FWC and Overland Solar 160w panel reliability

[No longer here]

Hey Folks,
I am looking to get some feedback on your expereince with the new FWC solar supplier and panel reliability. The suppler is Overland Solar out of Idaho.

The point of this thread is to see if anyone else is having similar problems. When I got my brand new FWC Fleet Flatbed back in Janurary it arrived with a DOA panel attached which was replaced under warrenty. Now 6 months later the replacement panel is exhibiting a possible failure.

I was finding that the panel was not keeping up with the demands of the fridge and day to day laptop and phone charging in full sun. At the time I figured my use was excessive and that's why my battery was running down. While getting some remedy work on the suspension done at Maineline Overland I inquired about adding a second panel and was told that the stock FWC solar wiring and OS controller cannot handle 2 160w panels on the roof unless it was designed. I decided to order a remote panel and an upgraded Victron 30A controller with bluetooth. This was a gamechanger. I could see 30 days worth of data.

On a recent 2 month trip around the Great lakes I began to notice that the panel was cutting out several time per day while I was driving resulting in many charging hours lost. Upon analyzing the data I have seen a gradual drop incharging from 14.5 hrs per day to now now sometimes only 6. I suspect that the vibrations over the panels while driving are breaking the internal connections resulting in a drop of function. To rule out the other system components I hooked up my remote panel and everything worked, leaving the OS panel as the outlier

Has anyone else had trouble with their Overland Solar panels?

Edit: It seems the panel was potentially damaged in shipment and has been replaced by OS

 

[oldhotrod]

Interested...i recently purchased the panel and so far so good but I'm a newbie to solar and couldn't tell ya what all that info means...

 

[pvstoy]

On your edit mentioned the panel was just replaced? If so working?

My panels have been working fine. My system is a stand alone and get charging only from solar. But could get alternator charging by a switch if need be. You mentioned solar cuts out while driving. You are getting two sources of input and on the controller there are settings to tweak to help over come this. Check the manual and maybe Rando or others can chime in to help. Maybe a separate posting will catch their eye.

 

[Vic Harder]

It would be good to see a screenshot of your battery configuration settings for the Victron gear. The one that shows the dial gauge above, is showing zero watts is "normal" if the batteries are fully charged. What IS odd about that shot is the low voltage of the solar panel... I would expect to see 18V in full sun for a 12v panel.

That said, the 23V in the second shot makes more sense, and with a battery voltage of 13.2 in that one, I would not expect to see a lot of charge going into the batteries, so that is not an unusual case either.

Interactions between alternator and solar charging can be interesting. In my previous truck/camper I had both the Victron gear and a set of gauges in the cab that monitored voltage/current going between the truck and camper. I never checked to see what the Victron MPPT was doing while the alternator was pumping out 80A into the batteries though. I did usually shut down the alternator connection once the batteries were at 90% to let the Victron finesse the final little bits of charging.

 

[Durango1]

I'm a solar (and electrical) dummy, Raven. However, the OS system on my 2018 Grandby Flatbed has been (apparently) working well for over a year. (One frustration I have with OS is no printed manual.)

 

[rando]

If your alternator gets your battery voltage up above the absorb voltage set on the Victron charge controller, it will think the battery is fully charged (it probably is) and go to float mode. This maybe what you are seeing.

The decrease in solar charging hours is really a good metric of how well your solar is performing. As the days get shorter you will get less hours of solar, and if the battery is full does it still show it as charging? A better metric would be how many watt-hours per day or the maximum battery voltage each day.