Hooked up Classic to new panel today and have questions....

[Wxboy]

I purchased a 12 volt panel for camping and I don't have a charge controller for it yet so I hooked it up to the Classic today but I noticed some strange behavior.  At first I was seeing 88 to 90 watts on this 90 degree day but then I noticed it was lower, like in the 40's and 50's.  I figured it was the high clouds but I kept looking out the window saying the sun looks pretty strong so why am I not getting the output.  Then I pushed the enter button on the Classic so it could do a sweep and then it jumped up to 70 something watts.  Then 2 minutes later it was back down in the 50's.  I hit the enter button again and it went back up to the 70's.    I've never seen this behavior with the larger panel so I'm wondering what is happening.  I still don't fully understand the Classic so maybe I'm missing something.  I only had a couple of hours to play with the panel and watch the output today so maybe it was just a fluke and tomorrow everything will seem normal. 

The panel is a UL solar 125 watt 12 volt panel and I did program the wizard for the panel although I'm not sure that matters. 


As a side not while I was playing around I noticed that by hitting the top right and top left buttons on the Classic while it was on the main display screen I could make the input voltage go up and down and therefore the watts changed as well.  Am I the only that didn't know you could do this?  When would this be useful to adjust? 

[boB]

Excellent !  You found the magic buttons !    I'm not sure if the manual mentions that
those buttons do that but if you hold down the status button while returning to the
main status display, it has a brief (very brief) description of some of these button
pushes.

Yeah, the SOLAR mode doesn't always work the greatest for a 12V battery and a
12V module...  That mode works better when there is some voltage room above
battery V to work with.   Try another mode such as Legacy.  That may work better in
this situation.

boB

[Wxboy]

Thanks boB, I'll experiment today. 

[Wxboy]

I used the Legacy mode yesterday and it seemed to work fine.  Thanks again.