Checking peek watts with Watts-up meter

[Turfdr]

I'm almost done with my first DIY PV panel and would like to test it to have a record to see how it holds up over time.
It is made of 35 5"x5" about 2.5 watt cells.
I have an old analog charging/starting system checker with a carbon pile load.
I don't want to rely on the old meters so I thought I could tie a Watts-Up meter and check
open voltage, then load it for peek watts then disconnect the pile and connect straight to a battery for actual watts.
The Watts-up meter has a pos & neg on both source and load side and I believe powers up with either source or load feeding it.
It says not to short the meter and is obvious if connected to a battery as it is rated at 50 amps/100 amps surge.
Will this work, or is there a better way?
I hate to fry the meter.

Thanks.

Dan

[BrianSmith]

I would put a nice big rectifier diode in series with the positive output of your panel and then connect to the watt meter on the input side and read OC voltage.  If that looked reasonable, I would short the output side of the meter and see how the short circuit current looks of your panel.  I'm pretty sure this type of panel configuration will not like shady spots, so make sure the entire panel is uniformly illuminated in sunlight and not partially shaded.  If both of those looked reasonable, connect the output side of the meter to a battery and see how much current and power you can charge into your battery.

If someone knows more about those meters please chime in since I don't actually have one and don't want to be the guy who told him how to blow up his meter....    Hope this helps

[Bruce S]

The meter will do what you want it to do. but DO NOT short it, that will kill the meter.
Even a diode is not needed as the meter has internal circuit to keep from draining the battery or carbon pile back into the PV setup.

The meter when connected, will give you accumulated, peak and recent.
All in all it is a very good meter for the cost. The readings take turns showing up, but still very easy to take notes from.

Come back with some numbers from your PV it will be interesting to read about:).

BTW: You can reverse use the meter as a load meter as well, so you could actually hook up the meter source to a battery and see how much power is being drawn out of battery set as well. This is what I've done in the past for NiCd packs since their discharge is much different than Acid based batteries.

Hope this helps!!
Bruce S