am I putting to much power in the renogy ?

MEK1954

I have a RENOGY Rover 60 with 4- 195 watt solar panels connected in series to put 48 v into the renogy and on a good day I would get 40 amps of charge in mid day, I was told I do not have enough solar panels to keep my 800amphr  battery bank up so I added 4 more panels this past week and now I get up to 886 watts and 59.99 amps to the battery's and it worked great until it got up to 59.99 charging amps , it will charge for a min or 2 and go into fault and the lights start to flash and in about 1 min it restarts itself and after about a 1/2 hr of this cycle I now see it goes into fault at about 49 amps, about mid afternoon the watts and amps would go down to about 235w 15a and run just fine, am I putting to much power in the renogy ? I thought the renogy would regulate this.

BB.

Guessing this is the controller?

https://www.renogy.com/rover-60-amp-mppt-solar-charge-controller/
https://www.renogy.com/content/RNG-CTRL-RVR60/RVR60-Manual.pdf

A quick look, it appears that the MPPT controller should take a larger array and should just limit its output to 60 amps--But not shut down/fault if more PV Array is power is available. (there is a double flash white LED if this is happening).

Manual has lots of fault indicator definitions... But nothing about solar array and too much power available...

On page 28, says that the controller will simply limit output current to battery bank even if the panel is over sized.

The max array is listed at 800 WAtts for a 12 volt battery bank...

A comment was that the controller runs hot over ~40 amps... And needed a fan (or better cooling airflow/don't mount in a closet/under a shelve)...

I would call their support number and see if they can help.

-Bill

Photowhit

I think they've made a few versions of that controller. Looks like yours can't be 'over paneled' so I'd say that's the problem.

MichaelK

Renogy is marketing to low-budget DIY producers, and doesn't sell the best tier-one products.  You can get a more sophisticated controller from Midnight or Outback that can better deal with amperage spikes.  In solar, you really do get what you pay for.  Ultimately, a better controller would solve this problem.

In the real-world right now though what you can do to mitigate this problem is what's called "virtual tracking".  Change the direction of array #1 to face somewhat East of South, and array #2 West of South.  Rather than a single big spike at 12 noon, you'll have a broader but lower plateau from about 11:00am to 1:00pm.  How much change will be proportional to how much you change the direction, but it's something you can do yourself.  You'll produce almost as much kWh over the course of the day, but without the controller shutting down spike at noon.

706jim

MichaelK said:

Renogy is marketing to low-budget DIY producers, and doesn't sell the best tier-one products.  You can get a more sophisticated controller from Midnight or Outback that can better deal with amperage spikes.  In solar, you really do get what you pay for.  Ultimately, a better controller would solve this problem.

In the real-world right now though what you can do to mitigate this problem is what's called "virtual tracking".  Change the direction of array #1 to face somewhat East of South, and array #2 West of South.  Rather than a single big spike at 12 noon, you'll have a broader but lower plateau from about 11:00am to 1:00pm.  How much change will be proportional to how much you change the direction, but it's something you can do yourself.  You'll produce almost as much kWh over the course of the day, but without the controller shutting down spike at noon.

This was my exact reasoning when I still used a Trace C40 controller; prevent it from overloading. I've since upgraded to a better controller but have kept the same panel positioning and it seems to be working well.