Ouch a bad back!

A few days ago, I twisted awkwardly and hurt my back. That’s put a stopper on most things. Today for example though I’m way better I could not bend down to put my socks on!

So, yesterday I sat quietly in the bus writing a articles. I had my tablet and phone connected to my USB charger. My ventilation fan would cut in and out as required. Then suddenly it didn’t cut in. An hour later when it should have cut in again, all the lights went out.

Working through the problems it looked like it could be either the battery or the charge controller that had failed. The battery should not have failed as the battery was new last year. I’d say I bought it in June and installed it in November but I could be wrong. With my bad back, I can’t get under the bus to look either!

Today I got to my system and found that I’d riveted the old charge controller to the wall. That was not very convenient and I must spank my bottom for doing that! I was very naughty. I was so glad to have a switch on the battery supply. That made removing everything that much safer and easier. While I was in the vicinity I also put in a switch on the solar power so that I can switch the solar off as well as the battery. Never know when that might come in handy.

The solar charge controller is the one I’d been using for a very long time. Looking at it, I can see exactly why I should have had problems. It was a 10A charge controller and I was using far more than 10A. I was possibly using up to 20A. I replaced it with a 30A.

As can be clearly seen, I had a 10A charge controller. I’m not surprised it was unhappy with more than 10A going through it.

So, the charge controller was replaced with a similar controller but this time, rather than using rivets the controller is attached using 6-32 rivnuts and 6-32 bolts. That way I can switch it out if I have to. Top left you can also see my solar panel switch.

Having replaced all that, things are still not hunky dory. Currently the charge does not seem to be getting that high and seems to be dropping very rapidly. I disconnected one circuit that leads to the extraction fans just in case that was the problem but though it was live, that wasnt the issue. I went through all the fuses to see if anything else was live and it wasn’t. That led me to suspect in turn that the new charge controller might not be that good.

Looking around (not very hard) I found another charge controller. This time a 20A controller. Putting that in place was the matter of a very few minutes being able just to unscrew the other and screw the new one in place then switching the solar and power back on.

Although it was a new controller, the battery voltage didn’t seem to improve massively leading me to suspect that the old controller might have drained the battery despite the parameters having been very carefully set. It could well also be that lightning hit the bus at some point. I did find that I had a lot of blown fuses one time when nothing had been used. That was after a storm. There have been a few storms lately.

I’m going to let the thing charge for most of tomorrow morning. Probably 6 hours of sunshine should get at least 7ah into the battery. Measuring the voltage is a bit hit and miss to be honest. I’ve never seen a voltage less than 12.9 on my built-in meters before today. I’m hoping that if it was a lightning strike, it didn’t take out any solar panels.