Epever 3210AN power off during night

[solar_fun]

Hi,
I have installed on my motorhome a solar panel of 100W, an Epever 3210AN controller and an AGM battery and I do have some questions:

1. The battery type can be Gel selected ? as Gel is a better variant of AGM, previous selection was Sel

2. once after the sunset comes the controller receives (of course) no power and display turns off without having the possibility to turn on if you press either of the 2 buttons. Should it not switch to battery once it does not receive current from the PV ? I have tested both with Load and without it.

3. Battery voltage shows different from the controller and from a multimeter. Is that normal ? or that voltage is the maximum that needs to reach, because the controller somehow it charges the battery without showing any amps from the PV !

Overall my MPPT is it broken or not ? I'm glad that is still charging my battery but don't know in which way of if it is protected somehow.

 

[mikefitz]

The battery type

Usually AGM needs a higher charge voltage than GEL , default for the 3210 on the GEL setting is 14.2 boost volts. Either change to USER and set a 14.6 boost volts or change back to sealed settings.

tested both with Load and without it.

Check load output is switched on, manual page 19,20.

Battery voltage shows different from the controller and from a multimeter

Possible faulty interconnection between battery and controller and/or solar input to controller, check terminals. Verify meter is working with a known voltage.
The videos suggest a faulty interconnection. It may be internal in the controller, but most probable in the wiring and terminations external to the controller.

 

[0truck0]

Agree with the above.
The controller runs off of battery power and should not turn off if solar is not present. Solar is not present every day, so there is no logic for it to turn off either.
Agree, use "USER" and program in your own charging profile.

 

[Boomerweps]

My 3210 is powered by the battery and as long as the battery is connected, the display works. Once the battery bank is fully charged, I can read the voltage only of the solar panels, no amps shown because no power is drawn from the panels for charging. Initially it was confusing to me, too. Unless the controller determines power is needed for charging, it stops power flow measured in amps. I rarely look at the actual controller, I do most of my interaction vis the MT50 remote display.

 

[0truck0]

Think of controller as a sink faucet. When your bucket is empty you fill at full faucet flow, when near full you adjust to slow faucet speed until it is full and then you turn off your faucet. lf your bucket has a very small hole in it then you might have the faucet flow or drip at a very slow rate to compensate (float) n keep it full. You always have parasitic losses bc controller will itself take some power, but so minimal.

 

[solar_fun]

Hi, thanks all for the responses, after some research and thanks to the Epever support, I have discovered that the reason the controller did not enter in the night mode, i.e. it was power off during the night, were 2 fuses inside the controller that needed to be replaced. There is also a youtube video of someone who did more than that, replacing the fuses and some mosfets, hope I will not get so far with it. Now it remains to mounted back in the car to see if it really works and charge the battery, because also showing a wrong voltage is a sign something is damage. Don't know why the controller continued to show a higher voltage of the battery if something is broken in it. Everything showed to look normal but it was not. They could do some improvements on this side or some checks in the firmware. Right now I don't have an MT50 control panel to check the real voltage, maybe in the future I will have one, but still they should come up with an upgrade to the firmware.