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Renogy 20 wont charge

Kasey

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Nov 28, 2020
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Hi all. I was gifted the Harbor Freight 100W solar kit. I was unimpressed with the charge controller and found the renogy line on this site. I picked up the Renogy Rover 20amp controller and finished the swap last night. Unfortunately today I noticed it is not charging the battery. I verified all the terminals and checked the solar terminal with a multi-meter. It showed about 13 volts which is about inline with what the panels would produce on a rainy/cloudy day. Yet still no charging. I wanted to make sure I didn't mess up something during the swap so I hooked back up the cheapo controller and it instantly started charging the battery. I have no error codes and in the Rover menu it does show panel voltage but no output amperage to the battery. The PV indicator is off which the manual says it means it has no connected solar array. Any ideas?
 
Any ideas?
What battery? Lead acid or ??
Were you chargers, especially the Renogy set to the proper battery type?

Need more info. 13v is pretty good for most chemistries. Some chargers have minimum input voltages to operate properly. What is the Voc listed on back of your panels?
 
What battery? Lead acid or ??
Were you chargers, especially the Renogy set to the proper battery type?

Need more info. 13v is pretty good for most chemistries. Some chargers have minimum input voltages to operate properly. What is the Voc listed on back of your panels?
SLA battery and the Renogy is set to that. The panel voltage is 14.
 
15v is the min stated for both Rovers in the specs.
Even so, don't expect much charge out of a 100w panel on a cloudy day.
 
It's an MPPT and I couldn't find any minimum input voltage. I've got a sunny day coming. I'll swap them back when there is.
 
I found a local guy selling some used SanTan 250Watt PV Panels (SS270P-72) for $100 a pop. Would one of these work with the renogy 20 PMMT charge controller? I believe the panel is 24V but I want to keep the rest of my system at 12V. Your advice has made me believe the 4 25Watt harbor freight panels aren't providing enough juice to charge my battery with the Rover.
 
Or maybe the Mission Solar MSE60A310? Platt electric has them new for $180.
 
I switched back to the Rover today and it found the solar array and was charging the batteries. I was getting up to 16 volts from the panels. Even when its at 13 volts when the clouds roll over it still has a solid PV light on the unit. I think I'll stick it out with these panels for a while until I can find a good deal on a 200-275 watt panel.
 
Keep the original PWM charge controller for this panel. There would be insignificant advantage using a mppt CC at 16v when the mppt V of these panels is 18v.
I think I'll stick it out with these panels for a while until I can find a good deal on a 200-275 watt pane
In Australia 2nd hand panels 180/190w are cheap $0 -$10. There is a big jump in prices after that till they reach the landed wholesale cost of $140 for new cheap 300W panels. Our prices are skewed by government subsidised schemes but the fundamentals should be the same with the USA.
It costs installers to get rid of old panels even if there is only a slight drop in performance so its a win for us looking for cheap watts.

Your Renogy MPPT would be ideal for series/parallel combination of these panels.
 
Keep the original PWM charge controller for this panel. There would be insignificant advantage using a mppt CC at 16v when the mppt V of these panels is 18v.

In Australia 2nd hand panels 180/190w are cheap $0 -$10. There is a big jump in prices after that till they reach the landed wholesale cost of $140 for new cheap 300W panels. Our prices are skewed by government subsidised schemes but the fundamentals should be the same with the USA.
It costs installers to get rid of old panels even if there is only a slight drop in performance so its a win for us looking for cheap watts.

Your Renogy MPPT would be ideal for series/parallel combination of these panels.
Thanks! The main reason I switched to the Rover is because the HF controller does not have over discharge protection. I only has a feature to stop the battery from being charged if it was over discharged. Since I have security lights and lights inside the shed I wanted to make sure I didn't damage the batteries from being overly discharged. So I have hooked up the rover's load to a fuse box and run my lights off of that.
 
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