TriStar Manual

39TriStar MPPT Operator’s Manual
Generally accepted wiring practice is to limit voltage drops between the charger and the battery
to 2%. Even properly sized wiring with 2% drop can result in a 0.29 Volt drop for 14.4V charg-
ing (or 1.15 Volt for a 48 Volt nominal system). Voltage drops will cause some undercharging of
the battery. The controller will begin Absorption or limit equalization at a lower battery voltage
because the controller measures a higher voltage at the controller’s terminals than is the actual
battery voltage. For example, if the controller is programmed to start Absorption at 14.4V, when
the controller “sees” 14.4V at its battery terminals, the true battery voltage would only be 14.1V if
there is a 0.3V drop between the controller and battery.
Note that the battery sense wires will not power the controller, and the sense wires will not com-
pensate for losses in the power wires between the controller and the battery. The battery sense
wires are used to improve the accuracy of the battery charging.
See Section 3.2 - Step 7 for instructions on how to connect the battery sense wires.
4.3 Push-button
The following functions can be enabled with the push-button (located on the front cover):
PUSH
• Reset from an error or fault.
• Reset the battery service indication if this has been activated in custom settings. A new
serviceperiodwillbestarted,andtheashingLEDswillstopblinking.Ifthebatteryser-
vice is performed before the LEDs begin blinking, the push-button must be pushed at the
time when the LEDs are blinking to reset the service interval and stop the blinking.
PUSH AND HOLD 5 SECONDS
• Request battery equalization manually. The TriStar MPPT 150V will begin equalization
in either the manual or automatic equalization mode. Equalization will begin when there
issufcientsolarpowertochargethebatteryuptotheequalizationvoltage.TheLEDs
willblinkthesequencedenedintable4-3belowtoconrmthatanequalizehasbeen
requested. The equalization request will automatically stop per the battery type selected
(see Section 4.4). Equalization will only occur if the selected battery type has an equaliza-
tion stage.
• Stop an equalization that is in progress. This will be effective in either the manual or auto-
maticmode.Theequalizationwillbeterminated.TheLEDswillblinktoconrmtheequal-
ize has been cancelled as shown in table 4-3 below.
Push-button Action SOC LED Indication
Manual Equalization Started Green+Yellow+Red / Green+Yellow+Red / Green / Green
Stop Equalization Green+Yellow+Red / Green+Yellow+Red / Red / Red
Table 4-3. Manual equalization LED indications