I just finished 3 or 4 weeks (part time) troubleshooting my boat’s solar charging. I first purchased a new SmartSolar unit which works great. I’ve been swapping panels, mppts, etc. and was getting lots of weird readings from the BlueSolar unit. Last week, I purchased a VE.Direct cable which seems to work fine.
I first noticed that the new Smart mppt was working fine - consistent 3.5 to 4amps into the battery (per my BMV and the MPPT app). The BlueSolar unit had no amps going into the battery and was reading zero on the app. From playing around, I found that as soon as (after 3 or 4 seconds) I connected the PV, current would begin ramping up to between 3.5 and 4 amps. Then, without touching anything, it would slowely (over 20 to 30 seconds), the current would die off to zero. This was all observed on the BMV. If I looked at the BlueSolar app, it showed zero PV current the entire time. And the Battery current would go from zero to a negative 1.5 and then back to zero (-1.5 when the BMV current showed maximum). I turned the unit off and on several times and even did a factory reset and was not able to get it to do anything other than turning on and off about every minute.
Anyone have any clues on what might be wrong?
Thank you.
I brought my solar panel and controllers home and made a science project out of troubleshooting my BlueSolar Controller. I was using an old lawn and garden lead acid battery that started out at 12.09 volts. The really odd thing was that the battery was being charged (voltage was increasing) even though the controller was showing negative amps for the battery. When I hooked the same solar panel and battery up to the new Smart Controller, the voltage continued to rise but the battery amps were always positive. I’m hoping this will be the piece of the puzzle that will solve it for one of you Victron Experts out there. But regardless of this, the BMV on the boat says that the charger is shutting off and on as I stated above.