When I left my installation to go on holiday I disconnected my battery bank from my EasySolar but forgot to disconnect the 6 solar panels also. It was in the night so there was no power input from the PV at the time.
Will there be damage to the charger the following day when the sun/light returns and the PV panels are activated/powered while the EasySolar is not powered ON?
system is designed to run with batterys! You should not disconnect them
Not ideal. And definitely not recommended.
The mppt can be powered from the pv side only. And there shouldn’t be damage since it is not trying to provide power to anything.
How long do you plan on leaving it like that?
Would be a bad design, imagine a fuse blows in the battery circuit…
The main issue is when there is massive production and a sudden disconnect, something has to absorb the overshoot. Sometimes that something gets its face blown off.
Don’t worry.
Only the inverter’s electronics is drawing power and that consumption is steady and low.
If the system slowly evolves from night to day - so as Alexandra says, no sudden disconnection - it will be OK.
Kirchhoff’s laws says that: No load → no current → no problem.
Thank you.
I am hoping i can get a friend to turn off the PV input. I don’t know them very well so it is helpful to know how urgent it is and if it isn’t already too late (the damage done) so that he is not wasting his time making the journey.
I won’t be returning until 6 weeks time.
The latitude is Glasgow (Scotland UK) so very little power will be generated most days. Clear sun hours are rare in Dec/Jan but do occur of course. It’s a 1.4kW in total array, mounted 60 degrees from horizontal. 5kVA EasySolar.
The inverter is switched to OFF.
System is set to charge on PV only.
I understand how a state of OPEN CIRCUIT of the PV means no power generated but with the charger circuitry connected it would seem different?
Consumption is given by the loads (resistance).
No loads will mean no current, even if the voltage is different from zero.
In your case, the loads will be small (device internal consumption) so the current is proportional with the loads.
The power generated is proportional with the loads/consumption.
So even if the panels are fully exposed to the brightest sun and they are capable of generating 1.4kWp in that moment, if you are drawing only 50W, then the panels and MPPT will not generate more than 50W.
The problem is when the current draw is big, meaning high consumption (big loads) and then the consumption and/or loads suddenly drops to zero because of an open circuit.
For a few moments there is a transitory state when the voltage could spike until the regulation circuits are kicking in. And that spike could be a problem. But NOT your case.
Also, if the equipment is well built, that should not be a problem, because like nonandat69 has said, otherwise will be a bad design.
Electricity Physics 101, just like learnt from school: Ohm’s Laws → Kirchhoff’s Laws → Maxwell’s Laws.
Sadly, nowadays people don’t show the desire to understand and/or experiment the underlying phenomena and are just content with reciting and/or following something from a manual, because “for sure they know what they are saying”… Sorry to say and no offense intended, just a Pavlovian world.
I agree, since there is no load, there wont be any prodcution worth noting. There should not be any issues.
This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.