diy solar

diy solar

My negative experience with my solar charger Epever Tracer10415AN and a warning for using it with Lithium Battery

I do recall in a manual that it said to connect the batteries before connecting solar. I would imagine reverse for a disconnect which is why I assume I did not suffer a similar failure.

Digging through my papers, if i find it ill add
Yes, of course. Pretty much any SCC instructs you to connect battery and power up before connecting PV (and the reverse for depowering).

Powering or depowering with an incorrect sequence certainly has nothing to do with the issue I experienced.

Others have indicated that moving out of charge sequence may be related - as long as in the same Boost Charge Stage, for example, certain new settings are ignored.

I never got my charger past Boost, so if that was the cause of my issue, connecting to a power supply and driving to voltages well past Boost may have done the trick (I did not have the foresight to check that it moved out of Boost into Float, but it should have since I drove voltages higher than Boost).
 
Yes, of course. Pretty much any SCC instructs you to connect battery and power up before connecting PV (and the reverse for depowering).

Powering or depowering with an incorrect sequence certainly has nothing to do with the issue I experienced.

Others have indicated that moving out of charge sequence may be related - as long as in the same Boost Charge Stage, for example, certain new settings are ignored.

I never got my charger past Boost, so if that was the cause of my issue, connecting to a power supply and driving to voltages well past Boost may have done the trick (I did not have the foresight to check that it moved out of Boost into Float, but it should have since I drove voltages higher than Boost).
Referred back to the original post again and yes I see that proper offline procedures were followed.

I am wondering about a start up surge maybe? That is a lot of capacitors to charge, and my system is 25.6v, less than half of the maximum so I would have more headroom for this scenario.
 
Referred back to the original post again and yes I see that proper offline procedures were followed.

I am wondering about a start up surge maybe? That is a lot of capacitors to charge, and my system is 25.6v, less than half of the maximum so I would have more headroom for this scenario.
Just to put this subject to bed.

Fist, on startup surge, I have a precharge resistor connected to a 3-pole high-current switch, so battery is never directly connected to the inverter until precharge close to battery voltage.

More importantly, I contacted Epever support and they told me that the SCC should always be de-energized and re-energized after changing any voltage settings. The precise response I received is below:

Answer: it would be best to re-power the controller if you have change the control parameters.

Note: the below orders must be observed when power off or power on the controller.

-Disconnect order of the controller (power off): 1. PV, 2. battery;

-Reconnect order of the controller (power on) : 1. battery , 2. PV ;
 
I have changed my parameters, except for system voltage, several dozen times and never disconnected sufficient to call it a reboot until I made a wiring change. Making small changes to the charging parameters took instantly upon upload or saving from the MT50 before I started running them in parallel. When I changed them during the solar day the unit would zero out and build back up to the mppt point.
 
I have changed my parameters, except for system voltage, several dozen times and never disconnected sufficient to call it a reboot until I made a wiring change. Making small changes to the charging parameters took instantly upon upload or saving from the MT50 before I started running them in parallel. When I changed them during the solar day the unit would zero out and build back up to the mppt point.
Which model #?

In my case, I could upload new voltage parameters and ‘read’ them back but they had no effect until I cycled power to reboot the SCC (Tracer AN6420).
 
I have changed my parameters, except for system voltage, several dozen times and never disconnected sufficient to call it a reboot until I made a wiring change. Making small changes to the charging parameters took instantly upon upload or saving from the MT50 before I started running them in parallel. When I changed them during the solar day the unit would zero out and build back up to the mppt point.

I believe that's been my experience as well with the Epever units I've tested with. (Tracer1210AN/Tracer3210AN/Tracer4210AN/Tracer8420)
 
I believe that's been my experience as well with the Epever units I've tested with. (Tracer1210AN/Tracer3210AN/Tracer4210AN/Tracer8420)
How often are your chargers moving out of Boost Charge Phase? (mine never has, it’s never come close to fully-charging my battery because I drain it every night, so it wakes up every morning in boost and stays there until the sun goes down…)
 
This was during the summer:

1632963090106.png

How often are your chargers moving out of Boost Charge Phase? (mine never has, it’s never come close to fully-charging my battery because I drain it every night, so it wakes up every morning in boost and stays there until the sun goes down…)

I have relatively small fixed loads on the system (12v Pb chemistry in this case) that graph above is from so there's plenty of sun during the summer to get past the boost phase - though not really an ideal amount of float charging...

What were you hoping to learn from this question though?
 
This was during the summer:

View attachment 66935



I have relatively small fixed loads on the system (12v Pb chemistry in this case) that graph above is from so there's plenty of sun during the summer to get past the boost phase - though not really an ideal amount of float charging...

What were you hoping to learn from this question though?
Oh, there’s another thread from Epever AN owners where he had difficulty getting new settings to have effect and he came to the conclusion that new settings he had downloaded only took effect once his Epever AN-Series exited Boost Mode.

Seems like you completed a Boost Charging Phase every day (and early at that), so unless you ever changed settings early in the day while you were still in boost and verified that the new settings took immediate effect, your experience may not nail the question shut.

My situation is the opposite of yours.

I’ve got a 14kWh battery that I drain to 10% every night and right now I’m only getting 5-6kWh of power from my PV/SCC during the day, so my battery pretty much barely makes it to ~50% SOC on a good day and my SCC never gets out of boost…

Whether it’s a fundamental issue with all AN-Series Epever SCCs or I just managed to trigger a bug that hit me into some stuck state, rebooting as Epever recommended finally solved my issue, so I’ll make a practice of going through that simple depower/repower sequence whenever changing any voltage settings…
 
Oh, there’s another thread from Epever AN owners where he had difficulty getting new settings to have effect and he came to the conclusion that new settings he had downloaded only took effect once his Epever AN-Series exited Boost Mode.

Seems like you completed a Boost Charging Phase every day (and early at that), so unless you ever changed settings early in the day while you were still in boost and verified that the new settings took immediate effect, your experience may not nail the question shut.

My situation is the opposite of yours.

I’ve got a 14kWh battery that I drain to 10% every night and right now I’m only getting 5-6kWh of power from my PV/SCC during the day, so my battery pretty much barely makes it to ~50% SOC on a good day and my SCC never gets out of boost…

Whether it’s a fundamental issue with all AN-Series Epever SCCs or I just managed to trigger a bug that hit me into some stuck state, rebooting as Epever recommended finally solved my issue, so I’ll make a practice of going through that simple depower/repower sequence whenever changing any voltage settings…

Ah I see, interesting...
 
Ah I see, interesting...
I’m actually very impressed with the capability and quality of these budget Epever AN-Series SCCs, but the documentation is absolute crap (as is the software, perhaps a smidge better).

My assessment is solid engineering but lousy product marketing…
 
I’m actually very impressed with the capability and quality of these budget Epever AN-Series SCCs, but the documentation is absolute crap (as is the software, perhaps a smidge better).

My assessment is solid engineering but lousy product marketing…
The PC software is not clever in dealing with the USB connection to the RS-485, on a PC which is coming in and out of sleep, I think. The human interface design is... meh. That said, I've been using it, and getting reasonable results.
 
Well. This, combined with my own experience (involving a different reseller) with a Tracer AN 20A and Tracer AN 40A (both have dead displays, at least, the 40A is running, and the reseller sent me an MT-50, which, BTW, does not play nice on RS-485 with the USB converter and the PC software. The 20A might run- I did not test it thoroughly, I just swapped in the 40A which I had already purchased for another application and set it aside), do not inspire confidence. That said, they work OK, with no more than 400 nominal watts of panels so far. Also they demanded quite a lot of time for climbing the learning curve on configuration.
Which brings up a question that's bugging me- why can't I find replacement display assemblies in a quick internet search? The reseller said he can't give me those. I haven't asked Epever about this. Maybe that should be next.
 
Well. This, combined with my own experience (involving a different reseller) with a Tracer AN 20A and Tracer AN 40A (both have dead displays, at least, the 40A is running, and the reseller sent me an MT-50, which, BTW, does not play nice on RS-485 with the USB converter and the PC software. The 20A might run- I did not test it thoroughly, I just swapped in the 40A which I had already purchased for another application and set it aside), do not inspire confidence. That said, they work OK, with no more than 400 nominal watts of panels so far. Also they demanded quite a lot of time for climbing the learning curve on configuration.
Which brings up a question that's bugging me- why can't I find replacement display assemblies in a quick internet search? The reseller said he can't give me those. I haven't asked Epever about this. Maybe that should be next.
Where did you purchase from?

Epever support is pretty responsive and they clearly have a lot of different product generations with a lot of stale inventory in various ‘bargain’ internet channels.

Especially when wanting support for Lithium batteries (including LiFePO4), it’s best to purchase from whatever channels Epever Support recommends and be sure you get a box with the special new markings related to newest product generation with Lithium support…
 
Oh, there’s another thread from Epever AN owners where he had difficulty getting new settings to have effect and he came to the conclusion that new settings he had downloaded only took effect once his Epever AN-Series exited Boost Mode.

Seems like you completed a Boost Charging Phase every day (and early at that), so unless you ever changed settings early in the day while you were still in boost and verified that the new settings took immediate effect, your experience may not nail the question shut.

My situation is the opposite of yours.

I’ve got a 14kWh battery that I drain to 10% every night and right now I’m only getting 5-6kWh of power from my PV/SCC during the day, so my battery pretty much barely makes it to ~50% SOC on a good day and my SCC never gets out of boost…

Whether it’s a fundamental issue with all AN-Series Epever SCCs or I just managed to trigger a bug that hit me into some stuck state, rebooting as Epever recommended finally solved my issue, so I’ll make a practice of going through that simple depower/repower sequence whenever changing any voltage settings…

I wouldn't be surprised if there's models/settings which do require a power cycle to take effect, but I just tested and confirmed that the boost voltage setting on a Tracer1210AN does take effect almost immediately even in boost mode. Happy to provide a screen capture if you want proof, but what I did is hook up a 24v power supply to the battery connection and my bench power supply to the solar input, then changed the boost voltage setting back and forth between 27v, 27.5v and 28v with my multimeter on the battery terminals of the SCC. In that test the voltage updated both in the SCC's own readings and on my multimeter within about 3 seconds. (No reboot/power-cycle was involved.)
 
I wouldn't be surprised if there's models/settings which do require a power cycle to take effect, but I just tested and confirmed that the boost voltage setting on a Tracer1210AN does take effect almost immediately even in boost mode. Happy to provide a screen capture if you want proof, but what I did is hook up a 24v power supply to the battery connection and my bench power supply to the solar input, then changed the boost voltage setting back and forth between 27v, 27.5v and 28v with my multimeter on the battery terminals of the SCC. In that test the voltage updated both in the SCC's own readings and on my multimeter within about 3 seconds. (No reboot/power-cycle was involved.)
No need for a screen capture, I believe you.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I performed that exact same test with a PSU before installing my AN 6420 (which exacerbated my confusion later when things worked differently).

Testing with a PSU, there is no charge current flowing, so it’s conceivable that actual charging underway is a requirement for this ‘lockout’ mode (if that’s what it actually is).

But in any case, I think the conclusion is that anytime you become concerned new settings may not have taken effect, take a minute to depower/repower (or always, if you want to be safe).
 
Testing with a PSU, there is no charge current flowing, so it’s conceivable that actual charging underway is a requirement for this ‘lockout’ mode (if that’s what it actually is).

Reasonable hypothesis anyway... :unsure:

But in any case, I think the conclusion is that anytime you become concerned new settings may not have taken effect, take a minute to depower/repower (or always, if you want to be safe).

(y)
 
When we buy goods from 12,000 miles away, just buy a new one and stock this one for spare parts. Better yet, buy a midnite classic and then you’ll have someone in the USA to fix it.
 
Where did you purchase from?

Epever support is pretty responsive and they clearly have a lot of different product generations with a lot of stale inventory in various ‘bargain’ internet channels.

Especially when wanting support for Lithium batteries (including LiFePO4), it’s best to purchase from whatever channels Epever Support recommends and be sure you get a box with the special new markings related to newest product generation with Lithium support…
Off the top of my head, I can't remember the name, but it was the cheapest price I saw that looked like an actual reseller for a Tracer AN 20A (and later, 40A). I couldn't figure out the lithium support vs. non-lithium support noise at that time (over a year ago), so I took a shot. They both have blue buttons, and charged lithium iron phosphate batteries well enough, as far as I can measure.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top