We installed a solar setup for a Centurion D10 gate motor.

 

This is the components

 

2 x CNBM 160 Watt Monokristallyn sonpanele @ 2 x Batterye, 12VDC AGM 18Ah @
1 x Laai Reguleerder, 12/24VDC 30A 

 

So this sunny afternoon the gate seized up, and displayed an Over-voltage error, 5 beeps in succession, something also smelled burnt, it seems 28v limit was exceeded of the gate or something?  Can anyone help me think how I can get this fixed?

Thanks

Edited September 16, 20223 yr by bloupotlood

1 hour ago, bloupotlood said:

We installed a solar setup for a Centurion D10 gate motor.

 

This is the components

 

2 x CNBM 160 Watt Monokristallyn sonpanele @ 2 x Batterye, 12VDC AGM 18Ah @
1 x Laai Reguleerder, 12/24VDC 30A 

 

So this sunny afternoon the gate seized up, and displayed an Over-voltage error, 5 beeps in succession, something also smelled burnt, it seems 28v limit was exceeded of the gate or something?  Can anyone help me think how I can get this fixed?

Thanks

Get the motor to Centurion to check. They might indicate it got a too high DC voltage. Once sorted you can check that the solar controller is set for not charging higher than 27.8V.

Not enough info on the charge controller you used and if it does stop charging at the right voltage. It will have to be measured before putting the motor in service again.

40 minutes ago, Scorp007 said:

Get the motor to Centurion to check. They might indicate it got a too high DC voltage. Once sorted you can check that the solar controller is set for not charging higher than 27.8V.

Not enough info on the charge controller you used and if it does stop charging at the right voltage. It will have to be measured before putting the motor in service again.

Thank you, it was reading over 30V this afternoon when the incident occured (pic was taken around 4-5pm).  I'm not sure if it was in between rounds of loadshedding, but someone opened the gate partially then wanted to close it again, then 5 beeps, overvoltage.

53 minutes ago, bloupotlood said:

Thank you, it was reading over 30V this afternoon when the incident occured

You probably need to change the settings on the charge controller. For some reason they sometimes default to 30V. There should be a setting for what voltage to turn the PV off. Set that a bit lower than what you require because it will probably overshoot.

10 hours ago, jumper said:

You probably need to change the settings on the charge controller. For some reason they sometimes default to 30V. There should be a setting for what voltage to turn the PV off. Set that a bit lower than what you require because it will probably overshoot.

Thanks!  Will check it out today, it's tricky because you want to wait for full sun power (so probably mid day) here so I can make sure it properly adheres to limits set.  I will keep in mind what you said of "under" setting it!

Thanks again guys.

36 minutes ago, bloupotlood said:

Thanks!  Will check it out today, it's tricky because you want to wait for full sun power (so probably mid day) here so I can make sure it properly adheres to limits set.  I will keep in mind what you said of "under" setting it!

Thanks again guys.

You don't need full power from the PV or not even PV at all. As long as the battery is connected you can do all the settings required. The controller must just have power. Set the charge voltage to 27.7V.

If it does not stop charging at the set voltage then the controller is faulty. They tend to keep on charging when going faulty and pass nearly the full PV voltage to the batteries.

Edited September 17, 20223 yr by Scorp007

Get an MPPT controller, it seems that the PWM is not working well in this instance - my hypothesis is that the panels can provide too much current for the batteries to sufficiently filter.

3 minutes ago, P1000 said:

Get an MPPT controller, it seems that the PWM is not working well in this instance - my hypothesis is that the panels can provide too much current for the batteries to sufficiently filter.

With 13A the maximum power from the panels and a 30A controller it should function correctly. Having said that due to the cost of damage to batteries and motor I would also rather get a Epever 20A MPPT going at about R1400 than rely on the PWM controller. This MPPT has about 16 settings to fine tune via comms cable and can also do lithium.

8 minutes ago, Scorp007 said:

You don't need full power from the PV or not even PV at all. As long as the battery is connected you can do all the settings required. The controller must just have power. Set the charge voltage to 27.7V.

@Scorp007is correct here, the controller just needs power to change the setting as you are setting voltage. You should just need to cycle the setting to "PV Off" or something similar, that will be the setting you are looking for.

Just now, Scorp007 said:

With 13A the maximum power from the panels and a 30A controller it should function correctly.

No, the issue is not the capacity of the controller. The issue is that it connects the PV directly to the battery when the PWM is in the "on" state. So if the battery internal resistance is too high, the voltage can go quite high before the controller switches the PWM signal off again. With a PWM controller, the battery is the filter. An MPPT should eliminate this kind of problem completely.

1 minute ago, P1000 said:

No, the issue is not the capacity of the controller. The issue is that it connects the PV directly to the battery when the PWM is in the "on" state. So if the battery internal resistance is too high, the voltage can go quite high before the controller switches the PWM signal off again. With a PWM controller, the battery is the filter. An MPPT should eliminate this kind of problem completely.

You are spot on. I always wonder if the battery is good enough to filter those full panel voltages provided by the PWM controllers. I rate it fine for charging the battery but not if sensitive equipment is connected. I have used 3 x PWM controllers but prefer the extra power and control of a MPPT. Just like my smaller inverters I just don't like modified sine for any load and go for pure sine wave.

18 minutes ago, Scorp007 said:

You are spot on. I always wonder if the battery is good enough to filter those full panel voltages provided by the PWM controllers. I rate it fine for charging the battery but not if sensitive equipment is connected. I have used 3 x PWM controllers but prefer the extra power and control of a MPPT. Just like my smaller inverters I just don't like modified sine for any load and go for pure sine wave.

I know nothing about these controllers, but what i infer here is that this controller is a charger predominantly, and it doesnt regulate for  load output. Is that correct.? 

1 hour ago, bloupotlood said:

you want to wait for full sun power (so probably mid day) here so I can make sure it properly adheres to limits set

Sorry, just to clarify, you only need power to change the setting, but you are right, it is best to check what is it doing at midday when the sun is strong and the battery is probably full as this is when the PV turns on and off and tends to overshoot.

7 minutes ago, BritishRacingGreen said:

I know nothing about these controllers, but what i infer here is that this controller is a charger predominantly, and it doesnt regulate for  load output. Is that correct.? 

You are right. It does however have a load output that can be used to disconnect loads when battery becomes discharged to protect equipment. It can also be used to switch lights off at dawn when PV comes in. The drawback is it cannot provide current higher than its rating. This means no high start current devices can be connected. They connect on the battery directly.

Edited September 17, 20223 yr by Scorp007

1 hour ago, Scorp007 said:

You don't need full power from the PV or not even PV at all. As long as the battery is connected you can do all the settings required. The controller must just have power. Set the charge voltage to 27.7V.

If it does not stop charging at the set voltage then the controller is faulty. They tend to keep on charging when going faulty and pass nearly the full PV voltage to the batteries.

The tech is on his way from the solar company this morning, some notes, I noticed a bad burning smell yesterday when the motor gave the overvoltage error, it's still working fine however, another thing, the intercom is connected to the gate motor, it's making weird and loud noises in loadshedding.

2 minutes ago, bloupotlood said:

it's making weird and loud noises in loadshedding.

Likely also the PWM controller.

Stupid question, but shouldn't they wire the "load out" ports on the charge controller to the Gate Motor instead of just going to batteries and from batteries to gate motor?

1 minute ago, bloupotlood said:

Stupid question, but shouldn't they wire the "load out" ports on the charge controller to the Gate Motor instead of just going to batteries and from batteries to gate motor?

This is exactly what I was going to comment on after @Scorp007mentioned them. It would be better to run them from there imo.

4 minutes ago, bloupotlood said:

Stupid question, but shouldn't they wire the "load out" ports on the charge controller to the Gate Motor instead of just going to batteries and from batteries to gate motor?

You don't have to but it will be good to use the load output to protect the batteries from over discharge. Due to the size of the batteries the surge start current should be below 30A. One will not do it if the controller was say a 10A controller. Not sure if Centurion use a soft start on their gates.

Edited September 17, 20223 yr by Scorp007

10 hours ago, Scorp007 said:

You don't have to but it will be good to use the load output to protect the batteries from over discharge. Due to the size of the batteries the surge start current should be below 30A. One will not do it if the controller was say a 10A controller. Not sure if Centurion use a soft start on their gates.

We tried connecting it to the load-out, but it's ignoring its limits, just pukes out whatever the input is, I think the smell yesterday was this little cheap charge controller that got killed, they're going to bring me a Victron / something else now.

UPDATE: Turns out it was a "dud" battery (one of the two) which caused the chaos.  Hopefully things work more smoothly now.

Edited September 17, 20223 yr by bloupotlood

2 questions, what would happen if you put 2 chargers on battery at same time for the idea of solar during day and electrical at night? And how can you change low voltage cutoff on d10?

13 hours ago, corneille said:

2 questions, what would happen if you put 2 chargers on battery at same time for the idea of solar during day and electrical at night? And how can you change low voltage cutoff on d10?

Normally 2 chargers would work normally. Each will see the battery state and charged based on that. But.... I have found current very high when using a transformer based power supply in parallel with a Axpert. Funny that the power supply only showed the high current in the negative lead.