Solar panel & associated equipment

[superheat6k]

As technology in this field is still developing due to the more widespread use of solar energy more generally, what / who can someone recommend for a new solar install. I will need the panels plus associated charge controllers to hook up to the two battery banks.

Can the solar set up override the Victron smart charger, so this only cuts in when necessary ? That said the charger doesn't use much power, so my main requirement is to keep the batteries topped off when away from shore power and not running the engines.

My battery banks are 2 x 230AH domestic, anchor and bow thruster and 1 x 230AH engine start and stern thruster, all 12v.

I have a decent flat area on my foredeck ~ 1.5m x 1.5m to place the panel/s upon.

Thanks.

 

[Trident]

I can recommend (and even supply at cost - that is not for profit as I've just retired but still have my trade accounts so hopefully not considered an advert by mods) Renogy stuff and Victron. I'd recommend Renogy as the panels are the best and the charge controllers as good as Victron but rather less costly and with a better user interface.

Your 1.5m by 1.5m would get you two 175w flexible panels (1.5 x 0.7 each) if you needed that much or a couple of smaller 100w panels and all of these can run through an MPPT controller to correctly charge the batteries. The Victron shore power charger will sense if the batteries are full from solar and not keep charging - everything can be connected to the batteries together without issue.

I would need to know the wiring arrangement to the thrusters to recommend how to wire things up - a pair of normal VSR split charge relays will keep the other batteries charged by flowing charge from the domestic bank when there is a charge in to them from the solar but your wiring set up may mean that if the bow thruster battery, for example, failed or was very low charge it could pull the current needed from the VSR charge wire which is unlikely to be large enough to handle it so you'd blow a fuse. A rare occurrence but it needs planning out of you want to charge three battery banks from one solar installation ...

If you want to PM me I can let you know prices and wire sizes and lay out etc as I've done for a few people on the forum recently.

 

[geem]

I can recommend (and even supply at cost - that is not for profit as I've just retired but still have my trade accounts so hopefully not considered an advert by mods) Renogy stuff and Victron. I'd recommend Renogy as the panels are the best and the charge controllers as good as Victron but rather less costly and with a better user interface.

Your 1.5m by 1.5m would get you two 175w flexible panels (1.5 x 0.7 each) if you needed that much or a couple of smaller 100w panels and all of these can run through an MPPT controller to correctly charge the batteries. The Victron shore power charger will sense if the batteries are full from solar and not keep charging - everything can be connected to the batteries together without issue.

I would need to know the wiring arrangement to the thrusters to recommend how to wire things up - a pair of normal VSR split charge relays will keep the other batteries charged by flowing charge from the domestic bank when there is a charge in to them from the solar but your wiring set up may mean that if the bow thruster battery, for example, failed or was very low charge it could pull the current needed from the VSR charge wire which is unlikely to be large enough to handle it so you'd blow a fuse. A rare occurrence but it needs planning out of you want to charge three battery banks from one solar installation ...

If you want to PM me I can let you know prices and wire sizes and lay out etc as I've done for a few people on the forum recently.

From .Rod Collins website
Warning:
I don’t often do this as I hate to ever advise against any manufacturer but there is one manufacturer that we would urge a very strong caution on and that is Renogy. We’ve not seen a manufacturer with this many failure prone products in 30+ years in this market. Beyond the higher than normal failure rate the company has the absolute worst customer service I have ever experienced.

 

[alahol2]

From .Rod Collins website
Warning:
I don’t often do this as I hate to ever advise against any manufacturer but there is one manufacturer that we would urge a very strong caution on and that is Renogy. We’ve not seen a manufacturer with this many failure prone products in 30+ years in this market. Beyond the higher than normal failure rate the company has the absolute worst customer service I have ever experienced.

I've got a small Renogy PWM charge controller, I've not had it long enough to comment on its reliability. However I've raised a couple of queries with their customer service guys and I must say they were very quick to reply and the answers were very full and well explained. Maybe they are improving.

 

[northwind]

I fitted a victron solar controller about 18months ago, it decided to leak all the silica out, contacted victron who could not have been more helpful, new unit supplied by dealer in a couple of days.

 

[geem]

I've got a small Renogy PWM charge controller, I've not had it long enough to comment on its reliability. However I've raised a couple of queries with their customer service guys and I must say they were very quick to reply and the answers were very full and well explained. Maybe they are improving.

I have no comment to make. I am posting from the guy that tests kit in the USA. He was instrumental in writing the ABYC standard for lithium batteries. He is super knowledgeable on the subject. His comment on Renogy, not mine. Just thought anybody considering the kit should be aware. Rod isn't some blogger with an axe to grind

 

[PetiteFleur]

I used Photonic Universe for panels and pwm controller which can charge 2 batteries with an adjustable charge rate to either battery in 10% steps. I use 10% for the start battery and 90% to the domestic battery. Good advice when you talk to them by phone.
MPPT chargers are better, but just a trickle charge to the start battery.

 

[geem]

I used Photonic Universe for panels and pwm controller which can charge 2 batteries with an adjustable charge rate to either battery in 10% steps. I use 10% for the start battery and 90% to the domestic battery. Good advice when you talk to them by phone.
MPPT chargers are better, but just a trickle charge to the start battery.

The start battery should not need a significant charge. If used for just engine starting the load is just for 1 second. It gets a charge off the alternator, then sits there until the engine is next needed. The trickle charge deals with the self discharge of the battery so it is at 100% next time you start the engine.
MPPT can significantly boost your solar harvest. If you have a reasonable amount of solar then conversion to MPPT is very worthwhile. In addition you can set the exact charge profile that the battery manufacturer specifies for your batteries rather than a generic setting determined by the solar charger manufacturer. You can have an adaptive absorption phase rather than a fixed period. All this helps increase the life of your battery bank

 

[Trident]

From .Rod Collins website
Warning:
I don’t often do this as I hate to ever advise against any manufacturer but there is one manufacturer that we would urge a very strong caution on and that is Renogy. We’ve not seen a manufacturer with this many failure prone products in 30+ years in this market. Beyond the higher than normal failure rate the company has the absolute worst customer service I have ever experienced.

The US customer service is well known to be terrible, whilst UK, Canada etc have great and quick service. Marine How To a) wrote that several years ago and b) sold competing brands as their "only recommended" good brands prior to his stroke. His battery choices for example exclude Battleborn who are almost universally accepted elsewhere as the best available. I'm sure he felt he had good reasons but with hundreds of their products fitted in the last few years I have had a zero failure or complaint rate .

People like Will Prowse on possibly the best known and most well researched channel online recommends them so I'm very happy to do so as well but opinions vary on all these things .

I did a lot of research for my own boat and other than the Victron inverter all my kit is now Renogy and works perfectly year after year with full time, live aboard, all electric galley use.

I think he is a very knowledgeable guy however and hope his health continues to improve.

 

[Trident]

The start battery should not need a significant charge. If used for just engine starting the load is just for 1 second. It gets a charge off the alternator, then sits there until the engine is next needed. The trickle charge deals with the self discharge of the battery so it is at 100% next time you start the engine.
MPPT can significantly boost your solar harvest. If you have a reasonable amount of solar then conversion to MPPT is very worthwhile. In addition you can set the exact charge profile that the battery manufacturer specifies for your batteries rather than a generic setting determined by the solar charger manufacturer. You can have an adaptive absorption phase rather than a fixed period. All this helps increase the life of your battery bank

Worth noting having custom settings in not an option for many MPPT chargers - only MPPT chargers allow you to do this but many, if not most MPPT do not or do so in a way that doesn't allow for things like correct lithium settings. I have a Morningstar for sale for just this reason - the custom settings allow to remove or reduce the absorb cycle but not the float charge, which to get around is set at 13.2 so its never floating but this meant that by default if the battery reached "full" for the day (over 13.2) and then heavy lows took it down again the Morningstar would not change back to charge mode as it still saw a value over the float charge.

So for those not as clued up its important to say that many MPPT allow you to set the exact charge profile you want but you need to check an individual brand to be sure it does.

 

[geem]

Worth noting having custom settings in not an option for many MPPT chargers - only MPPT chargers allow you to do this but many, if not most MPPT do not or do so in a way that doesn't allow for things like correct lithium settings. I have a Morningstar for sale for just this reason - the custom settings allow to remove or reduce the absorb cycle but not the float charge, which to get around is set at 13.2 so its never floating but this meant that by default if the battery reached "full" for the day (over 13.2) and then heavy lows took it down again the Morningstar would not change back to charge mode as it still saw a value over the float charge.

So for those not as clued up its important to say that many MPPT allow you to set the exact charge profile you want but you need to check an individual brand to be sure it does.

Answer then is Victron MPPT

 

[geem]

The US customer service is well known to be terrible, whilst UK, Canada etc have great and quick service. Marine How To a) wrote that several years ago and b) sold competing brands as their "only recommended" good brands prior to his stroke. His battery choices for example exclude Battleborn who are almost universally accepted elsewhere as the best available. I'm sure he felt he had good reasons but with hundreds of their products fitted in the last few years I have had a zero failure or complaint rate .

People like Will Prowse on possibly the best known and most well researched channel online recommends them so I'm very happy to do so as well but opinions vary on all these things .

I did a lot of research for my own boat and other than the Victron inverter all my kit is now Renogy and works perfectly year after year with full time, live aboard, all electric galley use.

I think he is a very knowledgeable guy however and hope his health continues to improve.

Rod Collins sells Battleborne batteries on his Amazon site.

 

[Keith-i]

I installed a simple solar setup myself to keep 200ah domestics and 100ah start batteries topped up between use. I went for a 100w solid panel and a Votronic twin output MPPT controller (marine version with conformal coating). This trickle charges the start battery with up to 1A and the remainder goes to the domestics. All seems good 1year down the road.

 

[superheat6k]

Thanks for the very useful replies. Trident I am about to send you a PM.

 

[Trident]

Answer then is Victron MPPT

Or Renogy - the Victron is good but a little expensive and has no display so you have to use the Victron app to program it and I dislike things that have no back up if their $0.50c blue tooth chip dies as has been the case a lot quite recently with Victron

 

[Trident]

Rod Collins sells Battleborne batteries on his Amazon site.

He does now but when he wrote the piece several years ago he did not and BB were already well ahead of the rest but about half the price of the brands he was hawking then...

 

[William_H]

What is not clear to me is which source of battery charge will prevail when shore power is competing with solar charging. You might find that solar is sidelined by shore power which will bring batteries up to full charge over night then go to float and solar controller will be left to add to float. Perhaps best bet would be to not use shore charging. Or alternatively rely on shore charge as I imagine you do now and forget solar. Relying on battery capacity and engine charge if you are away from shore power and living on board.
If you want to go for solar power. The best panels are those made for domestic PV installations. Typically 40v or more open circuit and 250w or so in a rectangular panel aprox 1.8 m by .7 metres. The size and shape may not suit you. Very cheap due to huge numbers produced. Here in west oz they are every where. For a 12v system this will require an MPPT controller (Victron are good) to recharge your domestic battery bank. As said engine start battery should not need charging but if you leave it for a long time a separate small solar panel will look after it. ol'will

 

[jakew009]

What is not clear to me is which source of battery charge will prevail when shore power is competing with solar charging. You might find that solar is sidelined by shore power which will bring batteries up to full charge over night then go to float and solar controller will be left to add to float. Perhaps best bet would be to not use shore charging. Or alternatively rely on shore charge as I imagine you do now and forget solar.

The charge source with the highest voltage will prevail. The only thing the charger can vary is the voltage it is putting out.

At the start of the charge cycle the charger will be in a current limited condition (it had to reduce the voltage to limit how many amps it was outputting so as not to overheat). In this stage you will typically find that the solar charger and the mains charger will work in unison to bulk charge the battery.

Once the battery is nearly full, the charger will switch from constant current to constant voltage to finish the charge cycle. At this point typically the charger with the highest voltage configured will take over and the other will do nothing (but it doesn’t matter because the battery will only take a couple of amps at this point).

 

[chris-s]

We fitted a Renogy ‘on-board’ controller for this season. This has both an mppt charge controller, compatible with lead acid, agm and lithium, and a dc-dc charger.

It uses the solar to maintain the house batteries and the alternator for the engine battery. When either are fully charged it uses the dc-dc charger to combine the solar/alternator to charge the other battery set.

By connecting your shore power charger to your engine batteries alone, it would see that as an alternator source and once the engine batteries are charged it would divert the charging to the house batteries all the while using solar at the same time.

We had to swap out our old 1-2-B switch for one that kept both engine/house batteries isolated, albeit with an emergency ’B’ option.

So far it has worked well with no issues. I looked for a Victron all-in-one-box equivalent but couldn’t find one at the time.

Chris