Winterizing off grid solar for summer cabin.

[Basketcase]

If you are not using much water currently, you are being to gentle on the batteries, they should need water at least every other month.
Decide what your batteries manual calls for, FLOAT service , and that voltage is what you set BOOST and FLOAT to. Boost duration can be 10 min. Disable Equalize

I do know that I have a lot more battery than I need. The house is empty most of the time with no loads, and even with a full house we might charge 8 or so phones in a day, plus about 4 hours of 4 to 5 amps worth of lighting. My bank is 230 AH at 12v. I did this battery size because very occasionally I will use a small 12v air compressor to fill a tire, or an inverter to charge drill batteries or similar. Hopefully being over sized in my battery bank isn't a problem.

Thank you for the info on how to program my controller. That sounds pretty straight forward. I'll find that float voltage and create a custom "winter" battery type.

[Mike90250]

If you are not using much water currently, you are being to gentle on the batteries, they should need water at least every other month.
Decide what your batteries manual calls for, FLOAT service , and that voltage is what you set BOOST and FLOAT to. Boost duration can be 10 min. Disable Equalize

[Basketcase]

It appears that perhaps I would set up a "user" setting for battery type and use that for winter storage? Any tips on how I would set that up? Or is there another way to do it? My controller is the Acopower 30 amp MPPT.

[Basketcase]

They are flooded. I don't think snow is much of a problem, but there will be times when they may be covered. Being right on the ocean, I'm not terribly comfortable about re positioning the panels to shed the snow.

That was also my concern about the batteries running out of water. I will say that I'm shocked that from April to now, even with the use they have had (which is very little load) I have not needed to add water. I have checked them 3 times, last time being last week and they are all just below the lip of the opening. I'll have to see if and how I can make my controller switch to just float. I imagine there must be a way but I'll admit, I havent played with the settings much.

[Mike90250]

Are the batteries Flooded or AGM.
The issue about leaving them on charge till spring thaw, is every day, the charge controller will attempt to fully recharge the full batteries, with Bulk, 90 min of Absorb and then finally back to Float. You need to set your controller to Float till spring, or you will in a couple months, boil all the water out of your fully charged battery.

[SIGP2101]

Trickle charge them all the way to the spring. No snow on your panels is a must.

[Basketcase]

Hello,

This spring, you guys helped me get the off grid solar back to operable. I inherited the maintenance on this system. I have a small setup. 2, 6v Duracell golf cart batts in series. An MPPT controller and I think about 200 or so watts of panels. It suits our needs of charging phones and some lights just fine (at the moment).

My question now is about winter storage. This house will be shut down on October 7th and left shuttered up until april/may. What is the best way to shut it down and store it? I can top off the batteries and disconnect them, or I can leave the array/controller connected to maintain them over the winter and disconnect the loads. I know in either scenario I need to make sure they are full (water wise). So what is the best scenario?

Thanks!