I am looking for help figuring out why our solar setup is not working like it should. Our van is a Sportsmobile West 2019 build. We only get what seems to me to be a reasonable amount of solar charging on days when it is slightly overcast or hazy sunshine (and this isn’t consistently true). However, we usually don’t get any (or very minimal) charging on bright sunny days.
Here is what we have:
- 2 Relion Lithium Batteries
- Blue Sky Solar Boost 3000i Solar Charge Controller – although this looks like it was designed for AGM batteries, the documentation indicates it should work with lithium batteries as well.
- 2 @ 115w Zamp Solar Panels
- Relion Battery Indicator
Sportsmobile left all of the Blue Sky Solar Controller settings at their default values which seems to be consistent with the Relion Battery documentation. However, I have since changed 2 settings which I thought were more appropriate for lithium batteries based on the documentation:
- Float Charge Voltage (FLT) changed to “OFF” (default = 13.2)
- Battery Temperature Compensation (btc) changed to 000 (default = 500)
Neither of these changes seemed to have any impact on what results we are seeing.
Here is what I have generally observed from the solar controller display:
- Aux Out display light – Always on regardless of sun/clouds (off at night)
- Charge Status display lights:
o Float – Only on if there is more than negligible charging
o Absorption – always on (off at night)
o Bulk – always off
o Flashing Lights – Never (because there is no equalization with lithium batteries?)
o Volt/Amp – The Volt reading tends to be about 13.4, but I have seen it as high as 13.9. The Amp reading is often 0.0, but when I am getting some charging I’ve seen numbers in the range of 2.5 to a high of12.1, but it is mostly on the lower end of the range
o Volt – tends to be the same or very close to the Volt reading in Volt/Amp
o Amp Out – tends to be the same or very close to the Amp reading in Volt/Amp
o Amp In – is 0.1 whenever the Amp reading in Volt/Amp is 0.0. Otherwise, the Amp In reading is always lower than the Amp reading in Volt/Amp by around 20-25%. For example, when the Volt/Amp reading was 13.4/3.4, the Amp In reading was 2.5
o Aux Volt – is 0.0 whenever the Volt/Amp reading is V/0.0. Otherwise, it is the same or similar to the Volts
- On bright sunny days the face plate on the controller gets very hot (which I understand is normal).
- Hazy sunshine seems to work best, but this is not consistent.
- On days where there are periods of bright sunshine and overcast skies alternating throughout the day, as soon as there has been any period with bright sunshine there won’t be any more solar charging for the rest of the day regardless of whether the overcast skies return. Does this mean the system needs to reset itself at night?
Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should check or need to change? Thanks.
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