I hope someone can help with some difficulties and confusion I am having with my new Blue Solar! Many thanks if you can!!
Tiring of the spurious claims and poor performance of cheaper solar controllers I bought a new MPPT 75/10 about a week ago. It is required for a sailing boat I will be taking around Ireland this summer, and energy is a very important part of safe passage making.
I have looked through forums/online but cannot find information required, please can you help with some advice?
I have two batteries, (12v) to serve primarily engine and secondary VHF, navigation and domestics. The set up I have (the chinese controller removed and the Victron put in its place) is a 3 way switch on the + output from the controller : primary battery, off and secondary battery. Readouts: I have an amp metre on the output of the controller (after the 3 way switch) and a battery monitor giving voltage and amps.
Installation of the Victron: I followed the instructions in the little booklet, connecting battery first, then solar panel.
Problems: At first (few days, to see it works) I switched to secondary battery. The green soon showed it was on ‘Battery Life’ and the yellow on ‘bulk’ (terms from victron toolkit app). About 20 minutes and it showed , if I can recall, battery Life and Float (I was not sure of the meaning, the booklet is not clear and I had not yet seen the victron toolkit definitions). Next day I switched to primary and the same seemed to happen.
Problems started yesterday morning after I started the engine. Before starting the engine I turned off the controller feed to the batteries (turned 3 way switch to off) . This left the controller still connected to the PV and not connected to either battery. I ran the engine for routine engine checks for about 25 minutes and after turning off the engine I turned the 3 way switch to the secondary battery (waiting a few minutes after turning the engine off). The green soon showed it was on ‘Battery Life’ and the yellow on ‘bulk’, both blinking quite fast. From readouts it seems to have been charging and the voltage was going up. Unfortunately it kept going up and going up all day reaching 16.5 volts. It appears to me the controller no longer switches mode and, it seems is overcharging.
I waited all day for it to switch to float ( a sunny day, yesterday). I turned the switch to the primary battery and for half an hour it also did not revert to float (the primary had just had full charge from the engine.
I cannot find information on bootloader mode, I cannot find information on firmware does or if it needs updating.
