Inquiry about Outback Solar system settings. Have Flexmate 80 and the FX3048T inverter. Completely off grid
My setup:
3 strings of of three 300 watt solar panels (clean not dusty at all)
Flexmate 80 and the FX3048T inverter with the Mate interface. (the older black one)
Eight 6 volt AGM batteries. They are 3-4 months old They are LEOCH batteries and the model number is: LDC6-224-GC2. I googled the model number & found the specifications immediately.
Everything was working very well. Upon getting new batteries; I had a solar technician come by and enter all the appropriate settings and it worked flawlessly for months. Then a couple weeks ago it started to charge the batteries very very slowly even in full light. I called Outback Solar customer service and they had me adjust the setting on the Mate and the Flexmax 80. It was still charging very slowly. Outback Solar then instructed me to open the breaker box next to the system and low & behold 2 of the breakers between the inverter and the panels had popped to off. I flipped them back on & the juice began to flow again. The breakers have not flipped again. Yet, ever since that day, when the system settings were tweaked with, the system has not charged back to 100% once. It will also completely go out in the middle of the night when the batteries get into the low 70s-60% range. I would call the original solar technician but he retired. Any insight as to the optimal settings for this system? Because it seems the one that Outback provided are not working. Perhaps the settings are OK & I need to to some sort of reset? Any help would be appreciated as we are off grid way out in rural Hawaii.
Posted Sep 28, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC · edited
OK, so problem A is that batteries will not charge to 100%, correct?
How are the "systems settings" set? I have SE inverter, and I have to go online to change the battery settings using an installer account, because as the owner I don't have ability (thanks a lot SE!).
So, if you can't change them online, you may need to switch account types, which I had to do before I could control battery use.
There are settings to not charge battery all the way; can you check that your settings aren't telling it to charge only so far up?
BTW, only partial charge/discharge can increase longevity quite a bit, but with Lion, at least, charging close to 100% is actually OK as long as you discharge almost immediately.
Problem B not clear: you mean your power will go out when battery still at 60%? Again, can you confirm settings aren't set to do that (but that would be pretty crazy, think 50% highest I've seen as cuttoff, and its usually 20-30%).
Aloha and thank you for the reply. That is correct. They no longer charge up to 100%. They used to prior, no problem. You can change the settings via the system itself. The Outback solar Flexmate has an interface to change settings like absorb and float etc. The system is set to cutoff when the batteries get to 50%. Although it is cutting out when it is in the 60's during the night. Once the sun is shining it no longer loses power. Also, when Outback had me tweak the settings; the battery charge percentage suddenly showed a 100% charge. I think that the system thinks the gel AGM batteries are more full of juice than they actually are. Is that even a possibility with AGM batteries?
Most batteries have much smaller capacities when very cold, and can be destroyed by being charged when hot. Is temperature differences at night a possible cause here?
I barely know anything about Lithium Ion, unfortunately so cannot help there. I know that sometimes with Lion the charge readings can get wonky, and best way to fix is to actually drain down very low, and immediately recharge, so that the controller can "see" the actual total capacity.
But to do it safely, you need to not go to complete 0, and to immediately begin charging once you are very low.
I see. hmmm
Also we are on the Big Island so the temperature is between 60 and 80 degrees F pretty much year round.