I am wondering how important is it to always connect the battery first when powering up/down an MPPT controller? Seems more important than I had first thought. The manual does say (in the installation section) to connect the battery first, which I understood was so that it can automatically detect 12/24/48V battery, and set its set-points accordingly. I understood that this was needed during the first power up only, and I assumed that after that it would not matter whether you disconnect the battery before the solar, or reconnect it after the solar is connected. This is not made fully clear, as the manual does not specify the correct sequence for normal operation explicitly.
A customer of mine disconnected the battery while the solar was working. Later he reconnected it, (solar still on) and the controller was damaged. Victron did not cover this damage under their 5 year warranty. They said it was clear from the manual that you should not do this. I will need to read the manual again but I wonder how many people know this? I wonder how many people take care to always check that the solar is not connected when they connect the battery after some temporary down time. Seems like people need to know this.
