Solar Kit, CONTROLLER MELTED.

[Hari Seldon]

Hello all, thanks again fro all the support, this blog is great.

I bought a Solar kit from Home Depot:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Nature-Power-85-Watt-Solar-Panel-Off-Grid-Charger-Kit-57001/204466693?keyword=solar+kit+85

I hooked it up properly to a 70Ah deep cycle battery. The controller melted.

Was the controller faulty? Or was I supposed to have a load dump? Or a disconnect? Nothing was said about such things in the manual or instructional video.

Thanks.

[sensij]

Sounds like a faulty controller. I'm not sure how enough current could flow to melt it... not enough power coming from the panel, so it must have been the battery. If + somehow shorted to - or ground through the controller, that might be enough to do it.

[PNjunction]

That controller is cheap, and widely rebadged. Manufacturing is spotty and questionable. You'll often see them as Sunforce 7A etc. Burning up is not uncommon. I took mine apart years ago and laughed.

Thing is, they are not even pwm, which is considered the minimum standard today. They are the 1970's "ping pong" type which rely solely on the battery's own hysteresis, which tend to ruin batteries anyway. Using one of these now is like wearing bell-bottom pants.

This is actually a good thing that it burned up!

Replace that junk with at the very least a quality charge controller, like a Morningstar Sunsaver SS10-12v 10A pwm controller and your batteries will thank you. There are a lot of choices with controllers, and the Morningstar will at least get you into the modern world should you decide to go with something else later. The CC is the "heart" of your system, and is not the place to cheap out.

Put it this way - even if the controller worked, and if you asked what the first thing I'd change out was, it would be that controller!

Unfortunately, some amateur radio operators still think these are the bees-knees because they don't involve any switching techniques and as a result there is no "switching noise" from them. That is true, but their batteries are suffering, not to mention the fact that many modern pwm controllers don't have huge amounts of switching noise anyway - at least not unless you put your antenna leads right across the body of the controller. Don't know if that applies to you, but threw it out there for ham/amateur lurkers..

[SunEagle]

Kind of sad that the kit only has a 85watt panel and 8amp CC but includes a 400watt inverter.

That 70Ah battery is too small for that inverter and the 85w panel is too small to recharge that 70Ah battery.

Bad fit all the way around.