question

Hi @Judodesign

Your Anker states 30V max, and you've hooked up a panel rated 39.7V. Possibly destroying the internal charger, which won't be an mppt, most likely a pwm unit. But it may have protection, and has just shut down.

And a panel mounted under roof bars won't perform well. It might get to the 120W input rating of the Anker, but don't count on it.

You could try a Victron 75/10, the smallest in the mppt range. That's equivalent to the 10A rating of the onboard unit.

Hi @JohnC ,

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I think the powerhouse just shut it down. Hence the 0w reading. I just plugged the dc input port into the van cigarette lighter port and it was happily showing a 65w current coming in to charge the powerhouse. So doesn’t look like there’s damage to the unit

As mentioned, I have the panel mounted under roof bars (see attached) but will now mount it on top as there are whole cell rows covered. That might do it.

But perhaps I should put a small mppt inline to condition the current from the panel as it is over the powerhouse input ratings (not that we get great sunshine in Ireland). I’ll look into the mppt you mentioned.

Thanks

I've now moved the panel on top of the roof rack and tried again. No change. Still showing 0w charging on the powerhouse. I'm getting a reading of 37v from the panel, but my multimeter is untrustworthy!.

Anker have confirmed that the maximum voltage of the solar panel is up to 32.5V. But the powerhouse will shut off its DC charge port when the input reaches 30V.

@JohnC Do you know if the Smart Victron 75/10 will allow me to set an output voltage limit of 30v in the app? Also, would it be best to connect the powerhouse to the battery ports or the load port?

Thanks for any help. We have a trip coming up and i'll need to order the Smart Victron 75/10 pretty quick to get it here in time.

Just coming back to say that the Victron SmartSolar MPPT 75/10 resolved the issues and the PowerHouse is now charging from the solar panel. I managed to connect the PowerHouse to the battery port on the MPPT and set it to a 24v charging state with a 10amp limit. So when the panel is fully under the sun, I can get a flow of 240watts. But I have already seen it get up to 265watts, so there is some buffer around the limit.

It's not quite at the PowerHouse's input limit of 300w, but it's close. Also, by having a 405w panel I'm getting a good charge to the PowerHouse even on cloudy days.