Technology; Product Features; Mppt Charging - tbs electronics Omnicharge Solar OCS 100-20 Owner's Manual

2. TECHNOLOGY

2.1

Product features

Omnicharge Solar battery chargers are true next generation products and contain the latest highly
efficient switch mode power supply technology, as well as a smart digital control system. Please see
below a summary of the most important Omnicharge Solar features:
• Fast Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) ensures that you always get the maximum
amount of power transferred from the PV panels to your battery. Even under the most
difficult circumstances. The MPPT efficiency of an Omnicharge Solar charger can reach up to
99%.
• Highly efficient switch power supply technology ensures a low waste of power and allows for
a fan-less design.
• Smart selectable charge programs for AGM, Gel, Flooded, Lithium and User defined battery
types
• Automatic battery voltage detection
• Battery temperature sensor input
• Historical data storage up to 300 days
• Full protection against battery reverse polarity, PV reverse polarity, short circuits, battery
open circuit and solar charger over temperature
• Monitoring and configuration via Dashboard Mobile app (iOS and Android)
2.2

MPPT charging

There are essentially two types of charging technologies for solar chargers. These are PWM and
MPPT technology. PWM is the most basic one and can be seen as just an automatic switch that
connects the PV array directly to the battery as long as charging is needed. This results in a PV
voltage that is pulled down to the same level as the battery voltage. And since this voltage level is
typically lower than the maximum power point voltage (Vmp) of the PV array, the resulting effective
power to charge the battery bank is not optimal.
A solar charger with MPPT technology is more advanced and it is based on a smart high efficiency DC
to DC converter that will continuously find the maximum amount of power that is available from the
PV array. This is accomplished by varying the input voltage of the charger by controlling the amount
of power consumed from the PV array. The main goal is to find the highest result out of the
multiplication of battery voltage and charging current (P = V * I). This highest result is called the
Maximum Power Point. The image below shows a typical I-V graph of a PV panel. Added in red is a
scaled graph representing the generated power (multiplication of I and V) of the same PV panel,
including the maximum power point Pmax:
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