Archerite
New Member
Just starting with solar and I got a tiny setup with 2 x 10 watt panels and a single 7.2Ah 12v SLA. Since I did not have any black/red wires that I felt were safe enough with the currents of solar stuff I used a speaker wire that has a single red line on one of it's conductors. The rest is transparent gold like in color and aside from the thin red line both wires look very similar. I know this was dumb to begin with.....
While connecting the battery to the Victron MPPT I connected the positive and negative the same as the PV input....and that turned out to be wrong! I was expecting a spark since that is what I learned from my research but touching the contact of the battery connecting sparked twice so hard it actually vaporized a piece of it!!! Scared to heck out of me and I was shaking offcourse! Looked at the wires to the battery...(don't ask about the connection there)...and then the markings on the MPPT! They were in reverse!!!!
Needless to say there was no sign of life after this incident but nothing burned down either. Then I looked at the fuse in the MPPT and with some effort took it out...and it had blown! I replaced it with a same value from my also new fuse box and....it still worked! I was sooo scared I had just blown away a 130 euro charge controller!! But the fuse blew and saved the day!
A big applause to Victron for making their controller idiot proof and protect it against stupid! I still think I got lucky with the fuse blowing and the piece of the terminal that is missing did not end up in my eye or something! Remember to Tripple check EVERY connection and use the correct wire colors...even if I still need to do it myself. ?
While connecting the battery to the Victron MPPT I connected the positive and negative the same as the PV input....and that turned out to be wrong! I was expecting a spark since that is what I learned from my research but touching the contact of the battery connecting sparked twice so hard it actually vaporized a piece of it!!! Scared to heck out of me and I was shaking offcourse! Looked at the wires to the battery...(don't ask about the connection there)...and then the markings on the MPPT! They were in reverse!!!!
Needless to say there was no sign of life after this incident but nothing burned down either. Then I looked at the fuse in the MPPT and with some effort took it out...and it had blown! I replaced it with a same value from my also new fuse box and....it still worked! I was sooo scared I had just blown away a 130 euro charge controller!! But the fuse blew and saved the day!
A big applause to Victron for making their controller idiot proof and protect it against stupid! I still think I got lucky with the fuse blowing and the piece of the terminal that is missing did not end up in my eye or something! Remember to Tripple check EVERY connection and use the correct wire colors...even if I still need to do it myself. ?