Solar panel setup woes

[slowgoesit]

Here’s the setup, going from panels to batteries:

6 each SIL360NX solar panels w/ MC4 connectors

10 ga tinned PV dual insulation, single conductor PV wire with MC4 connectors where appropriate.

Circuit protection provided by circuit breakers (on + wire only) between panel and controller.

Victron 100/30 MPPT Smart Charge Controllers, one for each solar panel. Smart controllers have case grounds to (-) bus.

Circuit protection provided by circuit breakers (on + wire only) between controller and (+) secondary battery bus in engine room.

4/0 Ancor tinned wire from secondary battery bus to primary battery bus outside of engine room.

4/0 Ancor tinned wire from 100ah Dragonfly Energy (Battleborn) LiFePO4 batteries.

Smart controllers, and overall battery usage monitored via Bluetooth to Smart Controllers, and Victron Smart BMV-712.

The Victron 100/30 Smart controller is set to LiFePO4 batteries via preset 7 on rotary switch. Charging parameters mirror Dragonfly Energy’s recommendations. Rotary preset 7 confirmed via bluetooth to BMV-712.

System turned on with CB’s between controllers and battery bus first, then CB’s between controllers and solar panels last per instructions.

The problem. Smart Controllers show 0.01 volts, no amps charging in full sunlight. Battery voltage is 13.46 volts or so. Charge voltage in bulk or absorption is set to 14.4vdc. Using a multimeter, polarity is correct, wires are hooked up to correct terminals on controller (PV and Battery), voltage is showing 42 + or – at the controller PV terminals, yet Bluetooth on the Smart Controller still shows 0.01 volts . . . .

I’m totally stumped. This is occurring with all three of the six panels I’ve got hooked up so far. No charging is taking place. I would be pretty surprised if three of three controllers are defective, nothing was ever hooked up wrong. I’ve jumped around the CB panels in case it was a problem with the CB’s, even though voltage showed correct, no change. Double, triple, and MANY TIMES checked all routing, connections, etc, nothing wrong. Read controller manuals, etc till I’m sick of reading them. Their only suggestions are defective equipment, incorrect installation, or no sunlight . . . .

Only thing I haven't tried is manually inputting charge parameters into controllers, but since the correct parameters appear to be there, I don't see the need.

I keep thinking I'm missing something simple. Just can't figure out what it is.

Suggestions anyone?
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[SteveK]

This should be an interesting topic.

I suggest you wear down the battery to 50% and see if that triggers a charge. 13.46V is at float charge. Something is keeping battery at float voltage.

 

[Insequent]

I had some quirky behaviour when setting up 4 x 100/50 smart controllers at the start of the year. I'd suggest turning all the breakers off, have a coffee (allowing dissipation of charge for internal controller components) then come back and turn just one controller breaker on initially. I think this is the only method to do a reset.

Then use the app to go through all of the parameters. As I recall the controllers sense the battery voltage at first time connect, and then it remains set. Default is 12v system. But try and check that is the case. You could then turn that controller off, and do the others one by one to confirm all have a 12v system voltage set. There is a process to reset battery system voltage if needed.

Then, with only one controller breaker on, turn on the panel breaker for that controller. If it does start working then it will became the Master. Then add the other controllers, and assuming they are all on the same network (which you infer you have done) that master should ensure the other controllers play ball. There is no way of selecting which controller acts as master. But once you have got them working the first time, they just seem to "figure it out" between themselves the next day.

Once i had all 4 controllers operating, by basically doing what I outline above, I have had no further issues. Although I did get bus bars hot and start to deform the plastic mounting block on them. It surprised me that 2 x 100/50 controllers threw out enough juice to do that to a 100A busbar, but after replacing with a 150A busbar no more issues.

You did not say what wire size you used between the controller and the battery bus bar, but I'd suggest 8ga or even 6 ga. I've used oversized wiring everywhere on the solar setup to minimise voltage drop.

 

[twistedtree]

You say you have 6 panels and 3 controllers, so how are the panels grouped? Since you measured 40 or so volts, I’m guessing you have two panels wired in parallel feeding one controller?

But regardless, your 100/30 controllers are undersized unless each is servicing only a single panel. A single 360W panel will produce 25A at 14V. So you would need 6 controller, one per panel. The MPPT may be going into immediate overload.

 

[SteveK]

I read 6 panels, 6 controllers

 

[mvweebles]

You say you have 6 panels and 3 controllers, so how are the panels grouped? Since you measured 40 or so volts, I’m guessing you have two panels wired in parallel feeding one controller?

But regardless, your 100/30 controllers are undersized unless each is servicing only a single panel. A single 360W panel will produce 25A at 14V. So you would need 6 controller, one per panel. The MPPT may be going into immediate overload.

A diagram sure would help....along with battery capacity.

TT - my reading of spec sheet on these panels shows 37v at 9.7a. If he ran two in series, the 40v makes sense and would be under 10a, within range of the 100/30 controller.

Man, that's a lot of solar. Indefinitely have watt-envy (I have 800w).

Following with interest

Peter

 

[slowgoesit]

Steve,

I've had the SOC (state of charge) down to about 31 to 33% each night, and still won't charge.


Brian

I've already checked the three controllers, and they are set up for 12 volt. I'll try your suggestion tomorrow. For tonight, I'll just turn everything off., then do as you suggest tomorrow.

The wiring from the controller to the bus is 10 ga. Since I only have one panel to each controller, and they each have their dedicated wire (both + and -) all the way from panel to bus, I think that is sufficient for 360watt (max) solar cells. I may end up upsizing at a later date, but first I have to get the things charging.

The solar panels functioning properly have suddenly taken on a greater need as the coupling between the main engine pto and the hydraulic pump that supplies pressure to the 12kw generator ate itself yesterday. We're between Nanaimo and Campbell River, Northbound to Alaska, and currently our only way to recharge the house battery bank is either via the (really small) engine alternator, or running the get home aux engine to power the generator . . . with the associated increased fuel usage . . .

Keep the suggestions coming! I'll report back.

 

[slowgoesit]

A diagram sure would help....along with battery capacity.

TT - my reading of spec sheet on these panels shows 37v at 9.7a. If he ran two in series, the 40v makes sense and would be under 10a, within range of the 100/30 controller.

Man, that's a lot of solar. Indefinitely have watt-envy (I have 800w).

Following with interest

Peter

Peter, I have 2180 watts of solar, with 1200ah of LiFePO4 house battery bank, wired in four pods of 3 batteries each, to minimize cable run. All the cable runs are "balanced" with same lengths. That's why I did them in 4 pods of three ea.

I've attached the solar panel cut sheet. Open circuit voltage is 45.4v. I'm reading 41.8v to 42v, which is telling me that the controller is not accepting any of the power, as the voltage should be lower in a properly functioning/charging system.

 

[twistedtree]

A diagram sure would help....along with battery capacity.

TT - my reading of spec sheet on these panels shows 37v at 9.7a. If he ran two in series, the 40v makes sense and would be under 10a, within range of the 100/30 controller.

Man, that's a lot of solar. Indefinitely have watt-envy (I have 800w).

Following with interest

Peter

The current rating is for the output (Battery side), not the input.

But I also stand corrected about the config, and see that he only has thee panels installed so far.

I think the best thing to do is poke around with the VictronConnect app. It’s as though there is some on/off setting that is Off. You should also be able to see the input and output voltages from the MPPT’s perspective.

Another thing along the lines of it being turned off somehow, I wonder if the controllers are under BMS control somehow, and not turned on as a result. My experience with these is thin even though I have 4 myself, but I recall that if they detect a BMS on the Victron data bus then they automatically switch into BMS controlled mode.

 

[SteveK]

The problem. Smart Controllers show 0.01 volts, no amps charging in full sunlight. Battery voltage is 13.46 volts or so.

I've had the SOC (state of charge) down to about 31 to 33% each night, and still won't charge

Still wanting to understand how the battery got charged back up to 13.46 volts which is 99% charged with 13.6v float and 100%. If something else is charging the battery the controller would drop the output.

 

[Insequent]

On initial power up the controllers seem to set a bunch of parameters. There is no doubt quite a few thousand lines of code in each one, and they have no user interface. The app, while pretty good, does not have any error code reporting that I can recall. But the coding, in non-volatile memory is pretty robust and a hard reset (off for minutes not just seconds) seems to sort out a lot of issues. At night the charging shuts off, but the controllers are still connected to the batteries and retain the start-up settings in volatile memory. With multiple charge controllers on one network, which I have and including a BMS 712, one of the controllers becomes the Master and the others are slaves. Assigning the controller as master is not user defined or managed.

I think it likely important that just one controller starts up and stabilises before adding the others. My assumption is that when the others do start, the first thing they do is search the network for a master in order to duplicate its parameters. These will need to come from the master. When the master itself first starts it may get something from the BMS although I think I only joined it into the controller network after all the controllers were working. As all of the controllers remain powered up overnight, when charging initiates after the following sunrise then it does not matter which controller acts as master because they already have identical parameters in volatile memory. It may or may not be the same controller that was master the previous day. The master/slave thing, and identical parameters in volatile memory is important as a fail-safe code procedure could be: if different parameters encountered between controllers then switch off charging.

I was at anchor late last year when I had quirky behaviour. By that I mean some days one or sometimes 2 of the controllers simply would not start charging that day even though the others were charging. And it was not just one controller being quirky. I did believe one controller in particular just had to be faulty, and was planning on sending it back to the supplier. Eventually I got it sorted and from memory the solution I outlined above was all that it took. Once sorted, I realised all of the controllers actually worked as designed. I did not return any of them to the supplier.

Mind you, I must have read the manual a dozen times, turned things on/off in all kinds of sequences, checked wiring. checked polarity, went through the settings in the app multiple times. And drank plenty of coffee while searching the 'net for possible issues & solutions. Maybe it was the coffee that fixed the problem? To be honest I'm not entirely sure of the precise actions that got it sorted after about 5 days of WTF? But once done, it's been faultless. Hence my suggestion of step by step startup from a reset (power off for extended time)

 

[rslifkin]

Personally, I prefer to set the charge parameters through the app and not through the rotary switch. I also keep the float voltage on the MPPT controllers set 0.05 volts higher than my other charge sources, that way DC loads will be powered by solar when available, even with the boat on shore power.

 

[slowgoesit]

You say you have 6 panels and 3 controllers, so how are the panels grouped? Since you measured 40 or so volts, I’m guessing you have two panels wired in parallel feeding one controller?

But regardless, your 100/30 controllers are undersized unless each is servicing only a single panel. A single 360W panel will produce 25A at 14V. So you would need 6 controller, one per panel. The MPPT may be going into immediate overload.

6 each 360 watt solar panels, of which right now, only 3 are fully wired in.

• 6 each Victron 100/30 MPPT Smart Controllers. One per solar panel, only three Smart Controllers are fully wired.
• Each of the six solar panels goes all the way through to the (+) and (-) buses, each with it's own circuit breakers up and down stream of the controller.

House battery voltage this morning is 13.08 volts, showing a SOC of 55%, with 652.4ah of 1200ah available used.

Currently drawing about 430 watts of power, fridge, freezer, Starlink, misc other loads.
Currently light rain and partly cloudy, but full daylight. I tried a "reset" on one of the panels only. No change. I'm thinking it is the controller settings as well, but everything appears to be correct.

 

[rslifkin]

Make sure the MC4 connectors at the panels are good. If they were plugged in under load, they may be damaged. You'll still see panel voltage with bad connections, but little to no power.

 

[Crossroads]

This may or may not be helpful given the actual expert advice above.

I recently installed two 200W panels in parallel thru a SmartSolar 100/30 to a secondary buss. First time I ran the engine, with 140A alternator, the MPPT output went to zero and did not restart when the engine was off.

In the MPPT settings I changed the Load Output from BatteryLife to AlwaysOn. Solar charging resumed, independent of engine status.

Full disclosure...I don't know what the BatteryLife setting is meant to accomplish. I am not an expert.

 

[Crossroads]

Correction...panels are in series.

 

[slowgoesit]

Okay, I spoke to Roni at Battleborn, who sold me the batteries, as well as the Victron Controllers. Kudos to Roni! Extremely patient. The 3 solar panels that are currently wired are now up and running! Now to finish the wiring on the other three, which will take a few hours.
The 360 watt panels are only putting out from 65 to 105 watts each, but we are half way up Vancouver Island in Canada, and it is overcast with light rain, so that is to be expected.

The solution: Much like Brian (Insequent) stated in post # 3, the solution was to reset all the controllers, but in this case, turning them off did not do the trick. Roni had me physically disconnect ALL the wires, wait 15 minutes, then reconnect Battery side first, then PV side. We went line by line through the controller settings as well. Turns out the rotary switch (position 7) for LiFePO4 is a little different from what Battleborn recommends for it's LiFePO4 batteries, so I set all of them to their settings and saved the settings as well.
Roni stated that he has seen this infrequently with multiple panel/controller arrays, but resetting the controllers and bringing them back on line one at a time generally fixes the problem.
Fingers crossed, and thanks to all who contributed!

 

[koliver]

Fingers crossed, and thanks to all who contributed!

Good luck with the rest of your installation.

 

[Insequent]

Glad to hear its fixed. I was pretty surprised that one of the three would not fire up even though I was confident about the reset then add one at a time process. The good news is these controllers are pretty much bullet-proof IMO once working.

 

[slowgoesit]

All six of the panels are wired, up, and running now. It's now 7:30pm and power generated has dropped to about 250 watts. High was when I got the last panel wiring completed at about 2:30, and it was about 1212 watts, so I expect to see higher earlier in the day.

Overall, VERY satisfied with the performance. Even getting the last three panels wired in late, the SOC increased from 49% to 94%, so from about 500ah available to about 910ah available. I have a 1200ah bank, but don't plan on running it below about 200ah remaining at the lowest.

Once again, thanks for all who responded!

 

[BruceK]

Great news and impressive output!
What`s the reasoning behind the individual controllers per panel? I appreciate the panel output would exceed the capacity of one, or more, but one for each?

 

[rslifkin]

Great news and impressive output!
What`s the reasoning behind the individual controllers per panel? I appreciate the panel output would exceed the capacity of one, or more, but one for each?

You get slightly more optimal output and less shading sensitivity with 1 MPPT per panel. Even more so if the panels are angled slightly differently due to deck camber, etc.

Depending on the size controllers you need, more smaller controllers is sometimes pretty close in price. When I built my setup it was cheaper to buy 2 of the Victron 100/30 than it was to buy a bigger controller like the 150/60 that would handle both panels. And mine are angled slightly differently, so it likely performs better this way too.

 

[slowgoesit]

Great news and impressive output!
What`s the reasoning behind the individual controllers per panel? I appreciate the panel output would exceed the capacity of one, or more, but one for each?

You get slightly more optimal output and less shading sensitivity with 1 MPPT per panel. Even more so if the panels are angled slightly differently due to deck camber, etc.

Depending on the size controllers you need, more smaller controllers is sometimes pretty close in price. When I built my setup it was cheaper to buy 2 of the Victron 100/30 than it was to buy a bigger controller like the 150/60 that would handle both panels. And mine are angled slightly differently, so it likely performs better this way too.

That's it in a nutshell. Some people have noted output in the tropics that actually exceeds the manufacturer's rating. Since we are planning on being in the tropics at some point, wiring two 360 amp panels in series for one 100/30 controller was too close to what I wanted to do. Plus, as stated above, the cost of larger controllers was about the same as 1/panel, plus the shading issue as well. Also, if we lose one controller, we only lose one panel's output, instead of two. The main difference is that we had to run twice the number of wires with 6 controllers.

 

[LeoKa]

Then, with only one controller breaker on, turn on the panel breaker for that controller. If it does start working then it will became the Master..

This reminds me to the Windows OS workgroup networking. There had to be a Master always running to see other computers and file shares. Unfortunately this Master role could not have been transferred and a new setup was required for the group, in case of a missing Master.
I wonder if Victron controllers configure a new Master automatically, if the original one is offline or dead?

 

[jsbraga]

Agreed

This should be an interesting topic.

I suggest you wear down the battery to 50% and see if that triggers a charge. 13.46V is at float charge. Something is keeping battery at float voltage.

I can see that as a topic. Do it.

 

[Nepidae]

Solar panel woos

First, I am NOT an electrician. Any major electrical work I have done on the boat I hire out. You do know that most boat fires are electrical related, right?

Second, I have Victron equipment. We just had to replace our Xantrex charger/inverter and did so with a Victron Multiplus 3000/12. I also have 6-L16 6V house batts, a BMV-712 smart gauge and a 150/60 MPPT and a smart gauge for the solar panels.

After the Xantrex was replaced by the Victron I noticed that the solar charging had dropped considerably. You didn't say if you were using shore power when you got the reading you got but I noticed the drop in solar generation while we were attached to shore power.

The tech who did the conversion suggested that the Multiplus was 'sensing' that the solar wasn't necessary so was cutting it back.

We are currently on a dock without shore power, and it seems, we aren't on the boat, but it is being watched, that solar is working as our 712 has a 12.95V display.

Quite possibly, you may be experiencing some similar condition in your issue.

Good luck.

 

[SteveK]

Nepidae, you may have said it better than I. I asked why the battery was at float voltage if the PV was not charging, something else is/was charging and the controller shut off solar charge was my guess.

 

[slowgoesit]

I posted back in post # 17 that we're up and running.
Today, highest output measured on our 2180 watt rated system was 1530 watts at 1:25 pm. That's 100 miles South of Prince Rupert in British Columbia, on a partly cloudy day! I'm entirely happy with that output! Our battery SOC was 100% by 12:30, so we did a load of laundry totally on solar, and that including drying! Did I mention that I'm totally stoked with the performance?

 

[Nepidae]

What manufacturer of solar panels did you install?

 

[slowgoesit]

What manufacturer of solar panels did you install?

Silfab. Model # is in post # 1. Cut sheet is attached to post # 8. This model/brand is one of the few I could find that is actually rated for salt environment. Available choices are going to be lessened due to the ongoing legal investigation of price fixing of imported solar panels from overseas. How much tighter will remain to be seen.