Classic 200 first impressions

[laszlo]

This is the first day on the job and today was a very hot day in TX - it's 105 F currently at 5 PM.

I've had an MX60 for 5 years, and the basis of my comparison is the MX60. My Classic 200 was made in Q1 of 2011.

Here are my first impressions.

1. Wiring terminal is not lining up with knockout - it was really hard to bend the #4's that I have in the limited space. And the holes on the terminal block are a bit small to route #4 conductor into -- it fits but it's just extremely hard to get them in there. Suggest changing the block out to a larger size. It was, however, nice to have the knockouts already machined out.

2. The entire charger is much lighter than the MX60 and the transformers are much smaller. There seem to be fewer FET's than the mx60's 14. This probably means that the Classic operates at much higher voltages in the DC-DC voltage converter than the mx60.

3. Was not able to update the firmware from WinXP from vmware on my Mac. It starts the upload but it finishes way too fast compared to the video of firmware upgrade on midnitesolar.com (have changed the serial driver port to COM8). Would be nice to have a menu prompt to display the classic's  Firmware version, like in the mx60. The MNGP menu displays the MNGP firmware version, which is 11/10/10.

4. The charger appears to operate hotter than the MX60,  the fans have been running constantly since 10AM, kicked in at 500W charging rate,  so the classic's efficiency may not be right up there with MX60. Classic's Temp display indicates 53C for the Classic, 45 for FETs, at 1600 Watts charging rate.

5. The setup wizard did not allow me enter 35 strings, stops at 24 or so.

6. The setup wizard did not allow me to enter 91.9V  for my panel VOC - it stops at 90V.

7. The wizards lat/logitude setup was nice -- no more relay clicking as with the mx60 to find out when the day breaks -- the Classic actually knows the sunrise/sunset times!

Would be nice to have input and output  W in status menu,   so that efficiency can be seen in the field. Would be nice to redesign the wiring cabinet a bit so one can land conductor in the terminal block without bending towards the front inside the chassis.

[boB]

Thanks, laszlo !!

The Classic does indeed have less FETs and smaller inductors than the MX60.   The MX60 has 12 and the Classic has 8 and so it
will run hotter than the MX60 for a given input voltage and output current as you found.
However, I believe the Classic has a better solar tracking method than the MX60 had which actually makes it
bring in more kW-Hours.  The MX60 algorithm wasn't too bad though, either.  We think it was better than the newer
FM units though and has shown in side by side comparisons to be better using identical arrays.

Your other observations have been duly noted BTW and we will take this all into account for future sofware upgrades.

As for having trouble updating the software, please talk with one of us,  (Ryan ?) about that.  You should definitely be able to
update your firmware as we make upgrades from time to time that should make it work better at times.

Thanks again for the input !
boB

[laszlo]

Thanks, Bob!

I managed to upgrade the firmwares with an XP notebook, and the Classic is now running like a charm - I am a few watts away from rated array power.  (35 Kaneka GSA-060 thin-film modules) .  This is great!