Be aware of cheap, less capable knock-offs of our model controller that are too basic to properly charge a battery. They will attempt to only turn ON and OFF for the SAME length of time, every time, when your battery is full. This will constantly boil your battery when it's full or not properly fill it or both. An improperly charged battery will have a short life and cannot be brought back. One to two years instead of 10 years or more life! You don't benefit from returning a product after it ruins your system. A charge controller must operate a relay whether mechanical or solid state(SSRs). The relay turns the charging from your solar, wind, hydro ON or OFF to your batteries. If you have 100 amps of solar charging being turned ON and OFF to your batteries you NEED to vary the time between the ON/OFF cycles. Our controller has custom programming that cannot be duplicated by the Dime Store sellers and is, of course, user changeable. Ours will more slowly top-off your battery! It will do this by adjusting itself every time your battery is full by increasing the duration of the next OFF cycle by up to 4 increased OFF times. For example: 5 seconds to 10, then 10 to 20, then 20 to 40 and will maintain a 40 second OFF time. You can adjust the starting 5 seconds down to 1 or up to 999. We even went a step further and programmed in a "sweep time" which is a secondary sensing timer that starts directly following an ON cycle. This tells the controller that it has or has not been too long before battery charging is needed again. The user adjustable sweep time allows the user and controller to have a wide range of charging times on any size battery bank. We also pre-wire and pre-program ours for you to be able to get up and going without becoming an expert. You're taking a risk with your system if accepting a too-good-to-be-true price or product description. If you're not convinced this is the controller for you, please check our other charge controllers or ask us which one is right for you. 

About load diversion:

The basic operating philosophy of a diversion controller is quite simple. Monitor the battery voltage, and if it should rise to a predetermined level, connect a diversion load, of sufficient size, to the battery or energy source to prevent the battery voltage from increasing any further. This is a very simple, yet very effective way of preventing battery overcharging. All alternate energy systems should have some form of battery overcharge protection.

Several schools of thought on the subject:

1. The source of power (wind turbine, solar panels etc.) -- should remain connected to the batteries while the dump is active.

2. The source should be diverted to the load directly and disconnected from the batteries. We happen to believe that is far better to leave the wind turbine connected to the batteries at all times.

Why? When you remove the battery level voltage from a wind turbine and send it's power directly to a load, then it sees for all practical purposes a short circuit (depending on the resistance of the load and lead wires.) This may cause the turbine blades to slow dramatically and in some cases bring it to a halt. This braking action can cause heat build up in the stator if it is repeated every few seconds or so (if the battery is just a little over the top). When you allow the turbine to see the batteries, along with the load, the turbine remains more within it's design realm -- always a good thing. The internal relays are configured to dump the batteries along with the source, but if you desire to disconnect the source from the batteries and send it to the load directly, simply utilize the N/C contacts of the relays as well.