Yesterday and Today

Yesterday I was pretty tired after doing all the stuff I did on top of a hot bus combined with running up and down my ladder.

This morning I looked at the bus and saw a dark patch. Looking more closely, it looked like there was a dark patch on the roof air vent. It was almost as though something had happened to it. Going outside and getting closer, I took this picture. Now I know where the top to my can of primer spray went. I left it on top of the bus. I also left the can of primer on the hood. Well, that was easily transferred inside.

It was rather a good thing that I'd listened to the Weather Gods and had sealed everything up yesterday because not long after I fell out of bed it started to rain. It rained quite hard and it's forecast to rain all week! Actually I'd have weatherproofed anyway because weather is hardly the most reliable thing and weathermen are twice as likely as politicians to speak with forked tongue!

A while back I bought a Renology Rover MPPT charge controller thinking it might be an improvement over my existing PWM controller. Over the last few months I have noticed it has not been that great at measuring battery voltage and not very good at charging the batteries. In a flight of fancy I ordered some lithium battery cells to make a nice 14 volt lithium battery. Those have yet to arrive from Aliexpress. 

Yesterday I tried running my extraction fans again. I'd noticed before that the controller seemed to pause a while before setting them going but yesterday I paid more attention to what was actually going on. As soon as the extraction fans start, the controller flashes an error 4 message and waits 5 seconds before starting the fans. While doing that, it cuts power to everything. That is not welcome! Out of curiosity I tried it with one extraction fan then the other singly and it was fine. Clearly something is amiss with the charge controller (which was brand new). I bought that controller in January from Walmart. I got it for $79 and now they're selling for $129. I installed it a month later, in February. It's now May and it seems not to be working too well.

Reading the specifications, it says the maximum load of my thirty amp charge controller is just twenty amps. That's a bit of a swizz! I measured the power used in the system as being 3.92A continuous when the fans are going. It is possible for there to be a higher amperage spike needed to start the fans but that, most certainly should not be an extra 14A and if that was the problem then the fans would stay stopped. It would also not show an error 4 (short circuit) but an error 6 (overload) if my reading of the manual is accurate.

Reading further it seems that manual likes to contradict itself. Do not use the load on the charge controller to charge batteries. Why ever not? I have a very nice AA charger that runs off a USB socket. I have phone chargers that run off USB. I have a camera that charges from USB Don't use the controller to power an inverter? Why not - if all you're using is 20A you should be fine.

Thus far I can say I am not overly impressed. I could bypass the charge controller problem by using the two legs from the load to power a relay. I could then run the actual load via the relay straight from the battery. That would require a relay to be operated 24 hours a day. It would make a nonsense of the solar generation and power usage stats. That in turn would make this Fancy Nancy charge controller a bit of a nonsensical overspend. One of the cheap $10 PWM charge controllers could be coupled to a relay, easily.

Needless to say, having looked at the reviews of this charge controller I did find somebody posted this little gem:

load side is too sensitive and goes into error mode from simply plugging in a 12 cigarette lighter plug for my ARB refrigerator. I have managed to get it to work once but as soon as the ARB compressor stops and tries to turn back on later it shuts down and throws an error. It's only pulling 4-5 amps on 12g wire.

That was an Amazon review. So basically this "I can handle 20A of load" but collapsing panting on the ground after just 4A of load proves that the whole instruction manual and advertising is false. It would not thus surprise me to hear that the charge controller is actually built in a Chinese forced labor prison for pennies or the Chinese equivalent - whatever that is- and shipped cheaply to America where Renology slaps some fancy advertising, calling it "Made in America" because they printed their name on it. This thing is just as much of a scam as ownership deeds for Brooklyn Bridge.

Several times I've tried contacting Renology because I know I've discovered this fault before then forgotten about it. This time I actually had a response and a ticket number. Bizarrely they want me to ring them. I don't know about you but I hate talking to people on the phone! Watch this space. I might have to phone them.