After hooking up the solar panel to the charge controller I started noticing that the controller was showing amps in/out but wasn't actually charging. Out comes the meter to find out whats going on.
The factory roof solar plug is wired backwards so I just switched the wiring around at the controller, the wires for the roof plug is now (Red Negative and Black Positive) at the PV input on the controller.....no big deal there. The meter is showing 22 Volts (Open voltage on the panel) from positive to ground so the panel is working.
Now the problem.
I measured voltage from battery + to PV - on the back of the charge controller and read battery voltage....hmm that shouldn't be the case. I lifted the wires off the controller and the red wire (My Negative) is showing common to ground, must be a short somewhere in the red wiring. Neither solar plug wire should be common with ground...especially the red wire. If I was running an older style PWM controller this really wouldn't be a issue since PV ground can be common with battery ground on these controllers. But I'm running a newer MPPT controller which requires the ground on the PV to be separate from the battery ground for proper operation.
I removed the panel and unplugged it from the camper to see if anything changed, nope...red wire is still going to ground. Just wanted to make sure the panel wasn't any part of the cause.
Now to find where the red wire is going to ground at. I suspect a break in the wire at a tight bend somewhere, maybe up by the lift panels or ?. The camper is under 2 months old so I don't suspect wear, maybe a defect during construction? This might be fun to hunt down.
I'll post up where I find it. Anyone else ran into this?
Here's a pic showing resistance to ground on the Red roof plug wire.
The factory roof solar plug is wired backwards so I just switched the wiring around at the controller, the wires for the roof plug is now (Red Negative and Black Positive) at the PV input on the controller.....no big deal there. The meter is showing 22 Volts (Open voltage on the panel) from positive to ground so the panel is working.
Now the problem.
I measured voltage from battery + to PV - on the back of the charge controller and read battery voltage....hmm that shouldn't be the case. I lifted the wires off the controller and the red wire (My Negative) is showing common to ground, must be a short somewhere in the red wiring. Neither solar plug wire should be common with ground...especially the red wire. If I was running an older style PWM controller this really wouldn't be a issue since PV ground can be common with battery ground on these controllers. But I'm running a newer MPPT controller which requires the ground on the PV to be separate from the battery ground for proper operation.
I removed the panel and unplugged it from the camper to see if anything changed, nope...red wire is still going to ground. Just wanted to make sure the panel wasn't any part of the cause.
Now to find where the red wire is going to ground at. I suspect a break in the wire at a tight bend somewhere, maybe up by the lift panels or ?. The camper is under 2 months old so I don't suspect wear, maybe a defect during construction? This might be fun to hunt down.
I'll post up where I find it. Anyone else ran into this?
Here's a pic showing resistance to ground on the Red roof plug wire.