MPT-7210A Solar E-bike or anything else charger
Vložit
- čas přidán 15. 01. 2023
- I hope you guys appreciate this I spent HOURS styling my hair for the conclusions.
Aliexpress unit:
www.aliexpress.com/item/10050...
Check out Jasonoids awesome tech channel:
/ @jasonoid - Krátké a kreslené filmy
Thanks for another great video, showing the operation of the MPT boost converter you mentioned - this makes all the bits and pieces come together nicely! A really neat device, and I do appreciate the hair :)
I always wondered if it was possible to use a mppt charger (this isn't one but anyways) to draw power from any readily available charger. Was afraid to test it. Thank you for sharing this! It makes good use of this particular solar charger. Even if it is not mppt and very slow it is programmable though.
I tried to use the same controller to keep my 36V golf cart charged via a 400W solar panel (28V during load) that is mounted on the roof of the golf cart. With this controller I could get only 230W out of my 400W panel. I switched the MPT-7210A controller with a Elejoy EL-MU400SP MPT boost charge controller. Now I get up to 380W out of my 400W panel. That is excellent. Having said this, I can't recommend using the MPT-7210A controller. It is very slow to adapt to different light condition - when driving around the golf cart the charge current was very low until I come to a stop. Then the controller ramps up the Ampere. I don not have those problems with the Elejoy EL-MU400SP controller. Even driving around I get my full charge amperes.
Wow that's cool you can charge on the fly. Yeah my use case wasn't driving my e-bike around with a solar panel on my head. LOL. I may win on style points but it's a little impractical. What I was using it for was for a static charging, like say you're biking on a picnic or something you can top up your bike while your eating and relaxing, or in a pinch if there is a blackout you could charge up your bike in the day time. Also if your normal charger breaks as long as you have ANYTHING kicking around that is a 5.5mmx2.1, including my video on using a USB-C charger and a 5.5x2.1mm adapter to charge your ebike. Obviously a golf cart is going to have many times the battery capacity of even the largest e-bike battery for obvious reasons. I'm trying to move 52 lbs including the battery around on my bike, a golf cart obviously needs more juice. I've also noticed this unit loves more AMPs. I've seen other people with more professional arrays and they all seem to have at least 2 panels in series or parallel when using this unit. The real value of this unit is the cost. That's why I said it's not really an MPPT charger it's just a boost converter. But for the price it's worth it.
I'll check out that MPPT controller when I can. I've been hearing reports of it feeding back all the power and frying a power supply that it was tested on. I'll do some digging or maybe buy a unit myself as a comparison. It's quite a bit more expensive (over double) than the cost of the MPT-7210A.
Warning: This cheap charge controller feeds back over 90V to solar input after charge stop. This high volt feedback voltage destroyed one of my bench power supplies. I guess after charge stop the capacitors inside discharge!? Neither the battery (used a 12 volt one) nor my now destroyed power supply (up to 24volts only) was able to produce 90+volts so it definitely comes from the charge controller.
Also the efficiency of it was not as advertised. Further the readings of those meters are off quite a bit. Better stay away from this controller.
Thanks , I made the faux pas of building eight 52V 30A 18650 batteries to swap between home solar storage and ebike use but damn it’s challenging to find 48V solar charge controllers or 48V inverters with a voltage adjustment feature without having to run a 5000W inverter / charge control unit.
Using two of these MPT 7210A’s for an efficient upboost from a 24V battery/ 1000W solar system to squeeze every watt out on those cloudy Pacific NW days.
Put the fan on the exterior of the unit the first day to save my hearing other than that I like these so far.
Elecaenta lsfc-120 solar panel...did you ever take that usb box apart? i'd be interested to know if you were able to fix and usb-c, or what your observations were.
I'm very sorry guys. Thanks very much for watching. But I've realized. I may be become a crazy scientist.....
Great testing scenarios, I liked when you tested it off your Golabs R300. So when using this with your car directly connected to your battery you could probably set it at it's limit of 10amps input and maybe get like 150-170 watts into your ebike? Have you tried that before? Just curious what the real limit would be when using a 12v battery directly.
Don't have a car unfortunately. But since the car port on the Golabs only puts out 10 amp max and I didn't totally boost it to not fry it, on a car you should get way better results, especially if the motor is running like you are driving to a campsite with your e-bike battery charging in the car. The 52v battery I recently bought has a recommended max rating of 3A so when I plug it in and look at my kill-o-watt meter with the 3amp charger it came with, it pulls around 200w from the wall to put out about 2700mAh or 2.7A x 58.8v or 158 watts actually going into the battery after losses. I'm not sure if that's a limitation of the BMS on the battery or just the "safe" charge rate as I could easily see it do around 5 amps(.33C) safely if you were in a hurry. The MPT7210A has a max output of 10A at whatever voltage you set it at so at 12v it would be 120w, at 90v it would be 900w so like your testing the more volts you boost it up with the more it's going to pump out. The max at 58.8 would 588w max output. Most guys that I see using this unit is for slow charging their e-bike because it's extremely accurate, once that battery hits the target voltage and the BMS is no longer pulling power after balancing the cells, it cuts the power right off no matter what your pumping into it and stops pulling power from the panels. The current counter is really nice as well. On my Golabs it acts a little differently, since it's not connected directly to the battery as the watts come down from the Golabs it will error out as an overvoltage error then stop charging because when you put it on the boost converter the boost converter is fooled into thinking its at the end of the charge because the MPPT controller on the Golabs is actually pulling the power it needs instead of it directly connected to the battery.
@@chrissinclair8705 Thanks for the explanation. It seems that since a car has low voltage it probably wouldn't be a high power option to use in your car. Still has many other uses like you said in your video but there are other higher powered options available.
@@Jasonoid Sure it's best for e-bikes as the output can be programmed so it's best used with higher voltages. E-bike batteries like lots of voltage but relatively low amperage. So the 10 amp max amperage output is basically overkill for an e-bike battery which I got as it's original purpose. However on limited amperage power stations, you can still bump it up to whatever the station will do. So say you had a power station that will accept 10 amp max but will accept 60v, you could get 600w max in there. If the station can take more than 10 amp then some of those extra amps are wasted. Either way it's still faster than just plugging in the car socket with no voltage boost and getting a max of 120w. Plus it's only about $45 USD not hundreds of dollars and will basically be programmed for any voltage including 72v batteries. You have to get a pretty large power station to accept more than 10 amp input, usually they get around this by having a higher voltage threshold which the MPT-7210A will do. Plus only a max10 amp draw is easier on the alternator and wiring. It's really up to you. If you have an ebike or have a power station 10 amps or under max input, but higher than the 36v demonstrated in your video, or maybe you have an older car and you're not sure pulling nych more than 10 amp from the cigarette socket can handle it than maybe the MPT-7210A might be an option due to it's programmability. It will pull more than 10 amp from the socket but will only pump out 10 amp max. But if you have a modern car or one with a jacked up power socket the other options might be better for you. It's really up to you, either way, whatever you choose you will still get a higher charging rate than just straight plugging it in. I suggest everyone go visit Jasonoids channel he has a great channel for solar and batteries. I'll link it in the video.
I use the mpt7210a to change my onewheel from the cigarette socket in the car. Quite handy.
Wish i could get a closer look at the connectors you used. Those terminals are small, so seems like anything over 12awg wont fit quite right
Well it can only do 600w max so it's not going to need a higher gauge. I believe I'm using 14 gauge wiring which is more than enough. I just put some spade ends and some shrink wrap and screw in the ends. You could probably go a bit higher gauge as you can use ends like I am to actually screw into the unit.
Thanks for great video is it possible to have a 12 volt 62 ah car battery as power supply ?
Sure why not? I wired up the unit with a 5.5x2.1mm plug but you can put whatever you want in there including bare positive or negative wires. It doesn't care you just screw in the leads and outputs you want directly to and from the board. However it will only input/output a max of 10 amp. So it can only draw 10 amp from that battery max. So 12v x 10 amp is 120w max input to work with. It will take 12-60v input, it actually has a 63v input capacitor but I wouldn't do that. So if you can fit 60v in there x 10 is 600w to work with. If you noticed when I did the "Car charging" test with the 12v cigarette lighter that's exactly the same thing as just putting a big battery on it at 12v so it should work fine. If you're battery is fully charged it should be running around 13.7v at no load so you should be good.
Oh man. I look like a bad Kenny Rodgers..
im going to be doing a long term trip around australia ,and will charging bike with solar most of the time, this unit really doesnt fill me with confidence ,,and they look and seem abit unstable ,yeah going to have to design a true mppt bullet proof unit
Well Good luck. This design works fine but it is a bit old now. There are other units out there that are true MPPT for more money. This unit is more of a multi power point TARGETING not tracking as you have to program in the maximum power voltage from your panels. This may make an excellent backup unit from you main one since they are so cheap. Once setup it works great but it's not automatic so if you are a bit worried about what your panels will put out max at what voltage this may not be for you as a primary charging source. A sort of standard panel will usually put out the most power at 18v if you put two in series it will put out the most around 36v. I have been seeing different MPPT chargers for ebikes floating around out there, maybe I'll pick one up and do a video on it for the community. I'll let you know. What voltage are you dealing with here? 48v? 52v? 60v? 72v? This unit will charge up to a 72v battery no problem (84v terminal voltage) at a max of 600w output. I've seen other chargers that put out less around the 200w which is still decent for around the same price which are MMPT. Maybe I'll pick one up as a comparison.
ill be in remote desert areas for long periods repairs and replacements arnt an option and my life will be essentially riding on it ,ive got to come up will bullet proof system thats fast to set up,really efficent and can charge 85 volt batteries it looks like may have to design my own solar blanket to ,if i can source 4 flexable panels ,that can output 22 volts each and run them in series or at least make a solid 60 volt,the then boost conveters will be most efficent boosting to 84@@chrissinclair8705
I cannot recommend this unit.
It really doesn't do mppt, you set a fixed Solar panel voltage, no tracking. This is also pretty inefficient, and if the voltage difference between Solar and output is higher, the Watts it can manage drop dramatically.
For example: If you have a 18V solar panel and charge a 48V battery with it (54,6V Charge limit), it only manages 80W MAX, not a watt more will go through. And the efficiency is really bad at that situation at 85%.
If the voltage gap is lower, like 31V input, this unit manages to deliver 122W at 87% efficiency.
If you have 48V in and 54V out, it manages 203W.
The very best this unit can do is 360W at 48V in and 54V out at 96% efficiency.
There is an excellent test with lots of numbers:
"How to get the most power out of the MPT-7210A boost charger " from Mike Schaus on his website.
I bought a CTK300-II MPPT Boost Controller instead, which is far better and does real mppt tracking. Far higher output at most of the range and >94% efficiency.
Good info. Yes I'm definitely looking to upgrade. I was just showing what this thing can do because of the cheap price. If it's this or zero, than this will work. When I buy something more appropriate I will do another video. However I do like this for other things other than charging my ebike and it's programmable which helps. Also if I'm charging my ebike I use 2 solar panels in series which increases the efficiency as it doesn't have to boost the voltage so much. Cheers.