EPEVER 10A MPPT Solar Charge Controller Tracer AN Series with 12V/24V DC Automatically Identifying System Voltage fit for Lead-Acid and Lithium Batteries

I bought this as wanted to take my solar off my inverter/charger as the inverter, when it registered sun on the panels, would turn on which used 1.2amps per hour (costly off grid). I calculated the max amperage for my single 300 watt panel and decided on the 20amp mppt charger. I decided that due to my lack of experience with solar installation to get my electrician mate to fit it, I wanted to make sure correct cable sizes were chosen. It was incredibly easy for him to fit as it was a quick switch from the inverter and a run of cables through a preexisting hole in the bulkhead to connect to the batteries. I have not tried to switch over any settings or run the software as the default settings on the unit were fit for purpose. It's been a year and 3 months since it's been installed and since then I've swapped from 3 batteries (old and damaged) to 2 120ah wet sealed batteries and now the sun is coming out it's been working like a charm, I've had my 12v fridge running and had the inverter on happily for hours and during the day I'm still able to charge my batteries and it's only April! It's going to be an easy summer that's for sure. Even in the past few months, although the fridge was permanently off, I would keep electric use to a minimum during the day and in the evenings and night quite happily run my inverter for hours at 2- 4amps an hour. Registered in darkest months roughly 3.5-4.5amps going into battery from mppt charger at peak daytime and today with sun highest point in sky saw a solid 8.6amps! Well chuffed hence what prompted this review. As I said, used a professional working electrician to install and source cabling, I haven't changed any of the settings as it detects most things and my batteries are flooded which is what it's set up for. So I say: IF YOU WANT SOMETHING TO DO A SIMPLE THING LIKE TAKE THE SUN FROM PANEL, MAKE IT INTO AS MUCH POWER AS IT CAN AND SEND TO YOUR BATTERIES. IT'S PERFECTLY FINE. I personally don't trust some of the more fancy specs of mass produced items as they are usually not fit for purpose. E.g. my inverter/mppt charger that is totally not fit to run solar but as an inverter, fine for running up to a 1000w but that's all I need. Same principle applies with this solar charger, I'd have my money that if you wanted to add this to a complex system, or with a large amount of batteries or to make use of some of the more intricate settings I'd reckon you'd come into some trouble. But then again, I weren't far behind on amps coming in during December as a friend of mine who has a pretty nice Victron system with 3X as many batteries and 2.5X amount of panel wattage! Which.is.not.bad.

Ease of installation

Replaced a supposed mppt controller (was pwm) with this beauty and all my problems disappeared now got fully charged batteries. The batteries only supply water features in the garden but were constantly discharging with old controller this is no longer a problem wish I had just paid that bit more in the beginning .Some people complain about the scrolling display didn't find this a problem just press the enter button and the display lights up and you can move to the display you want that is if you cant be bothered waiting for it to scroll through. I must admit I did struggle initially with changing the load output setting but once I figured it out it was obvious maybe me just be being a bit dim. Overall impressive bit of kit.

The product arrived a few days after I placed the order. I also purchased a "EPEVER eLOG01 Record Accessory Adapter" so that I could monitor the performance over several months, and the EPEVER /Epsolar Solar Charge Controller Accessories" -- two additional cables -- so that I could monitor the system on a laptop of android phone and put the electronic thermometer into the battery compartment in the engine room.I followed the instructions and it was easy to install. It appears to work well -- although this is my one and only installation so I have nothing to compare it against -- I do have a sophisticated battery monitor (that uses a 200am shunt) so I can cross check the readings on the Solar Charge Controller and they agree.One thing that the controller manual does not make clear is what voltage is output on the "load terminals", indeed the manual does not make it clear what the load terminal are for! As I wanted the solar system to change the batteries on my narrowboat I have ignored those "load" terminals. If I could I would remove the load monitoring from the display.The reason I have given this a four star rating and not a five star is because the computer software installation is poor. I have a Microsoft Windows 10 laptop and I would expect all software for Microsoft machines to use the standard Windows 10 installer. Instead this software seems to use something that is probably compatible with Windows Vista. The software comes in a ".rar" file which is not compatible with the standard Windows 10 file explorer (I used 7-Zip to access the files although winzip will probably work as well). Once extracted there is not one installer but two. The first installs the drivers and the second installs the software. This is very old school. Normally such software would be web-based but with a simple installer that would check for the version of Widows that is being run and install the appropriate software from the website and it would include an uninstall option to clean up the computer if the software is no longer needed or proves to be buggy.After some messing around I was able to install the software and it works, but I suspect that most amateurs who install this product, will not be able to get the PC software working, and will not understand the error messages they get about device drivers not working. It is a shame because with a modern Windows 10 installer this useful interface would be much more easily accessible.The controller also works well with "EPEVER eLOG01 Record Accessory Adapter", but I did come across one glitch. I disconnected the solar panels from the controller to install another solar panel. When I reconnected the solar panels to the controller it registered the reconnection on the display panel, but it failed to update the information into the adapter. I had to unplug the cable that connects the controller to the adaptor before the data started to flow from the controller into the adaptor.So 5 out of five for the controller, but 3 out of five for the computer software.

I struggle to see why anyone would buy any other charge controller other than this one, a reliable component that does exactly what its meant to do, you could buy two of these for the price of one of its popular blue brand competitors, 100% would buy again(already bought two 40amp models a 30amp,10amp and a 60amp version I love them!),build a 24v system to get the most out of it, the load output is very useful when paired with a relay(can be setup to heat water when battery is full)