Hi all,
I have read some other posts from people when searching for more information, however they seem to be a bit different to what I am seeing.
I have just installed a Smartsolar 150/100 with 2.5kw of panels connected and a 24V wet cell battery bank.
I have also installed a BMV-712 between batteries and charger so that I can get some rough indication of SOC.
In a totally sunny day where everything should be working fine, the watts coming from the panels is a lot lower than I was used to seeing on the old charge controller, sometimes only around 350w is showing on the solar input section.
The charger is charging the batteries and I can see that it's doing this, and it's sitting in BULK mode.
Other posts I have read have cited the same problem with low wattage from the solar, but when the people check their charger it is actually in FLOAT mode, my charger isn't getting to this mode but seems to be reducing the input from the solar like it seems to do in FLOAT mode.
In checking the history it has actually reached absorption and float mode on a few occasions, but not many, it really should be hitting it every day with the panel capacity, sunlight and battery capacity. Typically I am using about 65 a/h of power a night, this should be replenished pretty quickly realistically with this setup.
I have triple checked settings, connections, everything seems correct.
When I run a load like the microwave or something from the inverter the watts coming from the panels jumps up to more like it should be, so it's like the charger is limiting the charge to the batteries and therefore limiting the wattage it is accepting from the panels.
I have played around with the charge current, it should be around 45A for my battery setup, I have increased it and decreased it but I have never seen the charge current get to more than about 16A according to the controller.
Any thoughts as to what might be going on ?
Thanks for your help.
