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three dollar PWM controller:




I've seem these go for as high as $10 each, but if you look around you can find them for about $3, shipped.
They're low voltage and rated 10 amps, and are frequently being bundled with 100w panels and other small solar
packages. Even with the screen, it only draws about 8mA on standby. But it's just quick-n-dirty PWM, and will
drag the solar panels down to just a bit above battery voltage, so panel efficiency is pretty poor. But you
really, truly, cannot beat the price. It even has buttons to tweak charge parameters and toggle the load!

Another variation on this one lacks the load on/off button but is very similar. For LiFePO4 batteries, I set
the charge voltage to 14.6, the load cutoff at 12.0, and leave the load turn-on at 12.6 - I also leave the
battery type set to 1 since I can't find a table that shows all seven battery types.


ATO-PWM-solar-charge-controller-user-manual.pdf (5 MB)

specs	three dollar PWM 1	three dollar PWM 2

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last updated 02/19/2025 at 09:47:53 by make_www_index.command version 2025.02.14.A