WorldwideDave
Solar Addict
I’ve been having a lot of fun testing my system out over the last few months. I am learning a lot. Last night was a very different lesson learned however…
At about 1 AM my phone started buzzing at me. The Victron VRM notifier alert was telling me that my system was off-line. It was raining and windy yesterday, so I assumed it was because my Internet went out and I would just deal with it in the morning.
Within I remembered recently I had wires melt, and I felt it would be a good idea to investigate what might’ve caused this. I have security cameras that I pointed over at my solar panels and I could see that all the arrays were intact and there was no issue there.
I then tried to zoom in on my battery box and solar charge controllers, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary over there either. I then looked at my cameras histories to see if they had seen any emotion or perhaps a fire or something take place. Nothing. Remembering that it is in the middle of the night when I am normally asleep, and then remembered hey wait a minute… I have VRM. And it keeps track of my history.
When I opened it by default, it shows the today view, and all I could see was the state of charge Heading rapidly down to zero but there was no logged history today of consumption and because it’s in the middle of the night no Solar either. I thought that was a strange report. So then I went and looked at yesterday‘s report. What I noticed, is that the battery was at 100% state of charge up until 11 PM when all of a sudden a load came on and immediately began discharging everything 100%.
Well, I only have one load connected. My pool pump.
In all the testing that I did yesterday with trying to discharge the battery and charge the battery as quickly as I can to test my new BMS and conductors and lugs, I neglected to do one thing… When I turned my inverter back on last night for going to bed, I forgot to set the clock on my variable speed pool pump. The pump is supposed to turn on at 11 AM, but instead turned on at 11 PM. In about an hour and 15 minutes running it about 162 A the battery was dead.
I believe what happened is the inverter saw the incoming voltage at 11 V, and out of protection, turned off the load. Well, given the chemistry of these batteries, the voltage went back up naturally, even without sunshine. The inverter kick back on. The load came back on, and the inverter shut off a few seconds later. Apparently it did this so many times that I’m guessing that the battery itself went into a low-voltage protection state. That turned off the discharge circuit. About 10 hours later once the sun came up, there was enough voltage or charge going to the battery that I guess it decided to wake up. The inverter remained turned off, but the battery started charging. I went outside to inspect and everything was fine. I verified the clock was not set correctly.
I really wish there was a way that the variable speed pump would remember what time it is even after power is cut off to it. Like a battery or something.
So if you have a load that has a timer built into it, like a variable speed pool pump, add it to your checklist of things to do when you turn back on your inverter.
At about 1 AM my phone started buzzing at me. The Victron VRM notifier alert was telling me that my system was off-line. It was raining and windy yesterday, so I assumed it was because my Internet went out and I would just deal with it in the morning.
Within I remembered recently I had wires melt, and I felt it would be a good idea to investigate what might’ve caused this. I have security cameras that I pointed over at my solar panels and I could see that all the arrays were intact and there was no issue there.
I then tried to zoom in on my battery box and solar charge controllers, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary over there either. I then looked at my cameras histories to see if they had seen any emotion or perhaps a fire or something take place. Nothing. Remembering that it is in the middle of the night when I am normally asleep, and then remembered hey wait a minute… I have VRM. And it keeps track of my history.
When I opened it by default, it shows the today view, and all I could see was the state of charge Heading rapidly down to zero but there was no logged history today of consumption and because it’s in the middle of the night no Solar either. I thought that was a strange report. So then I went and looked at yesterday‘s report. What I noticed, is that the battery was at 100% state of charge up until 11 PM when all of a sudden a load came on and immediately began discharging everything 100%.
Well, I only have one load connected. My pool pump.
In all the testing that I did yesterday with trying to discharge the battery and charge the battery as quickly as I can to test my new BMS and conductors and lugs, I neglected to do one thing… When I turned my inverter back on last night for going to bed, I forgot to set the clock on my variable speed pool pump. The pump is supposed to turn on at 11 AM, but instead turned on at 11 PM. In about an hour and 15 minutes running it about 162 A the battery was dead.
I believe what happened is the inverter saw the incoming voltage at 11 V, and out of protection, turned off the load. Well, given the chemistry of these batteries, the voltage went back up naturally, even without sunshine. The inverter kick back on. The load came back on, and the inverter shut off a few seconds later. Apparently it did this so many times that I’m guessing that the battery itself went into a low-voltage protection state. That turned off the discharge circuit. About 10 hours later once the sun came up, there was enough voltage or charge going to the battery that I guess it decided to wake up. The inverter remained turned off, but the battery started charging. I went outside to inspect and everything was fine. I verified the clock was not set correctly.
I really wish there was a way that the variable speed pump would remember what time it is even after power is cut off to it. Like a battery or something.
So if you have a load that has a timer built into it, like a variable speed pool pump, add it to your checklist of things to do when you turn back on your inverter.
