New system lasting less than an hour.

[Crowz]

Turn it off anytime you’re not using the monitor or TV. That will be an easy place to start to reduce your battery usage. That Renogy inverter is too big for your needs and thus uses a lot of battery simply to be powered on. I sold mine and got a smaller Victron instead, which dramatically slashed my battery usage, using the ECO mode.



Sometimes you can get away with using a normal charger to charge lifepo4, but it’s not ideal. I would recommend getting two of these. You can hook up one to each battery to get a total of 60A of charging, which will take 9 hours to go from 0% to 100% for your entire battery bank.

Sorry for the USA link but it gives you an idea:

BPC123047102 Blue Smart IP22 Charger 12/30(1) 120V NEMA 5-15 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for BPC123047102 Blue Smart IP22 Charger 12/30(1) 120V NEMA 5-15 at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

The single output model seems hard to find at the moment. Maybe it’s easier in the UK. InvertersRus.com sometimes has used/open box models fora good price but they’d be the North American version. Maybe there’s a good Victron dealer in the UK.

There are cheaper chargers out there but the Victron would be the last you’d buy. Fully programmable and easy to use. I love mine.

Thats the charger I linked earlier and the link is for amazon. Easy to get in UK via amazon.

 

[Tomthumb62]

I have a victron battery charger that is powered by the grid that kicks in if the charge gets below 26% and charges them back fully.

What are your settings to achieve that it won’t charge until at 26% SoC? Though I don’t have 24/7 grid power in my mobile situation so not sure it matters much.

Thats the charger I linked earlier and the link is for amazon.

Ah! I missed that earlier. Such a great charger.

 

[Supervstech]

How much solar can you add to your system?

 

[Crowz]

What are your settings to achieve that it won’t charge until at 26% SoC? Though I don’t have 24/7 grid power in my mobile situation so not sure it matters much.


Ah! I missed that earlier. Such a great charger.

This is the thread where I went thru figuring out how to program it to do what I wanted. Slick charger.

Need some help programming the victron ip22 charger

I have my 12v ip22 20 amp charger installed and its working great. I want to program it to full charge the battery bank and then quit charging till the battery bank reaches 13 volts and then charge it back full again and repeat forever :) This way if I have cloudy days it will charge the...

diysolarforum.com

 

[Beavo]

How much solar can you add to your system?

I could maybe have 40-50 on my garage roof.
I know they're not angled correctly as I don't want to drill through the fibreglass roof.

 

[JWLV]

You never mentioned how many volts the batteries have right when the sun goes down. Presumably that's when your batteries should be fully charged. A fully charged 12V LiFePo should be close to 13.5V. I'm guessing that your batteries have not been fully charged each day. It just gets lower and lower.

 

[bolowo]

In summary you do not have enough PV array to fully charge your batteries.

I have 4 160W panels connected in 2series per victron 75/15 mppt CC to charge my DIY 24V 160AH battery as shown in the attachments.
Despite the panels being rated at 160wp, I literally get slightly above 100w max on a good shiny day.
Given the inefficiencies and power loss in cables, fuses and devices, the power to the battery is greatly reduced.

It takes me about 3 full sunny days to charge my 4KWH DIY battery from 10% to Full.
So I plan to double or triple my solar array.

 

[Beavo]

You never mentioned how many volts the batteries have right when the sun goes down. Presumably that's when your batteries should be fully charged. A fully charged 12V LiFePo should be close to 13.5V. I'm guessing that your batteries have not been fully charged each day. It just gets lower and lower.

I was thinking last night that I should have mentioned that.
During the day they have been generally staying at around 13.1v - 13.4v.
(That's with the TV and monitor running.
)
I assumed that anything over 12.8v and under 14v would be fine when the sun went down.

Within an hour of the sun going down it's dropping down so much that I feel I have to turn the system off.
If I don't, it'll turn itself off anyway.

In fact the inverter shuts down at 10v(ish) even if I do switch all the loads off.

Thanks for reply.
Cheers

 

[Beavo]

In summary you do not have enough PV array to fully charge your batteries.

Thank you for that reply.

It's clear that I'm going to need more panels but I'm wondering if it's worth it just to run a TV and a few other small items.

Shame I can't just plug the panels into my roof set up and get the feed in tariff from it.

Cheers

 

[bolowo]

Thank you for that reply.

It's clear that I'm going to need more panels but I'm wondering if it's worth it just to run a TV and a few other small items.

Shame I can't just plug the panels into my roof set up and get the feed in tariff from it.

Cheers

I imagine if you managed to buy those two giant LIfePo4 batteries then I guess you can just add a few more panels, even for the long life span of the batteries its worth keeping them above 50% charged. Even for worst days with no sunshine your TV and lights will remain on for a few mores days.
With solar, redundancy is paramount!

 

[littleharbor2]

Couple things,
Flat oriented panels at this time of year are really struggling to put out power. If they can be tilted you would see a noticeable difference,
Second, What is the reason you have a second charge controller connected to the load terminals of the larger controller?

 

[Beavo]

I imagine if you managed to buy those two giant LIfePo4 batteries then I guess you can just add a few more panels, even for the long life span of the batteries its worth keeping them above 50% charged. Even for worst days with no sunshine your TV and lights will remain on for a few mores days.
With solar, redundancy is paramount!

I'll get some more panels. I think I'll just gradually update everything to Victron gear first.

 

[Beavo]

Couple things,
Flat oriented panels at this time of year are really struggling to put out power. If they can be tilted you would see a noticeable difference,
Second, What is the reason you have a second charge controller connected to the load terminals of the larger controller?

Yes I know the positioning isn't ideal but I'm struggling to find a frame that I haven't got to screw into the fibre glass roof of my garage.
Although saying that, it always charged my 6x130ah deep cycle lead acid bank very well all year round.

The second charge controller just feeds off the epever charge controller. I like it because it has a few usb and 12v outputs.
Just makes it easier to charge usb things that I use.
Thanks for reply.
Cheers

 

[JWLV]

I was thinking last night that I should have mentioned that.
During the day they have been generally staying at around 13.1v - 13.4v.
(That's with the TV and monitor running.
)
I assumed that anything over 12.8v and under 14v would be fine when the sun went down.

Within an hour of the sun going down it's dropping down so much that I feel I have to turn the system off.
If I don't, it'll turn itself off anyway.

In fact the inverter shuts down at 10v(ish) even if I do switch all the loads off.

Thanks for reply.
Cheers

The voltage reading while the sun is out is going to be misleading. It'll be higher than what the battery actually is because in order to charge a battery the charging voltage has to be higher than what the battery voltage is. What you are measuring when the sun is out is what the charging voltage is, not what the battery is.

Ideally you want to disconnect everything and measure the battery voltage without anything attached. But that's a pain to do. Without disconnecting everything, the best time to measure battery voltage is right after the sun goes down. This is when you'll get the best guesstimate of what your battery's state of charge is.

 

[Beavo]

The voltage reading while the sun is out is going to be misleading. It'll be higher than what the battery actually is because in order to charge a battery the charging voltage has to be higher than what the battery voltage is. What you are measuring when the sun is out is what the charging voltage is, not what the battery is.

Ideally you want to disconnect everything and measure the battery voltage without anything attached. But that's a pain to do. Without disconnecting everything, the best time to measure battery voltage is right after the sun goes down. This is when you'll get the best guesstimate of what your battery's state of charge is.

Thank you for that.
Things are beginning to make a bit more sense now.
Wish I found this forum years ago.
Cheers

 

[740GLE]

What are the charging settings of the SCC?

Hopefully they never go to float with battery voltages that low but that could also lead to more issues.

Does that Rover report daily KWHr production?

 

[Beavo]

What are the charging settings of the SCC?

Hopefully they never go to float with battery voltages that low but that could also lead to more issues.

Does that Rover report daily KWHr production?

Thanks for reply.

1. I've never touched any of the settings so it's how it came out of the box.
There's no mention of lithium batteries in the instructions though.

2. I'm not sure how I'd tell what mode it's in.
The icons on the screen never seen to change much, other than showing it charging it not.

3. Rover? I assume you mean Epever.
I can plug a laptop into it and it shows more information. I've only ever done that once though and was too terrified to change anything.

Cheers

 

[Beavo]

I have a victron battery charger that is powered by the grid that kicks in if the charge gets below 26% and charges them back fully. This is probably the ideal solution till you get your solar setup sized right if you have access to the grid.

I'm going to order one of these this week but just wanted to clarify that I can connect this to my two 280ah Lifepo4 that I have in parallel.

Or do I need to charge each battery individually?

Would be nice if I could just connect this up and forget about it.

Edit* This one:


Cheers

 

[Tomthumb62]

I'm going to order one of these this week but just wanted to clarify that I can connect this to my two 280ah Lifepo4 that I have in parallel.

Or do I need to charge each battery individually?

Would be nice if I could just connect this up and forget about it.

Edit* This one:
View attachment 192215

Cheers

One of these will take 18 hours to charge your 2x280Ah battery bank from 0% to 100%. But it’s better than what you have now, which is too little charging.

Yes, you can just hook it up to your bank. Positive wire to positive on battery one. Negative wire to negative on battery two.

You also will need some wire. 4mm^2 at a minimum, but thicker is better. Iirc, I used 8mm^2 for mine. You also need ring terminals that match your battery and the wire. The charger comes only with the cord to plug into an AC outlet.

Before then, you can download the Victron Connect app to your phone. It has a demo mode where you can see and adjust all the settings. If you want just plug and play, just pick the Lifepo4 preset, it will do fine to start with.

When you get the charger and hook it to your battery and plug it in to the outlet, you’ll then see it as an actual device when you open Victron Connect.

 

[Crowz]

You can run multiple chargers too if you need more power than what it puts out.