Quick Solar Panel Demo
Dear Reader,
Far too often I’ve seen solar enthusiasts struggling with two-meter setups to try and calculate the true power output of their solar panels. Switching back and forth between two meters as clouds and trees occlude the panel makes getting a good reading very difficult! So here’s a quick demo of how easy the setup is with a Mooshimeter.
Here’s a diagram showing the the meter was hooked up for this demo:
This setup is not perfect because the current from the panel will induce some burden voltage in the leads and cross talk in to the voltage reading slightly. If you wanted to get around this problem, you could use the Mooshimeter’s low voltage channel and an external current shunt instead of the internal current measurement.
Comment or email with questions and ideas, I hope you find a use for this in your projects!
The Mooshimeter is available for preorder now through Dragon Innovation.
So complicated for my brain, James. I am glad there are brains like yours out there to help us improve our lives!
I thought one of the features was the low burden voltage on the current channel? How would an external shunt reduce that significantly?
The only thing better than low burden voltage is no (additional) burden voltage. External current shunt mode allows you use the existing burden voltage of your existing wiring. Not great for gain accuracy, but very handy for certain measurement types.
Alternatively, you can add an external shunt if you would like to measure above 10 Amps and still need good gain accuracy.
Okay, so I just got my Mooshimeter and I’m playing with this same application, but watching a battery charger. How do I get the current math to be part of the display? I can show current and I can show voltage, but I can’t figure out how to make it do the wattage calculation for me.