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Renogy DC DC Charger w/ MPPT

This would be perfect for me as well if it supported shore power.

I would think you could use an inverter like this that has automatic transfer to shore power and built in battery charging. You could connect the inverter's battery charger to a relay that switched it with the alternator input to the Renogy.

Any thoughts on this config?
I see that it's been a while since anyone has commented on this. This would also be ideal for my application for my little westfalia.
 
Anyone seeing their charger stuck in “current limiting” mode as displayed on the DC Home app? I have a DCC50S hooked up to an 100aH Renogy LFP and for some reason it is stuck charging at ~60W/~4aH no matter if I use the 150W solar panels or alternator. I managed to charge up to 10aH with my solar and used to display MPPT / Boost on the status, it looks like it’s stuck into some sort of protection mode. I have tried to discharge the battery down to 80% SoC but it still does the same.
I have tried fiddling with voltages/max charge currents via DC home settings, unplugged to “reset” it, but to no luck.
Any clues? I appreciate the help.
Replying to myself here...
So after a bit more testing what I found out is that just unplugging the DCC50S from the house battery wasn't enough to fully reset-it (some capacitors inside I reckon) so I plugged my multimeter on the battery power terminals and watched the voltage drop til < 1 volt, that seems to have fully cleared any internal state.
Just plugged everything back up and it started working normally.
Interestingly enough when plugged into my car I got up to 781w of charging power, alternator amps shoot up to 59.28A while charing down to the battery was still current-limited to the max ~50A as configured, so pretty happy with that.

Also was can confirm that once the House battery was fully charged up it diverted Solar power to the Starter battery, as I only have a temporary Solar panel setup I wasn't able to test both Solar + Alternator but I trust it would work as already tested by others here.

One behaviour that remains odd is that it looks like one cannot change the Max Charging Current via the DC Home app while the charger is "working" I was not able to make it tune down the charging current, I was trying to do that primarily to reduce the amount of heat generated at the DCC50S unit itself (seemed to remain stable at 50C on my tests, boot of the car with A/C running in the cabin).

DC Home/stats seems a bit finicky but I reckon that is due to interferences on the RS485 transmission cables make it unreliable, I have noticed that the app fails more often become worse when there is DC charging current running past the cables which are in close proximity. (closing and re-opening it always gets a fresh set of stats, otherwise it updates every 60s or so).

Overall quite happy with the whole setup given the price point of the whole package (DCC50S, BT-2, Hub, LFP100S).
 

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Hello everyone. I have a USER profile setup with a temperature compensation of 3C. I woke up to find my battery was taking a charge at -13C from the solar panels at about 0.4A Why is the Renogy allowing a charge? I am pretty miffed about this because I want to protect my batteries and charging them below 0C is terrible for them.
 
Hello everyone. I have a USER profile setup with a temperature compensation of 3C. I woke up to find my battery was taking a charge at -13C from the solar panels at about 0.4A Why is the Renogy allowing a charge? I am pretty miffed about this because I want to protect my batteries and charging them below 0C is terrible for them.

I don't think charge controllers (at least for the most part) have a low-temperature cutoff. They do commonly adjust charge voltage for temperature, supporting lead-acid profiles.

"I have a USER profile setup with a temperature compensation of 3C"
What is the exact definition of "temperature compensation" in the context of this Renogy charge controller? (I think this means voltage vs. temperature).

If you have a lithium battery, BMS should provide low temperature disconnect, but I think I read only some actually do this.
 
Anyone seeing their charger stuck in “current limiting” mode as displayed on the DC Home app? I have a DCC50S hooked up to an 100aH Renogy LFP and for some reason it is stuck charging at ~60W/~4aH no matter if I use the 150W solar panels or alternator. I managed to charge up to 10aH with my solar and used to display MPPT / Boost on the status, it looks like it’s stuck into some sort of protection mode. I have tried to discharge the battery down to 80% SoC but it still does the same.
I have tried fiddling with voltages/max charge currents via DC home settings, unplugged to “reset” it, but to no luck.
Any clues? I appreciate the help.
DC Home app ? I guess I don't know what that is. I have a BT-2 device I use to try and set the DCC50S up to my likening. I was never satisfied with my effort or the Renogy DCC50S/BT-2 equipment. Abandoned the effort.
 
I don't think charge controllers (at least for the most part) have a low-temperature cutoff. They do commonly adjust charge voltage for temperature, supporting lead-acid profiles.

"I have a USER profile setup with a temperature compensation of 3C"
What is the exact definition of "temperature compensation" in the context of this Renogy charge controller? (I think this means voltage vs. temperature).

If you have a lithium battery, BMS should provide low temperature disconnect, but I think I read only some actually do this.
Yeah, I think USER profile might confuse things as we don't know (at from reading the manual) how that behaves on low temperatures.

From the manual page 14:
1612485335778.png

Another thing to check/try is whether you have the BTS (battery temp sampling sensor) plugged in or not? I've seen that if you don't connect anything it just gets a default/fixed battery temperature of 25Celsius so the charger wouldn't be able to tell whether it's safe to charge or not without that so it might be "thinking" the batteries are warm (probably a stupid design/default value decision if you ask me).

Again as mentioned by Hedges, if you have a BMS on the battery itself those should be cutting off charging current to protect based on the battery internal temperatures.
 
All:

...a reply from Renogy as it regards my questions on the "User" voltage settings on the "Renogy BT" app.

The "long short:" 'Oh, we don't support that app anymore. Use the DC-home app instead, which doesn't have those voltage settings.'


Thank you for contacting Renogy. Our sincerest apologies for the delayed response.

The BT app was recently discontinued. Hence, we recommend downloading the Renogy DC-home app instead.

Here's an online manual for the Renogy DC-home app: https://www.renogy.com/content/DC-Home/DC-Home-Manual.pdf

On the other hand, we have the DCDC50S and DCDC30S manual here: https://www.renogy.com/content/RBC3050D1S-G1/RBC3050D1S-Manual.pdf

Hope this helps. In the meantime, should there be further questions, please don't hesitate to let us know and we'll do our best to help.

Have a good day!
 
Anyone seeing their charger stuck in “current limiting” mode as displayed on the DC Home app? I have a DCC50S hooked up to an 100aH Renogy LFP and for some reason it is stuck charging at ~60W/~4aH no matter if I use the 150W solar panels or alternator. I managed to charge up to 10aH with my solar and used to display MPPT / Boost on the status, it looks like it’s stuck into some sort of protection mode. I have tried to discharge the battery down to 80% SoC but it still does the same.
I have tried fiddling with voltages/max charge currents via DC home settings, unplugged to “reset” it, but to no luck.
Any clues? I appreciate the help.


Do you have the BTS connected ?
I though that was ignored when you set the battery type to Lithium but if not then it may limit it.

I've seen it in "current limiting" and "Controller Termperature too high" modes with just alternator charging (solar not connected at the time). Recovered once the initial boost had finished.

Nothing connected to the BVS - Battery Voltage Sensor terminals as I don't have a smart alternator
Nothing connected to the BTS - Battery Temperature Sensor terminals of the controller as I have Lithium batteries batteries.
Battery type set to Lithium (2 x 100Ah Renogy Smart Lithium in parallel)

As you can see in the screenshots the house battery temperature is listed at a static at 25 °C when nothing is attached to the terminals.
The controller temperature goes a bit bonkers when out of range !

Screenshot_20201219-180754_DC Home.jpg

Screenshot_20201219-175837_DC Home.jpg
 
I don't think charge controllers (at least for the most part) have a low-temperature cutoff. They do commonly adjust charge voltage for temperature, supporting lead-acid profiles.

Maybe cheap controllers don't have low temperature cutoff. My Victron 100/50 does have low temp cutoff. In fact, it has it built into the controller (the temperature sensor). But if either the Victron Battery Sense or the Victron BMV-712 is used, the solar charge controller will pick up the temperature at the battery, not at the controller.
 
Do you have the BTS connected ?
I though that was ignored when you set the battery type to Lithium but if not then it may limit it.

I've seen it in "current limiting" and "Controller Termperature too high" modes with just alternator charging (solar not connected at the time). Recovered once the initial boost had finished.

Nothing connected to the BVS - Battery Voltage Sensor terminals as I don't have a smart alternator
Nothing connected to the BTS - Battery Temperature Sensor terminals of the controller as I have Lithium batteries batteries.
Battery type set to Lithium (2 x 100Ah Renogy Smart Lithium in parallel)

As you can see in the screenshots the house battery temperature is listed at a static at 25 °C when nothing is attached to the terminals.
The controller temperature goes a bit bonkers when out of range !

View attachment 36039

View attachment 36038

yeah I actually have the BTS connected but as I said in my follow up comment after the “hard” reset it has been working fine so I think what happened was that I was playing with the current limits settings and I had at some point set it to 10A and it setting it again seems a bit flaky via the DC Home app so even though it thought it was set back to 50A it was stuck to the old setting somehow.

As I I’m in Australia I’m not too concerned about low temperatures but I’m about high temps.

I’ve also got the “Controller High Temperature” warning on the DC Home app but it seems to stabilise at 50C and resets after charger ramps down the Charging current. (Seems a bit too sensitive?!)

So now I have battery type set to Lithium and Boost Voltage set to 14.2 as I’ve got some Cell over voltage warning from the LFP100 BMS when it was set to 14.4.

BVS wise I’ve a smart alternator so I have that connected, but I’ve also used with it disconnected the side effect I noticed is that charging will stop once the smart alternator fully chargers the Starter battery (as expected as the voltage drops below the thresholds for the non-smart alternator installation) but will restart once the smart alternator kicks back in and raises the voltage above the threshold.
 
"DC Home" app is this one: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/renogy-dc-home/id1495327014

The screenshot I attached on my reply is from that app.

Works fine for my requirements.
Does the DC Home app allow selection of LiFePO4 battery setting or USER battery settings ?
I got the app to run, blue tooth sync (after reboot of the DCC50S), and I see that it is set on USER battery setting, with the parameters I previously put in using the BT2 and Renogy BT app. Have not been able to change any battery settings.
 
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One behaviour that remains odd is that it looks like one cannot change the Max Charging Current via the DC Home app while the charger is "working" I was not able to make it tune down the charging current, I was trying to do that primarily to reduce the amount of heat generated at the DCC50S unit itself (seemed to remain stable at 50C on my tests, boot of the car with A/C running in the cabin).
How much adjustability is available for the "Max Charging Current" setting? I didn't realize this model had that feature and don't see it mentioned in the manual.
 
Does the DC Home app allow selection of LiFePO4 battery setting or USER battery settings ?
I got the app to run, blue tooth sync (after reboot of the DCC50S), and I see that it is set on USER battery setting, with the parameters I previously put in using the BT2 and Renogy BT app. Have not been able to change any battery settings.
Yes you can ?? Just click on the “...” at top right.
USER settings I believe are a bit more limited from when compared to the old app.
 

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Yes you can ?? Just click on the “...” at top right.
USER settings I believe are a bit more limited from when compared to the old app.
There is still something different about the dc home app i see on my iPhone.
I see version 1.4.1
Are you using the same app on a iPhone, same version 1.4.1 ?
 
There is still something different about the dc home app i see on my iPhone.
I see version 1.4.1
Are you using the same app on a iPhone, same version 1.4.1 ?
Yep I believe I am on 1.4.1 on an iPhone 11 Pro Max (no sure if larger screen makes things look different).

I just checked on the Apple App Store and funnily enough 1.5.0 just got release 21h ago.
Release notes talk about the DCC high temp warning so looks like it was indeed a bug.
 

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All:

...a reply from Renogy as it regards my questions on the "User" voltage settings on the "Renogy BT" app.

The "long short:" 'Oh, we don't support that app anymore. Use the DC-home app instead, which doesn't have those voltage settings.'


Thank you for contacting Renogy. Our sincerest apologies for the delayed response.

The BT app was recently discontinued. Hence, we recommend downloading the Renogy DC-home app instead.

Here's an online manual for the Renogy DC-home app: https://www.renogy.com/content/DC-Home/DC-Home-Manual.pdf

On the other hand, we have the DCDC50S and DCDC30S manual here: https://www.renogy.com/content/RBC3050D1S-G1/RBC3050D1S-Manual.pdf


Hope this helps. In the meantime, should there be further questions, please don't hesitate to let us know and we'll do our best to help.

Have a good day!

I would like to correct my thread. @oz_photons has shown here https://diysolarforum.com/threads/renogy-dc-dc-charger-w-mppt.1406/post-206711 how Renogy's DC Home smart phone app can allow some of the house battery voltage settings from the Renogy BT app to also be changed with the Renogy DC app.

Thanks @oz_photons
 
I see in the manual that the BT2 is sold out in Canada and the Manual has the #5 outlet as a “future Development”

Yet the manual does have the unit as compatible. DC Home App (iOS) version is 1.5 now. I wanted to be able to monitor DC-DC / MPPT and battery SOC while I learn all this.

Suggestions?
 

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I see that it's been a while since anyone has commented on this. This would also be ideal for my application for my little westfalia.
@hvo @mjpalm21 I own this MPPT/DCDC product from Renogy, albeit the 30 amp model, and can't help but contemplate if I'm either ignorant here or over simplifying the problem.

What if, changing absolutely nothing already installed, you acquired a shore energized charger for your house battery? Full stop.

That charger, energized by the shore power you speak of, would keep the house battery fresh, supply your A/C appliances via what I presume would be an already existing inverter of this house battery, and in causing the voltage of your house battery to reach its upper limits, have the DCC50/30S divert some of that power from such a shore based house battery charger, to, consistent with the DCC50/30S' design, trickle charge your starter battery after the house battery is fully charged, just as if it your shore charger were a solar panel providing more power to the house battery than it needed (even factoring in what if any draw on it your appliances consume).

Does this make sense?
 
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