First full day of sun with new system, but batteries not charging

[HalfBaked]

I have been charging my new rack batteries with the generator for about a week because of gray skies. Today is perfectly sunny so I watched to see how it went.

My SCC TriStar ts-mppt-60 shows good volts/amps. (Pic attached) It sees the battery voltage, and I can see the amps on the clamp meter on the cables going from SCC to busbars, so that path is working.

But I didn't realize the amps weren't making it to the batteries until I saw the red light low battery on the MPII.

So I'm now running a generator in full sun until I can get this figured out. Hopefully I'm overlooking something simple.

 

[Texas-Mark]

What sort of load do you have on the battery? I.e. pulling more out than putting in.

 

[740GLE]

Screen shot says battery is outputting 800w, So with PV of 900w, you have about 1700w of load that’s quite a bit.

 

[Brett V]

Why are you running the generator? Put your loads on the inverter and let it do its thing. 53.84 is a full charge.

 

[schmism]

But I didn't realize the amps weren't making it to the batteries until I saw the red light low battery on the MPII.

How many panel watts do you have?

 

[HalfBaked]

Screen shot says battery is outputting 800w, So with PV of 900w, you have about 1700w of load that’s quite a bit.

That 800w is actually what the scc is getting from the PV.

 

[HalfBaked]

Why are you running the generator? Put your loads on the inverter and let it do its thing. 53.84 is a full charge.

That's the voltage under charge, so around 10% soc

 

[HalfBaked]

How many panel watts do you have?

1155 in this current array

 

[HalfBaked]

My loads are around 350w. This morning I watched 1300ish watts being harvested for about 3 hours before I noticed the problem. That should have given me about 3kwh. Instead I lost voltage/soc

 

[SamDeleted]

My loads are around 350w. This morning I watched 1300ish watts being harvested for about 3 hours before I noticed the problem. That should have given me about 3kwh. Instead I lost voltage/soc

Try again, no loads on at all

 

[Brett V]

Need more information to sort this out. How is your system wired and how much battery capacity are you trying to charge? Where are you measuring the current with your clamp on meter? When you use the generator, how does it charge the batteries?

 

[HalfBaked]

Try again, no loads on at all

I can only tell you what happened.
That liveview screenshot can't show loads at all

 

[HalfBaked]

Need more information to sort this out. How is your system wired and how much battery capacity are you trying to charge? Where are you measuring the current with your clamp on meter? When you use the generator, how does it charge the batteries?

5 100ah rack wired in parallel to busbars with 2awg, 1/0awg from there to 2 more bars where they meet the SCC and inverter.
Measuring the current on the 2awg wires coming from SCC to busbars.

Generator is wired directly to AC in on MPII

 

[740GLE]

That 800w is actually what the scc is getting from the PV.

So the PV array is providing its output, I don’t see the issue.

Do you feel the array should be outputting more?

If you have 1155w of PV and it’s generating 800w that math seems to add up for losses and panels that are warm and possible hazy weather.

 

[SamDeleted]

I can only tell you what happened.

And I can only tell you what best I think you do next.

You go about fixing things in a logical order. Personally my first step would be to let the system run a bit with no load, see what happened. Diagnostics is a process

 

[Brett V]

5 100ah rack wired in parallel to busbars with 2awg, 1/0awg from there to 2 more bars where they meet the SCC and inverter.
Measuring the current on the 2awg wires coming from SCC to busbars.

Generator is wired directly to AC in on MPII

That all sounds right. Where are you measuring SOC? Under charge or not, 53.84 is not 10% You'd be seeing something between 48 and 49 volts SOC.

 

[HalfBaked]

So the PV array is providing its output, I don’t see the issue.

Do you feel the array should be outputting more?

If you have 1155w of PV and it’s generating 800w that math seems to add up for losses and panels that are warm and possible hazy weather.

No, the problem is those watts aren't getting into the batteries.

 

[HalfBaked]

That all sounds right. Where are you measuring SOC? Under charge or not, 53.84 is not 10% You'd be seeing something between 48 and 49 volts SOC.

Getting ssoc from Victron connect via mk3 to MPII

 

[yodamota]

it looks like the bulk charge is trying to get to 57.59VDC. Is this the correct setting?

It looks like you are trying to charge 48v 500AH(24kwh) with 1155watts? Seems under sized to me.

My rudementary understanding of this is the batteries can charge at 0.5 Charge rate or 250amps. I think 0.20 charge rate is preferred(100 amps). What I am seeing is 16.5 amps.

 

[Texas-Mark]

No, the problem is those watts aren't getting into the batteries.

They have to be, the screenshot shows it (unless you have a load) That is why I asked what the load was. If the load is greater than the PV generation, you will have a net loss.