I’m having an ongoing issue with my Smart Solar Charge Controller MPPT 100 | 50
I’ve had all-in-one inverter units before that had direct input from the solar, so I’m new to this. The charge controller doesn’t put enough power into my batteries to charge them. And if it does charge them to 24, if I turn anything on in my house it just drains them out and the controller doesn’t seem to be trying to recharge them.
I currently have the charge controller connected to my solar panels and then to my batteries, and then I have the batteries connected to the inverter. Should I have the charge controller patched into the line that runs from the inverter to the batteries? Would that help the house draw directly from the solar?
Thanks! I’ve been living off my poor generator for way too long putting off figuring this out. I really need help.
Moving your solar wiring to the inverter feed will not help, unless the poor charging is caused by loose connections on the wiring and moving it means you tighten it back up.
Without any info generic checks are loose connections, fuses not seated, cheap breakers like the ones shown, poor MC4 connectors.
Post some details of your system, some performance data from VictronConnect app on your phone (battery and PV voltages and power). Do you have a multimeter and know how to use it.
The multi meter reading is 37.5 off the solar panels. It usually stays around there. The batteries charge just fine off of the generator without issue. I redid the connections to the batteries and they look fine. Let me know if there’s something else I should check.
It looks like a problem with the connection from your battery to the charge controller. There looks to be high resistance. Either the cables are too small or long or a bad connection or a fuse or breaker.
I have never used cables that long before. Your battery voltage max and min does not make sense. It’s very high and low. It also looks like you might need a firmware update on the controller. If you used a shunt or battery monitor to send voltage data to the controller then it might work. Set up a ve smart network.
Your drawing of the wiring doesn’t make sense, it indicates mppt + to battery cell then from same cell - to POWMR.
More accurate/descriptive drawing will help understand potential issues
Ive never used an mppt with my inverter because usually my inverters have a hookup for the solar directly into them. So i’m new to this part. How should the mppt be hooked up to the batteries along with the inverter?
As said your drawing is not ideal, how is your bank arranged and what voltage is it, 22V or 24V because it is hard to tell. The MPPT connects to the main +ve and -ve connections, the same ones your inverter uses. As said above, if you have a poor wiring connection you will have intermittent voltage. Check you mppt output voltage and at each connection, fuse, isolator to the battery looking for voltage drop.
This may seem super basic but: do the wires for my mppt and my inverter connect to the same point on my battery bank? Like positive mppt and positive inverter together to one point and negative mppt and negative inverter to one point? They are not currently together. I will test the connections like you said and see where there is fallout. I can also add a better drawing of my setup with all the battery connections.
I attached a picture of my batteries. I have six of them connected in three pairs but i think they are kind of burned out from running only on my generator for months after my inverter stopped processing solar and i was unable to exchange it, which is why i added an mppt charge controller even though i have no idea what i’m doing with it. Thank you for your help!
The MPPT does not have to be on exactly the same terminals as the inverter as long as it is at the same total voltage point.
However, if you are not exactly sure what you are doing, then use the same terminals so you know you have the correct voltage point.
The batteries you have will not have a long life if they do not get a full charge regularly, which is difficult with a generator unless you run it for long periods of time.
Okay. I’m attaching a picture of my current battery setup. When I went to add the MPPT, it looks like the threads are stripped on the negative connection so I can’t add anything to that point. Can I swap for the opposite charge on both fringe batteries? I starred the spots I’m thinking of with an asterisk on the picture.
No you can not wire them up like you have shown because both of the connections you have shown are at 12V, see the updated drawing so would never charge, which is probably why your voltage readings are varying so much. I have no idea if you have done damage to your batteries by doing this.
Anyway, the correct points to add the MPPT to are shown below. These points are 0V and 24V.
I also believe that the drawing is not complete, to make sense there should be 2 wires that I have drawn in orange colour to link all the battery sets together so all 3 sets of 0V and all 3 sets of 24V are linked.
Thank you so much. I had missed marking those two—I don’t know how I missed them but it is under my house and it’s kind of hard to see. One of them was disconnected, though. I reconnected it, made sure everything matched up with the drawing you sent, and connected the MPPT to the new cables spot and fired up my house. Everything seems to be working fine. Let me know if I should move the inverter cables over to join the MPPT in the middle if that would be optimal. Right now the inverter connections are still on the far ends—but it seems to be doing great as it is.
What a relief! Between my last inverter’s solar input dying, arguing with the company in china about it for months until they finally admitted it was their issue, giving up and ordering the MPPT to do that function, and then all of this, it’s been so long since I had working solar. Thank you!
