Hi all,
New here but have had a classic motorhome with Victron system for a few years. The solar was installed professionally and has run well for the 3 years I’ve had it. I have renewed panels and batteries but all Voctron components are as installed.
The solar became intermittent a few weeks back. In looking for the issue I discovered that one of the female pins in the comms cable which leads from the controller to the LCD display looks burnt. When wiggled this cable did sometime show a charge but it remained intermittent. The days are long and the sun is out but I’m getting no charge. It looks to me to be this cable that is the issue.
Does anyone have any experience of this? New cable? Or new controller? Or is something set up wrong. It’s worked fine since I got it - I replaced the panels straight away. It has 450w of panels and 3 x 100amp batteries.
Looks likely to be damaged from liquid intrusion; the drip lines on the controller indicate it was installed vertically rather than as directed, which is horizontally with the terminals facing down. As it is, installed vertically, moisture could have run into the port and collected, eventually causing damage to the VE.Direct port.
The cable itself is definitely damaged, so try replacing that first, and installing the controller in the horizontal-with-terminals-facing-down orientation as described in the manual; it’s possible that the controller itself has been irrevocably damaged but you might have gotten lucky by catching the damage at the VE.Direct port.
Thanks Justine. Controller was / is horizontally installed with terminals facing down - but that doesn’t rule out your theory. (I have a three year old who regularly throws water / other things around my van:) I will try a new cable first.
