Sooooooo.... I'm the guy in my camper club that loves batteries and solar, etc. This weekend I helped a friend put panels on the roof, upgraded the batteries to Lithium, added a Victron Solar Charge Controller, Orion Charger, and Phoenix 1200 Watt inverter. Pretty straight forward stuff. We also decided to upgrade his old Parallax converter to a Lithium converter charger. Long story short, it's all hooked up. I turn the battery on and . . . .. . Nothing. I look at the SOK BMS, it says nothing? So, I check voltages and I'm getting nothing at the shunt. Next, I hook up the Victon charger which is just flashing at me. The App says short? What the heck???? Two guys looking at me asking all kinds of questions. I'm a bit embarrassed and trying to figure it out. I turn on the system again and hear a big pop coming from the converter direction. . . . HMMM. Both 30 amp fuses blown on the DC distribution board. . . . I pulled out the instructions again. Black goes to positive the Distribution Positive and White goes to the negative . . . . I did it backwards. So, long story short. It was a big noise, but no fire, and it all works now. Two lessons learned: Have someone read the instructions with you when you are swapping out the controller if you can. Have someone check your work.
The other "almost fail" on the project was I told the guy wiring the combiner box on the roof that black is positive and white is negative on the solar input wires (we checked continuity prior to attaching the wires. He did it backwards despite my clear instructions (something we have something in common . . . ). The good news on this one is that I checked the polarity before we connected the panels to anything and caught this problem before it caused any problems. Problem caught, fixed and solved.
The other "almost fail" on the project was I told the guy wiring the combiner box on the roof that black is positive and white is negative on the solar input wires (we checked continuity prior to attaching the wires. He did it backwards despite my clear instructions (something we have something in common . . . ). The good news on this one is that I checked the polarity before we connected the panels to anything and caught this problem before it caused any problems. Problem caught, fixed and solved.