Will a Tankless Pressure Pump Charge Batteries?

Today’s question is on the TPP, that’s our Tankless Pressure Pump system. The question is, “Can the controller act as a charge controller when the pump is not pumping, so it continues to charge up the batteries?” With the TPP controller, what’s actually happening is, there’s a charge controller inside and that’s operating independently from the pump controller. 

Whenever the sun is shining on the panels and there’s capacity remaining in the batteries, it’s taking that power from the sun and adding to the batteries. When the pump fires up, it’s running off the batteries. We can operate during the day, we can operate during the night. As long as there’s capacity left in those batteries, we can run the TPP.

Depending on the exact system, it’s either a 24 volt or a 48 volt battery bank and you can actually run other things off of that battery bank. If you have DC lighting that’s a proper voltage you can run it off of that existing battery bank. You just want to be careful you don’t hook up too high a load and over discharge your battery bank.

The great thing about the TPP controller is that it’s an all-in-one and it’s set it and forget it. You don’t have to go and make any adjustments. You’re going to hook up your solar panels to the TPP, hook up your batteries and hook up your pump. Then it’s just going to operate and automatically charge the batteries. When the pump needs power, it’s going to send that power to the pump. So really, you don’t have to worry about, “Am I pumping from panels? Am I pumping from batteries?” It’s all being taken care of by that controller to get you the run time you need.

A common question is, “During the day, when they’re solar available, is the pump running off the solar or is it running off of batteries?” This question is easier to understand if we break it into three different scenarios. The first scenario is: We have more solar coming in than the pump is using for power. In that case all of the solar is going to the pump and any extra remaining power is going to go into our batteries.

The second case is: We have exactly the same amount of power coming in from the solar panels that the pump needs to operate (it doesn’t really happen in real life). In this case, all of the power is going directly to the pump.

The third case is: Either at night time or in low light conditions, where we have just a little bit of power coming in from the panels, the pump is using more power than the panels can produce. In that case, the controller is going to supplement the solar power from our battery bank in order to give the power to the pump that we need.

While those three different scenarios are taking place, you don’t have to worry about it! The controller takes care of all of it seamlessly. You don’t have to worry! As long as you have sufficient sunlight to recharge your batteries and provide power to the system during the day, you’re going to have plenty of water.