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colmes70 avatar image
colmes70 asked

Easysolar 1600/24 PV not charging

Hi, I have an easysolar 1600/24 with three 280w panel connected charging eight 6v rolls batteries. For the past 5 years everything has worked fine but recently during high winds the solar panel frame collapsed but didn't damage the panels. For the past few weeks I've been charging the batteries with a generator, so this week I dismantled the frame and put the panels to the side during which the wires came out of the connectors on one of the panels. I disconnected the wires from the easysolar and checked the polarity then reconnected wires to the connectors. After switching everything back on I checked the colour controller and saw 35w coming in from pv and then it went down to 5w. Now all thats coming in from the pv is 2 to 5w, I've tried switching everything off, disconnected the panels then batteries and reconnected in reverse but it still the same. Can anyone help please as I'm not sure what to try next.

MPPT Controllersbattery chargingEasySolar All-in-One
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2 Answers
Wayne avatar image
Wayne answered ·

Given the damage that occured you probably need to check every connection in the array it could beas simple as a bad join that is causing the voltage to crash.

Test by checking the PV voltage open circuit,then again under load and note the resaltting voltage

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colmes70 avatar image colmes70 commented ·
I've checked the voltage on the connectors going into the easysolar unit and each are reading around 35 volts so I'm wondering if the issue could be with the mppt?


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klim8skeptic avatar image
klim8skeptic answered ·

I suspect your 3x280w panels in parallel do not have a high enough Vmp to charge a 24v battery.

What are the specs of your 280w panels?

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colmes70 avatar image colmes70 commented ·
Voltage from the panels is fine and has been for the past 5 years so its looking to be the 100/50 mppt
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