Energy Matters Forums

[angusjones8]

I’ve got a fm80 charger controller charging 16x Winston 200ah cells.
It has been running amazingly for almost 2 years with only needing the generator twice.
I got home from work today and the battery was on 50%!
The CC showed CHARGED where is normally says bulk or float and 0amps going to the battery.
It was overcast and about 6:30 pm but I selected restart on the CC and it went into BULK charge and was putting out 10a.
I believe it did this once before in 2 years.
Does anyone know why it would not recharge the battery once it is drained to say 98%?
Thanks

[davidg]

Have you checked the Outback site for a firmware update? There might be one.......

[angusjones8]

Too easy I’ll look into that.

[australsolarier]

i don't know about fm80, but i have midnite classics, that sometimes play up. can you factory reset them?

[Gordon-Loomberah]

Run through the menu and set it to restart every 90 mins, I think it is restart mode2, without checking the user manual. That way if it does go into weird mode and stop charging, it should re-start in less than 90 mins.

[angusjones8]

Run through the menu and set it to restart every 90 mins, I think it is restart mode2, without checking the user manual. That way if it does go into weird mode and stop charging, it should re-start in less than 90 mins.

Perfect,
The 2 times I’ve caught it doing something stupid I have manually restarted it and it has come good.
Thanks very much for that.

[SandyP]

...
It has been running amazingly for almost 2 years with only needing the generator twice.
.../...
Does anyone know why it would not recharge the battery once it is drained to say 98%?
Thanks

Maybe also check the internal wire (battery / array) connections on the FM80 to ensure they are still done up tight?

[angusjones8]

...
It has been running amazingly for almost 2 years with only needing the generator twice.
.../...
Does anyone know why it would not recharge the battery once it is drained to say 98%?
Thanks

Maybe also check the internal wire (battery / array) connections on the FM80 to ensure they are still done up tight?

Not a bad idea.
I ran a thermal imaging camera over the whole thing a few weeks back and I did find a loose connection in my combiner box for one of my strings of panels. (5 were about 60* and 1 was 85*!)
Everything else seemed not too bad.