Early last year I had a solar panel professionally installed (photonic universe 180w) and a controller (Victron Smartsolar MPPT 75/15).
I didn’t really use my van as much as intended last year, but spent a good chunk of time in it in march this year, I was super impressed the battery was hanging around 13.4 v all the time I checked, and then this summer I got a bit panicky the solar panel wasn’t working because I was only ever reading 12.8v max. This has sent me down an absolute rabbit hole, but two things of note, I’ve since remembered in march I had hookup as I took a fan heater everywhere I stayed, and when I got the controller installed I disabled bluetooth, as someone said it would drain the leisure battery. So the 13.4 reading probably wasn’t accurate.
So after all this panicking I’ve managed to reenable bluetooth on the controller, so can look at trends of charging again, and its showing that when I’ve been using the van its been bulk charging, but when I’ve not been using it and its been on the driveway its been doing nothing. So that sounds like its charging fine, right?
Whats really thrown me is the installer also mentioned that if its a slow blue blink on the mppt its not “working”, and if I put a multimeter on the screw heads where the solar panel is connected to the mppt, I should be getting a constant voltage supply from the panel to the mppt, which is another behaviour I’m not seeing. Does anyone know a bit more about whether this is true? The installer also asked me to send him a screen grab of the app status which I’ve attached, and he said that showed the panel isn’t working.
I’m very confused how it can show all these things suggesting its not working, and have a panel thats providing 0 input on a multimeter but still showing charging trends on dates I've been out and using the van
