Out back fp1 acting up

wellbuilt · September 2020

Hi all , I have been having a little trouble with my flex power one system .

Last winter my panel where getting covered with snow every night , so buy the time the panels cleared them selves it was 1 or200pm and the sun was going down .

I started running my generator every other day for a hour or so , and bringing the battery’s up to 94/95% but my battery’s started getting out of balance .
when I left the house I would charge down to 500watts in absorb for my 430 ah battery and turn every thing off for a week or 2 .

I had one battery that the sg read low all winter 1.260 +-
mid January I started getting more sun plus I started using a 35’ pole with a 2’ squeegee To clear the panels and I just started the generator early morning and ran it for about 45min to a hour .
Things got better 😁
Now come may I had a gremlin show up up my charge controller would just flip to float 11/2hrs into a 3 hour absorb .

Some how the time changed in my mate ?

So I did all the new up dates and adjusted the time setting and I’m all good now .

I updated the inverter next , and that went fine , but the genarator charging changed ?

I was charging at 2000watts with the genarator putting in 2100 watts .

After the update I was charging at 600watts ? I check the setting in the mate and they must of been changed to
600 watts when I updated , so I changed the setting back up to 2000 watts but the mate is telling me I’m only have 1600watts going in ? I really need the extra 400 watts could any one tell me what is going on here ?

I have a Honda 2800 watt genarator and use 200/300 watts for house loads , the genarator seams to be working good .

Thanks in advance for your help John

Dave Angelini · September 2020

My guess is it is you

OK so to get the full power out of your genset, without any current limiting programmed in, raise the bulk set-point a volt for the test. Force a bulk charge during morning when the battery is low. That should get max power out of the genset if the batteries are good.

Check SG and do EQ's now before winter. Fall is the last chance to get balanced before winter offgrid. Good Luck.

wellbuilt · September 2020

Thanks Dave ,
I could definitely be me , but I don’t know how the setting in the mate change with out me resetting it
my SG are all up above 1.270 as of last week and my cells are just a little low .

Dave Angelini · September 2020

Lightning can do this especially if you do not have 3 SPD's!

Increase absorb time by an hour and test. Most people seem to be afraid to increase this. It is the reason, along with other things that batteries fail before their time, I think....

wellbuilt · September 2020

I don’t have any real lightening to speak of here in ny . I only have 2 SPDs as of now but will put the third one in this weekend .
It seam like the 3 hour absorb is a lot so I just backed off to 2 hours 2 weeks ago . I’m going to check the sg and see how it’s doing .

I hit float around 10 30 if it’s sunny and float around 130 ish .

mike95490 · September 2020

It's very common for folks to undercharge and ruin their battery banks. With solar, you have to be ridiculous over paneled to damage most flooded banks.

wellbuilt · September 2020

Hi mike , my battery is 430 ah and I have 4425 watts of solar .

And I figure I use 10% to 15% so 2500 to3500 watt hours , I seam to make this much power in January if my panels aren’t snow covered and I get some sun .

When I started running my genarator every day for a hour and rake the snow off the roof so I get some sun things got better .

I have 12 more 295vwatt panels sitting in my garage 5 or 6 for my well pump , my thoughts are to ground mount 6 more and add them to the house system .

I think I only need them for decJan feb March when it snows consistently and just turn them off 8 months out of the year .

mike95490 · September 2020

if you go ground mount, make sure there is enough space so the piles of snow, don't shade the bottom edge of the panels.

wellbuilt · September 2020

I’m sure there is a lot of snow shoveling in my future.

I was thinking I want the bottom off the ground 40” or so so the top is not two high and catching the wind ,
but I get 6th snow drifts in a big storm .

Out back fp1 acting up

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