I have ran into an issue using Aux 1 to trigger a SSR. The SSR is triggered on at the set points, but will not turn off unless I manually force it off from the control panel.
I initially tried the Float High as that is when I really want the SSR to be triggered. It does trigger on after the Delay time of being in Float, but will not turn off if the CC goes into resting mode or into a different charge mode, even after the Hold time has expired. I have both the Delay and Hold times set at 600 seconds. I can manually force Aux 1 off by going into the Aux 1 setting and setting it to Off.
I have also tried Waste Not High and PV High with the same results. It will activate Aux 1 at the correct voltage set points, but will not turn Aux 1 off when it reaches the V Low offset or PV Low set voltage.
Also, if Aux 1 is on when PV goes away and the CC goes into resting mode, Aux 1 will remain on. I can force Aux 1 off through the control panel.
Is there an issue with the firmware on the CC? I have Aux 1 jumpers set to supply 12v to activate the SSR.
First question will be:
What firmware is on the Classic?
I poked Ryan on this so hopefully he can get you an answer.
Tom
Classic 200V (rev 4)
Firmware:
- Classic Rev: 1609
- Network Rev: 1597
Hm. I will test the newest firmware here but we have seen no issues as of yet. Can you try straight diversion with the voltages set close together and delay set real low just to see if it will work. I guess what I am wondering is if the Delay time is the issue. I will try it here to but if you could try diversion with real low hold and delay that would be great.
Ryan
I set the delay and hold to 10 seconds and the voltages close together in Diversion mode and it did work. Aux 1 came on after 10 seconds although when it hit the low voltage, it actually took almost 60 seconds for Aux 1 to turn off. If I set the delay and hold to 1 second, it took about 1 second for Aux 1 to turn on and 10 seconds for Aux 1 to turn off.
I am going to try Waste Not High again, force a float and see what happens with the lower delay and hold times.
Hm I wonder if there is a divide by 10 error? I will have Mike check into this.
Can you go to the MNGP and check the code revisions? I wonder if the MNGP is updated as well?
Ryan
I just testing my Classic here in the lab and it appears to work OK so far.
24V battery and connecting/disconnecting the power supply input.
I set it for 10 seconds delay and hold time. 27.0V on and 26.5V off.
It appears to take 10 seconds on and off. I also set the LED mode to LED 1
so that the left hand red LED on the Classic control board lights up when
Aux 1 output is ON (high) an also watching the AUX1 enunciator on the MNGP.
Could your problem be that either the battery voltage is jumping higher than
the ON set point and resetting the hold timer ? Or, maybe that the battery voltage
is taking longer to get at least 0.1 volt lower than the set point voltage ?
If the battery voltage is moving around the set point, it may be resetting the timer.
Then again, maybe your voltage set points are good enough that all this doesn't
matter ?
In older MNGP code, there WAS a bug where the delay time (I think it was the
delay time) would show an extra decimal point and an extra digit in the
time setup menu that might be confusing issues.
I will keep checking here.
Thanks !
boB
I set the hold time to 600 seconds (10 minutes) and we'll see if AUX 1 goes off in 10 minutes
Is it possible to get the MNGP version from the Remote App?
Mine does have an extra digit on it that cannot be adjusted and it is set to 3. The setting looks like 600.0.3.
Quote from: phxmark on December 19, 2013, 03:15:10 PM
Is it possible to get the MNGP version from the Remote App?
Mine does have an extra digit on it that cannot be adjusted and it is set to 3. The setting looks like 600.0.3.
phxmark, yes, that is the bug I am talking about...
What that is is that there are a couple extra digits showing that should have been erased from the display.
I think they are the last digits, in this case, the 0.3 of the 600.0.3 in your example. I think that
if you just ignore those for now, you will be OK until your next upgrade/update.
Right now you can't tell the MNGP version but that will also be added in the future.
boB
Thanks Bob.
I also noticed in the Remote App that if I try to set the PV Low and PV High voltages for Aux 1, they don't jive with what is displayed on the Classic. If I set the voltages on the Classic, the On Voltage appears in the Off field of the app and the On Field is a number way different from the setting on the Classic.
I have it working now using the Waste Not setting. Seems to be working. I will see if it leaves Aux 1 on when it goes to resting mode. That was just the other issue I was having with Aux 1. If Aux 1 was on when it went to Resting, Aux 1 would never turn off. I set the delay to 30 seconds and Hold to 300 seconds.
phxmark, did you originally set the delay and hold times using the local app ?
The numbers are actually adjusted in tenths of a second so maybe there is a 10X issue there ?
boB
Hi Bob.
The Classic turned on Aux 1 when it was in Resting mode. When the battery voltage came up to the trigger voltage, it turned on Aux 1.
I noticed the same thing happened in Diversion mode and Float mode. All three are based on battery voltage. Is there a way to make Aux 1 stay off when using solar and the CC is resting?
I am trying to push excess solar when the batteries are fully charged and the house doesn't need the extra power to a small grid tie inverter. It works fine during the day, but when the sun goes down and the battery voltage rises back up to the trigger points, Aux 1 turns on.
Thanks for the help.
Quote from: phxmark on December 19, 2013, 10:36:17 PM
It works fine during the day, but when the sun goes down and the battery voltage rises back up to the trigger points, Aux 1 turns on.
Why is the battery voltage rising when the classic stops charging? Is there another charging source, wind turbine? etc?
Or perhaps when the sun goes down some loads on battery get disconnected?
What sort of voltage rise are you talking about? how many volts?
dgd
I have an inverter that charges the batteries when the sun goes down. During the day, the inverter/solar run the house loads. At night, the inverter goes back on-grid and can charge the batteries.
I was using PV High for Aux 1 control, but discovered that if Aux 1 is on when the inverter goes to resting, Aux 1 will not turn off unless I manually turn it off. If Aux 1 was already off when the CC went to resting, Aux 1 stayed off. Problem is, when the CC goes to resting, the PV Voltage in rises to Voc causing Aux 1 to turn on.
I really want to be able to trigger Aux 1 when the CC isn't resting and the CC is in Float mode. The Float High mode triggers off battery voltage, too when the CC isn't charging and is in rest mode. This may be by design or just an overlooked bug.
Quote from: phxmark on December 19, 2013, 11:55:55 PM
I really want to be able to trigger Aux 1 when the CC isn't resting and the CC is in Float mode. The Float High mode triggers off battery voltage, too when the CC isn't charging and is in rest mode. This may be by design or just an overlooked bug.
This does not seem right to me. The FLOAT HIGH (or low) mode does not trigger off the battery voltage, at least not in my Classic. If this was the case then when the controller is in BULK MPPT on its way up to ABSORB voltage and passes the FLOAT set voltage then the AUX FLOAT HIGH would be enabled. But that does not happen, the FLOAT HIGH is only enabled when the Classic actually goes into FLOAT mode,
I used this to enable DC water heating
only when the batteries were in FLOAT.
As the sun goes down and FLOAT moves to FLOAT MPPT then the AUX float HIGH is disabled and goes LOW.
It doesnt matter what other battery charging source there is, once the Classic goes to resting it will not start up again until there is power input from the PVs the next day.
Unless its my Classic that has a problem then there must be some other reason why your CLassic is not disabling the AUX FLOAT HIGH when it drops out of FLOAT mode.
dgd
Hi dgd. Are you using the latest firmware on your Classic?
Mine doesn't behave this way when I set Aux 1 to Float High.
Classic 200V (rev 4)
Firmware:
- MGNP Rev: 1608
- Classic Rev: 1609
- Network Rev: 1597
Quote from: phxmark on December 20, 2013, 12:21:30 PM
Hi dgd. Are you using the latest firmware on your Classic?
Mine doesn't behave this way when I set Aux 1 to Float High.
My 150 is using a previous 1401/1194 with Float High on AUX1.
I uploaded the latest firmware and left everything else the same and it appears that AUX1 is behaving as before.
I also wired in a spare 150 which has no input, no PVs and I set it to Float high on AUX1. This 150 was always in resting mode (0:unknown) and although it showed the battery voltage increasing as the other Classic charged the batteries through bulk mppt to Absorb then back to Float it never triggered AUX1. This sort of proved that AUX1 float high will only trigger when the Classic is actually in float and NOT based on battery voltage.
I could not find any way in the Classic setup to stop AUX1 from going off when the Classic dropped out of float.
Maybe I'm missing something here :) as I could think of uses for a latching type control of AUX, once a condition is met to enable an AUX then another user defined condition has to be met to turn it off.
ALthough that would probably require some logic table type of setup for AUX (we almost had this at one stage in the
MyMN exception reporting system)
I assume you have done all the obvious things like reloading the Classic firmware, factory reset then reprogram, check the SSR is seeing the proper levels of ON/OFF voltage, etc..
dgd
Just for grins and some testing, I placed the Classic in Perturb and Observe Mode. Waste Not is now behaving the way I want it. Must be a firmware issue. If I had the Classic in Solar or Dynamic Mode, Aux 1 wouldn't do what I wanted it to do.
Hi phxmark,
Good that you are trying a different MPPT Mode in the Classic (IMHO).
In looking at the specs for your PVs, seems that they have a Vmp of about 30.2 V, IIRC. This is on the low side, if you do have strings of only two PVs -- 60.4 Vmp fort the string.
AGM batteries would do better in this low-ish input voltage configuration, as AGM batteries usually do not need a real EQ. However, in the summer heat, you may not have enough input voltage to get the most out of the CC.
Just my opinion. Good Luck, Vic
Phxmark,
Maybe you could try re-programming that same Classic and see
if it acts differently ? I haven't heard of a Classic having to be re-programmed
after it was updated, (I don't think ?), but maybe it didn't update quite
right ?
boB
That is the only thing I didn't try after the update. I did reset it to factory defaults after the update.
Aux 1 is working the way I want it now. It turns off when it goes to resting. For some reason, Aux 1 behaves differently when in P&O mode. If I have the Classic in Solar or Dynamic mode, Aux 1 will stay on when the Classic goes to resting mode. I actually seem to be getting more power from my array when in P&O mode, too. Go figure.
I am way happy now that things are working the way I want.
Great ! Glad that it is working well now.
I guess it doesn't hurt to put more modes than one might think they would
need in there !
Merry Christmas, folks !
boB
Phxmark
That's an excellent observation Vic made as with only 2 panels of 30v Mpv in series that is not likely giving the classic enough voltage headroom to be doing mppt effectively.
And in not perfect conditions they may be at lower voltage .
I suspect that's why p&o mode is working much better than normal solar mode.
Have you considered reconfig the PVs into two strings of 3 in series and perhaps trying solar mode again. It would be interesting to see if this also maybe fixes the aux behaviour as well
Just a suggestion...
Dgd
Quote from: dgd on December 25, 2013, 04:26:02 PM
Phxmark
That's an excellent observation Vic made as with only 2 panels of 30v Mpv in series that is not likely giving the classic enough voltage headroom to be doing mppt effectively.
And in not perfect conditions they may be at lower voltage .
I suspect that's why p&o mode is working much better than normal solar mode.
Have you considered reconfig the PVs into two strings of 3 in series and perhaps trying solar mode again. It would be interesting to see if this also maybe fixes the aux behaviour as well
Just a suggestion...
Dgd
I rewired the panels to be 3 in series for 90v per string. I set the Classic to Solar mode. I let it run and monitored it for a couple of days.
Observations:
Aux 1 stopped working the way I wanted it to.
Power production was not as much from the system as it was in P&O mode.
I have since gone back to the Legacy P&O Mode and set it for 15% and I am getting better power production from the array and Aux 1 is back to working the way I want. I left the panels configured for 2 stings of 3 panels. Right now Watts on the app is hovering around 1300 Watts.
So far today(as of 4:45PM AZ Time, the system has generated 8.1kwh using Legacy P&O Mode. I have only been able to get a maximum of about 6.8kwh under solar mode.
Quote from: phxmark on December 30, 2013, 03:56:22 PM
I rewired the panels to be 3 in series for 90v per string. I set the Classic to Solar mode. I let it run and monitored it for a couple of days.
Observations:
Aux 1 stopped working the way I wanted it to.
Power production was not as much from the system as it was in P&O mode.
There is still something wrong but at least Legacy P&O mode seems to work for you, and the Classic hardware seems good. Solar mode should be more efficient than LP&O.
But you have already reloaded the firmware?
dgd
I reloaded, reset and reconfigured the Classic.
I have checked all the connections from the panels to the Classic. All are good. I have a 50ft run of 8Ga wire from the panels to the Classic. Voltages at the panels are within a few tenths of a volt at the Classic so the wire run doesn't appear to have much, if any, losses.
Is there any shading? Legacy P&O does better when the array presents multiple MPPT voltages that would typically be found with shading or mismatched panels. It also performs better when the arrays MPPT voltage is at or below battery voltage.
Ryan
Only in the morning, two of the lower panels are about 10% shaded. During the day from about 9 AM on, full sun on the panels. All panels are the same model and wattage. Legacy still works better than solar, even at full sun.
Is it possible you have a poor connection other then the rewired PVs?
No poor connections. At full sun, the controller is pulling a little over 17.1 amps from the array. The Imp for the panels are 7.95 amps so the amps coming from the array is above the panels label Imp.
Quote from: phxmark on January 01, 2014, 02:55:43 PM
No poor connections. At full sun, the controller is pulling a little over 17.1 amps from the array. The Imp for the panels are 7.95 amps so the amps coming from the array is above the panels label Imp.
This is not that unusual. The mppt process may have found a best input wattage point where the current is higher but the voltage is lower than the rated mpv of 90volts.
Although with 1300+ watts from a near 1500watt array there is probably not a wiring issue.
When you have the Classic in Solar mode what is the mppt scan interval set to? (from local app)
dgd
Solar MPPT Scan is set to 3 minutes which is the default. I am using Legacy and have it set to 3 minutes also and set the Watt percentage to 15%. I have read somewhere on here that it is recommended to set set the Watt percentage between 10% and 25% for solar and to adjust it up or down for best performance. It was set at the default which I believe was 10%. It actually performs better at 15%.