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EPEVER 60A charger cycling on/off - won't charge

Jazzmonger

Jazzmonger

Hacker at heart
Joined
Apr 29, 2022
Messages
157
Location
Wilder, Idaho
I suspect I have a low voltage condition. Does anyone know the MINIMUM PV voltages required? I'm loathe to get up on my RV roof and rewire my panels, especially since the wind is blowing at 30-40 mph right now.

The controller cycles from charging to off after about 20 seconds, resets after about a minute and does this continuously. I can see the PV voltage drop to 38v or so when it charges, hence my question about what is the min PV voltage for these units. All 8 of my panels are in parallel (8P), so I'm probably going to have to go 2S4P if this is the problem.

0BD04750-D245-4778-9E6D-2C77203A0592.jpeg

34A63823-094C-4555-9238-89717A6B76B5.jpeg
 
Nope, that's not it. The battery is quite discharged @ 12.22v - I ran the whole coach all night and started from 13.5v last nite. And if I fire up the genset, it charges at 100A continuously without going to float mode. Fully charged, the battery is at 13.7v.

So... the SCC should remain ON until the battery is charged.

And yes, I get 30a for about 3 seconds and then it all shuts down and the cycle repeats after a minute or two.

EDIT: I should add that I've replaced the EPEVER unit and the last one did the same thing, but after a few months it completely stopped working, even the display died, so I just replaced it.
 
Last edited:
Looks like you have an undersized self-resetting breaker between the charge controller and battery.
 
Checkthisout said:
Looks like you have an undersized self-resetting breaker between the charge controller and battery.
Click to expand...
Breaker is 60A manual. It’s never tripped by itself but I can (and have) tripped and reset it no problem.

I measure only ~12v idle or ~14 when it’s charging at the terminals of the SCC w my Fluke.

Ill try the min/max setting on my Fluke and capture that at our next stop.
 
Jazzmonger said:
Breaker is 60A manual. It’s never tripped by itself but I can (and have) tripped and reset it no problem.

I measure only ~12v idle or ~14 when it’s charging at the terminals of the SCC w my Fluke.

Ill try the min/max setting on my Fluke and capture that at our next stop.
Click to expand...

Bypass it and re-test.

Just detach the wire from one stud and attach both wires to the same stud. Takes 5 minutes

Also, check the voltage at the charge controller while it's cycling. EPever isn't top shelf but they aren't known for frequent failures or unreliability. Going to guess you have nothing more than a bad connection.

The charger. will stay charging so long as array voltage is about 1.5 volts above battery voltage.

Also, I noticed your max charging voltage is 19 volts in your screen shot there. Any chance you accidentally set the Epever for a 24 volt battery?
 
Last edited:
Discounting a controller issue, it seems there is some kind of intermittent connection between the controller and battery. Check everything especially the negative path.

Mike
 
To me it looks like you set the charge controller for 24 volts for a 12 volt system or you have something connected improperly.

You charging voltage hit 19.45 volts on a 12 volt system.

Or do you have a 24 volt system?
 
This brand new dual 8D flooded Battery bank is fine. ANY discharged battery will immediately jump to the ~charging voltage and then settle back down to very slightly higher than the previous voltage if you connect a charger to it for 20 seconds and then disconnect it, which is what this SCC is doing. Besides, it also works perfectly normally with my inverter, generator and alternator like it has for the past 24 years on this coach.

I'll have to wait until I drain off some capacity to test further. The alternator fully charged the batteries in my last trip leg. interestingly, the SCC is now sitting at a very constant charge rate right now and has for the past 15 min or so.
46A37952-36E6-4C58-8BA2-AB3E4A1BBF31.jpeg

It's only when the SCC charge rate is over 6-10A or so that I see problems. Regardless, I'm grabbing my Fluke and will set up min/max data capture.
 
Jazzmonger said:
This brand new dual 8D flooded Battery bank is fine. ANY discharged battery will immediately jump to the ~charging voltage and then settle back down to very slightly higher than the previous voltage if you connect a charger to it for 20 seconds and then disconnect it, which is what this SCC is doing. Besides, it also works perfectly normally with my inverter, generator and alternator like it has for the past 24 years on this coach.

I'll have to wait until I drain off some capacity to test further. The alternator fully charged the batteries in my last trip leg. interestingly, the SCC is now sitting at a very constant charge rate right now and has for the past 15 min or so.
View attachment 147569

It's only when the SCC charge rate is over 6-10A or so that I see problems. Regardless, I'm grabbing my Fluke and will set up min/max data capture.
Click to expand...

No comment regarding the 19.5 volts in your screen capture?
 
So I did measure 0.5v +/- .2v across the DC breaker. And its contacts feel way warmer than they should at it's 80A rating. It probably is worthwhile to use an industrial breaker here. I got this one from the vendor who sold me the SCC, but clearly it's not up to the task. I'll bypass it when the system starts misbehaving again and see if that's the culprit.

30258506-9702-420D-806D-F68C2F461EB9.jpeg

The Fluke did not capture any significant voltage anomalies when measuring the DC battery input to the SCC, even though the SCC is constantly reporting them. I've been designing advanced measurement circuitry my entire career and as a result, I have never trusted ultra cheap Chinese measuring circuits inside devices like this, which is why I always rely on high quality test instruments.

Right now the system is behaving itself at about 14A constant charge rate.

1D3ED72A-9F43-4B56-82D0-70A56782D4D3.jpeg
I'll pick this up tomorrow when the battery is more discharged and see if I can replicate the problems I had this AM.
 
Jazzmonger said:
This brand new dual 8D flooded Battery bank is fine. ANY discharged battery will immediately jump to the ~charging voltage and then settle back down to very slightly higher than the previous voltage if you connect a charger to it for 20 seconds and then disconnect it, which is what this SCC is doing. Besides, it also works perfectly normally with my inverter, generator and alternator like it has for the past 24 years on this coach.



...
Click to expand...
Sorry I bothered. You need no help.
 
Jazzmonger said:
So I did measure 0.5v +/- .2v across the DC breaker. And its contacts feel way warmer than they should at it's 80A rating. It probably is worthwhile to use an industrial breaker here. I got this one from the vendor who sold me the SCC, but clearly it's not up to the task. I'll bypass it when the system starts misbehaving again and see if that's the culprit.

View attachment 147586

The Fluke did not capture any significant voltage anomalies when measuring the DC battery input to the SCC, even though the SCC is constantly reporting them. I've been designing advanced measurement circuitry my entire career and as a result, I have never trusted ultra cheap Chinese measuring circuits inside devices like this, which is why I always rely on high quality test instruments.

Right now the system is behaving itself at about 14A constant charge rate.

View attachment 147583
I'll pick this up tomorrow when the battery is more discharged and see if I can replicate the problems I had this AM.
Click to expand...

Like I said, Epever CC's are not known to be glitches, inaccurate or unreliable.

I am going to guess you have a simple wiring issue or some other oddball thing going on.

Your last Epever was probably damaged as a result of losing/reconnecting to battery power constantly. That 19.5 volts it measured can happen when the battery is disconnected suddenly from the charge controller.

Those breakers are known failure points because they are junk. Change it out for a fuse.
 
Well, did you remove the breaker so your scc is just connected directly to the batteries and re-test?
 
I found those inline circuit breakers to cause problems. The first time I built my system I use them thinking they would do the job of a switch and a fuse.

However I ran into a problem if I started drawing around 60 amps (12v 800 watts). After about 10 minutes the inverter would shut down.

I suspected something was getting hot somewhere and creating resistance and a voltage drop.

At first I changed to a bus bar distribution system instead of bolting everything to the battery terminals directly. But the same problem still persisted.

I then replaced the inline circuit breaker that was between the battery and inverter.

Rplaced it with a proper 300 amp rated switch and ANM fuse holders and fuses. Now I can pull 200 amps off my system for half an hour no problems whatsoever.

So I think the problem was the inline circuit breaker and how the cable is only held in by a grub screw rather than a proper eye lug with an hydraulic crimp and bolted in place. The circuit breaker must have been overheating at a certain spot and creating high resistance that the inverter was seeing as a voltage drop and then shutting down.

At least now the whole system is a lot more bulletproof and I haven't had any problems since.
 
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