlien fans for the reference).
My friend got out of the hospital a week ago and was back in by Sunday night, so things have been touch & go, but right now, it's looking like they may have sorted him out, and he might be released again next week, depending on the results of the next round of tests.
In the meantime, I've been trying to find out as much info on the communication protocols of the BougeRV 60-amp controllers, and as far as I can tell, there's no provision for them to work together with others, even if they are the same brand & model. That doesn't mean one can't use them in parallel, but one is likely to need to log into each separately to manage them. It's looking more & more like the BougeRV controller is really intended for systems where it's the only controller in the system, so if one is OK with the limitations of an 800 watt charger (12 Vdc) or a 1600 watt charger (24 Vdc), this is the one to get, but if one has much greater needs, it might be better in the long run to go with the Victron system. I can possibly try to use both of the BougeRV controllers at the same time, but I don't have enough of the same type of solar panels to max out both controllers - I can run 1 with 800 watts of panels and only 400 watts for the other one until/unless I buy another pair of 200 watt panels.
I do have a pair of 36 Vdc rigid panels that are a pretty good match for the Victron 30-amp controller buried in the box, so I can drag those out into the yard and add them to the mix, but I don't think it's a good idea to mix those panels with the 24 Vdc Harbor Freight panels.
Clearly a win for the Victron system, as they can be linked via Bluetooth and you end up with one as the master controller and the others as slaves, so you change settings on one and the changes are propagated automatically to the rest of the network. Their network can also include other devices, like their Smart Shunt (which I have, but was saving for the 24 Vdc battery build).
Should be sunny all weekend, so hopefully I can get some charging data from one of the BougeRV controllers and the group of Victron controllers too, but I'm also trying to cobble together a minimal laptop to load Linux onto, and copy some videos to, so I can deliver it to the hospital and help keep my friend from going stir crazy and being a pain to the staff... It just needs to be able to run Linux Mint, and VLC for this to work.
