Since I got back from Meadow Lake (see the Ted's TR), I've been watching this thread with great interest and confusion because i just was forced into upgrading my set up (see the "When I almost blew myself up" thread a couple of months ago when me and Wondering sagebrush where up at the Sheldon Ant. Range) over the last month and this was the first real trip out with my new set up. My set up now is a 2 way coolmatic 3.8 compressor frig/freezer (I think wired directly into the system., 1 Renology 30 amp comptroller/pwm/lcd, 1 100 watt Renology solar panel (on roof) and two blue top agm deep cycle 12v batteries and this is what happened when I took it all to the lake! I had an earlier short trip out with this set up with a 10 amp comptroller and things sort of worked-at least things stayed in the green on both comptroller and the fwc batt charge gage.
Okay, I was up at the lake for almost six days, parked in a mostly sunny campsite and drove nowhere and this was a test of how this set up worked. The batt voltage stayed pretty steady a 13.0/12.7 for the few days, but got down near 11.4 (at first light every morning- it went up and showed that it was charging as the sun kicked in the solar panel) and ranged between 11.7 and 12.4 and it dropped when he frig kicked in during the day and went back up when it went off. It seemed like I spent allot of the time adjusting the frig down from 4.5 to between 2 and 3, the last few days to keep both the fwc battery gage and comptroller LCD lights in the safe range. Again, i'm not to sure how accurate this gage is, but until i got the frig it always was in the green or yellow, but near the end of this trip was in the yellow and one morning was in the red. I confess here my lack of understanding on what my new comptroller was telling me and I missed the simple color system of my 10 amp (Green work, red/no color no work).
On day 5, when I saw red in the morning on the fwc gage and freaked and started up the truck to charge up the batteries! The Comptroller showed 11.4, but as usual from what I could figure out, the rest of the settings were fine and it continued to show a happy face (meaning things were working okay) and the battery voltage gage soon showed it was charging (as did the fwc gage) and soon reached 12.7. The whole trip my comptroller showed a happy face and as soon as i got home, I went on the web to try to learn (very slowly) about how comptrollers and electric things are supposed to work. Wish me luck. So should i just ignore my fwc batt gage and trust the new one as long as it has a happy face and shows that it is working and charging? Or continue to use both-like i do now.
A first stupid question though, the new comptroller shows the batt charging, but never shows the dc thing lighting up, but, i've got nothing hooked up to that port on the comptroller and my frig is wired to the battery so there is nothing to worry about right??? Right now with the camper battery switch off the battery reads 13.0; switch on, it drops a tad-still with a happy face, but it is raining here now and it is not getting much of a charge. Turn on the frig, and it drops to 12.4 or so and still shows a happy face. turn it off, happy face and 12.7. When the switch is on the fwc gage shows green with a tad of green showing in the charging area. Did I confuse you all enough, me thinks, I'll continue to read the manuals and stuff and hopefully if I explained what happened out there good enough, one of you will tell me if I need to worry or not. Maybe I should have left things connected to the old 10 volt comptroller with it's nice lights, but down the road I am thinking of adding another 100 watt solar panel, so this really is a test of things to come.
Thanks for any comments
Stupid about electric stuff
Smoke
-you know the more i read the solar threads the more i don't know-but ever once in a while somethings sticks 
. For the last 8 months i've had that 100watt sp on the roof along with the solar connector it came with and things seemed to work fine. After the miss hap, had the rv folks put in the new additional batt and hook up the new frig and things again worked ok( i think), just up graded the comptroller and followed what Renology told me to do and just don't know enough to ask the right question to them or anyone for that matter, to find out if somethings not right. Bill, I've used something like that i got here to figure how much power i need to operate things on a system wide basis, but if it's no problem, maybe you could post it here and i could figure more things. i don't know but need to know, like how much power i'm getting or not getting from the dang thing. This teaching and old dog new tricks takes time, i guess it's forcing" me" mind to think--and that's good. I followed all the instructions i think,I feel so stupid, it should be working and probably is and just don't know it 
! Well back to the threads and reading stuff from the "solar charge comptrollers information center" and hopefully more help from you guys. Maybe I should ask my dog "Bob" for some help- border collies are supposed to be smart right 
?
