spirou Posted October 18, 2020 Share Posted October 18, 2020 About a month since last time I plugged into 230V (and that came after several months of using only solar) I saw the charger outputting 19A at the start but dropping down to a few A within a minute (battery was at 12.3V at start). I came back half an hour later and saw that charger output was 0A and the battery was at 12.6V Turning the charger off/on with the button on the unit saw the fan turning on briefly for 1-2s and a "spike" of 2-6A output, then everything quickly went back to 0. This is pretty much the same as with the first unit we had replaced. I changed the 30A blade fuse (tried 4 of them just to be sure) in the unit, and the 3.15A glass tube fuse on the 230V side, and the 45A midi fuse at the battery, knowing that sometimes fuses seem visually OK but they're dead, and there was no difference. It turns on (near) full power for a few seconds then goes to 0, 10s later it tries again and on and on and on. Must have a safety switch that detects increased resistance and shuts down. It's not overheating as the fan doesn't turn on other than on first attempt. Anyway, the charger seems to have malfunctioned with what seems to be a bad connection somewhere and as with the unit before that was dead on arrival I can't tell where exactly in the circuitry the problem lies. Nothing is visually wrong. Frankly, based on how little we used the 230V charger over the past year ( at most 20 days total ,since new) I struggle to find a reasonable explanation. First time I see something die from "non use" I expect to get a replacement as it is inside warranty period but also thinking about alternatives. Would be nice to have more space though to fit a nice victron multiplus that would replace the charger and Phoenix inverter. Every decent charger I look at is physically larger than CBE and the space is ridiculously tight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikefitz Posted October 18, 2020 Share Posted October 18, 2020 Victron with 5 year warranty. ( and can be configured for your future Lithium battery !). https://www.12voltplanet.co.uk/victron-blue-smart-ip22-battery-charger-12v-30a-1-output-bluetooth-built-in.html Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spirou Posted October 19, 2020 Author Share Posted October 19, 2020 Just don't have the space bigger than the CBE unless I do some major reorganization which I'm not quite prepared to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spirou Posted October 25, 2020 Author Share Posted October 25, 2020 Slight update although still no resolution. I went troubleshooting today and ended up changing two shortest cables in the run, from charger to DS distribution unit as that seemed to be the problem when I used jump leads to bypass the sections one by one. There was no visible or measurable issue with them and the charger started back up fine when I put new ones in. It worked normally at least 30min then I left it on to do other things. When I came back several hours later the charger was again in fault mode so back to square one. None of the cable sections shows any corrosion or bad crimps, resistance measurements under load show no obvious bad connections. Still a mystery . Sadly don't have an IR camera to maybe discover a hot spot but then again, charger shuts down so fast there probably wouldn't be any obvious overheating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninian Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 Hi, From what you've described it looks like you have a dry joint on a circuit board. You would need to remove the board and look at it for signs of burning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.