but wouldn't it be possible to see a green light down at 10% after six days of no wind, and wouldn't that be something to be concerned about?
VF - maybe a closeup picture would help - this is the meter when I first installed it:
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You see the red LED on the left. That means the bank hasn't been fully charged for two weeks. It took it until the next day to figure out that the bank was fully charged and that one went green. The 10, 20, and 30 are red. The 40 and 50 are yellow. 60-100% show green.
So if the meter is showing All Green, it means the bank has been fully charged in the last week and it's above 60% SOC. If there's anything showing yellow on the meter you're not treating your bank as nice as you could. If there's anything showing red on the meter you're a very bad boy and you should give your batteries away to somebody who will treat them nicer.
The three LED's on the left seem to require the bank to receive a full absorb cycle before it will go green.
Here's an example of why I find the little thing useful. When we got up this morning the the SOC showed 100%. The wind blew all night. But now it's down to 60%:
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The reason? My wife is cooking breakfast. She's got toast in the toaster (about 1,200 watts). She's got eggs and ham cooking on the induction cooktop (about 3 kW). I'm brewing a pot of coffee (about 1,200 watts). Plus the 'fridge is going, furnace blower is going, my computer, we got a couple lights on because the sun isn't up yet. The load on our bank is probably about 5.5-6 Kw as I write this.
I look around me and see what's on and the meter is still showing Full Green. That tells me immediately that my bank is right up to snuff. I don't need an ammeter to know that we're pulling some decent power off the bank right now. The bank is probably delivering 250 amps to the inverters. If the meter had dipped down into the yellow with the breakfast cooking loads on then I know my bank is down slightly from 100%. But there's not a cloud in the sky and the wind is blowing at about 10 mph. So basically, all my system has to do is rebulk the bank and it will float all day.
That's how I find the thing useful.
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Chris