Good morning y'all.
Yesterday was the warmest day I've seen in a long time. I literally broke out in sweat for the first time since last year.
Had to work on the solar system yesterday. Been having issues for a while now, but was able to troubleshoot it and is working properly now.
I thought I had a bad charge controller, but that turned out to be incorrect. It was the + lead to the battery bank messing up internally somehow, but since I had purchased a new MPPT charge controller, I replaced the old PWM controller that had been on it since 2014.
The main advantage of the new controller are several fold. But to not waste half the morning typing and your time reading if you have made it this far, the new charge controller allowed me to set the charger to only come on when the voltage drops below 12.5v (I can program it a little lower if I need to) and turn off at 13.1v.
Since we're not up there using it everyday, this should be much better for the battery banks not being charged daily and constantly, allowing them some time between cycles when nothing is happening to be idle and only charging when it really needs it.
It also has a load shut off to where the unit will automatically turn off at 11.5v That is even lower than I would've chosen personally (I would've chosen 11.8v) but that was the highest setting that it offered to choose from.
So, all in all, yesterday was a success, even if I did have to take the entire system apart piece by piece to find the culprit.
After sitting all winter long (and it was a cold winter too--I don't believe it got out of the 20's the entire month of january), the voltage on the battery bank was 11.7v when I first got there. This is probably not surprising for being sitting in an unheated building without being charged the entire winter.
After only about 30 minutes of being charged, the voltage had already climbed to 12.5v so it's certainly charging much faster and better than before. I'm going back later this evening to make sure that it turns off when it reaches 13.1v like it's supposed to just to make sure that it's working properly.
But, so far, I'm really liking the options of the new mppt controller and I think it's going to be much better overall.
Yesterday was the warmest day I've seen in a long time. I literally broke out in sweat for the first time since last year.
Had to work on the solar system yesterday. Been having issues for a while now, but was able to troubleshoot it and is working properly now.
I thought I had a bad charge controller, but that turned out to be incorrect. It was the + lead to the battery bank messing up internally somehow, but since I had purchased a new MPPT charge controller, I replaced the old PWM controller that had been on it since 2014.
The main advantage of the new controller are several fold. But to not waste half the morning typing and your time reading if you have made it this far, the new charge controller allowed me to set the charger to only come on when the voltage drops below 12.5v (I can program it a little lower if I need to) and turn off at 13.1v.
Since we're not up there using it everyday, this should be much better for the battery banks not being charged daily and constantly, allowing them some time between cycles when nothing is happening to be idle and only charging when it really needs it.
It also has a load shut off to where the unit will automatically turn off at 11.5v That is even lower than I would've chosen personally (I would've chosen 11.8v) but that was the highest setting that it offered to choose from.
So, all in all, yesterday was a success, even if I did have to take the entire system apart piece by piece to find the culprit.
After sitting all winter long (and it was a cold winter too--I don't believe it got out of the 20's the entire month of january), the voltage on the battery bank was 11.7v when I first got there. This is probably not surprising for being sitting in an unheated building without being charged the entire winter.
After only about 30 minutes of being charged, the voltage had already climbed to 12.5v so it's certainly charging much faster and better than before. I'm going back later this evening to make sure that it turns off when it reaches 13.1v like it's supposed to just to make sure that it's working properly.
But, so far, I'm really liking the options of the new mppt controller and I think it's going to be much better overall.