I’ve just had a lithium battery and SmartSolar charge controller installed in my campervan. The van will be idle for much of the time and it’s recommended to maintain the battery at a partial charge. So I want to stop the charge from the solar panels reaching the battery.
There’s a ‘Charger Enabled/Disabled’ setting. Will it harm the controller if I leave the charger disabled for long periods?
Many thanks.
Richard
Its not designed for that.
Ideally if you are not using the battery, you leave it in a partial SOC and disconnect everything otherwise parasitic draws will discharge it (unless it is clever and goes into a low power state.)
Hi LX,
Thanks for reply. The battery is Fogstar and it has functionality to shut down discharge, so it can’t be drawn on while idle.
So I’d still be interested to know if switching the charger to ‘Disabled’ would do it any harm in the long term?
Richard
Maybe you can disable charger.
But the charger’s electronics will still remain powered from the battery in order to respond to commands, like re-enable, right?
And that charger’s standby consumption, even if is negligible at first sight, will sooner or later drain the battery dry.
And I suppose you don’t want that…
You’d be better installing 2 switches, one for the panels and one for the battery.
When you leave, switch them both off - in the proper order - and all will be - I hope - OK.
This is correct. There will still be a draw from the battery.
Disconnect panels.
Disconnect the battery.
In theory long term the charger being switched off in software is fine, if the panels are disconnected as well.