Renogy 40A Rover slow to start charging in the morning

Hi all,

I have the Renogy Rover 40 amp with around 1000W of panels and 400Ah deep cycle batteries at 24V.

What I've noticed in the time that I've had this solar charger, is that it is very slow to start charging, even on completely sunny days.
For example, yesterday was sunny and it only started charging at 9h45. Even in the middle of summer it would only start around 9h00, although occasionally it would start just after 8. When it's not charging and it's sunny, the panel voltage screen it is reading 50-70V, and the batteries are sitting around 24.0 - 24.5V, with anywhere between a 1 amp and 7 amp load (2 DC chest freezers kicking on and off).

My solution, when I find it's not charging, has been to switch the solar disconnect switch off and then on again, then suddenly it realizes the panels are there and have voltage, and starts pushing in around 10 amps into the batteries. 

My question is if anyone has seen this before, and whether there is anything I should try set in the Solar Monitoring Software that would maybe start it charging earlier? The Solar Monitoring Software has a controller setting screen, but it is very light on what the settings should be, currently I have it set to 400Ah of batteries (since all values are halved if you are using 24V) and absorb/bulk for 4 hours a day (I tried to set it for 5 hours on the weekend and then it only ran bulk/absorb for 15 minutes, which makes no sense, so have now set it back to 4!).

At the moment I feel like my batteries are getting a bit too low overnight, and I see no reason why it shouldn't start charging earlier!

Many thanks!
Lindsay

What does your Hydrometer say the batteries are at? Do you have a way to top the batteries off at least twice a month?

Also your CC could be going bad...

My CC starts charging as soon as the sun comes up about 7:00... But it really doesn't start producing much power until 10:00...

Hi Tattoo,

I have sealed deep cycle, so I can't take any readings.
I decided to purchase another 2 solar panels to extend it from 2 x 260W panels to 4 instead of buying a charger to top up the batteries, believing this would be more than enough even if cloudy to keep everything charged fully :/

I already had the first solar charge controller swapped out months ago because it wasn't always starting charging in the morning. This one isn't as bad, it just seems to start very late. I thought maybe going from 2 to 4 panels might make it realize sooner that the sun was up and start charging, but it hasn't helped.
Did you play at all with the configuration for the Renogy Rover in the Solar Monitoring software? I'm wondering if I should just try set it all back to the defaults (where it auto detects 12/24 etc). Maybe this would help?

Thanks for the reply!

Hi No I haven't played with the monitoring software... I leave mine set in default and they work just fine...... Bird would know more about that..

You say you have about 1000w of panels now? How many panels do you have? It's a good thing you are running at 24v because you couldn't add any more panels... make sure you don't get to many panels for your CC to handle...

I have 8 100w panels and a 60w CC with 6 215cca 6v deep cell batteries at 12v that are not sealed so I can check with a hydrometer to be sure they are fully charged... But since they are not sealed they have to be vented so I understand yours not being sealed...

Maybe I should just put the settings to default then if it's working for you and you have almost as many solar panel watts as I have.
I'm surprised you are running 800W and 12V. I thought it maxed out at 500W for 12V?

My panels are 3 x 255W and 1 x 260W, which I realise is about as much as I can attach. All have pretty similar specs. I have each set of 2 in a series string, and then those strings joined in parallel. So about 70V, 20 Amps maximum into the controller. When going into the batteries 31 amps is the highest I've seen, but it's winter here (I'm in South Africa), so in summer I imagine it'll get much closer to 40 amps.

To be completely honest, my controller is actually the SRNE, which I believe is just a differently branded Renogy Rover. I've also written some code to run on the Raspberry PI, interfacing with the controller, logging most of the data to a database and also allowing me to keep an eye on what my solar is doing by viewing a webpage from a browser anywhere.
I'll probably release this to anyone who wants it, but will create a new thread for that

Lindsay, I'd love to take a crack at that code. Any chance you could get that on github?

Hi adobo,

Please see my post titled: "Renogy Rover monitoring software using a Raspberry PI" at renogy-store.boards.net/thread/1952/renogy-rover-monitoring-software-raspberry

It's really a simple Python script, only one file, with an infinite loop, so I'll see where I can put it that you can get it.
It requires the following to be installed on Raspbian: sqlite3, pymodbus, Adafruit_ADS1x15, apache2 and maybe some other dependencies.