Solar not charging lithium batteries Seneca

[Seek and Enjoy]

The dealer installed my 1200w of solar panels and hooked them up to the AGM batteries that came with the coach. We used it for a few days and all seemed fine. Then they installed 4 re-lion Lithium batteries. My understanding is that the solar will charge the batteries but since the converter that allows the generator or shore power to charge the batteries doesn’t work on lithium batteries, I would have to make a manual setting on my MPPT controller each time I connect to shore power or want to use the generator to charge the batteries. Now that they have dropped in the lithium and have us hooked to shore power, the lithium batteries have gone from 98% to 80% in 24 hours. We’re sitting in full sun on a 90 degree day and the batteries aren’t charging. Could it be a setting on my MPPT controller? It’s a Victron Energy SmartSolar MPPT 150/85-Tr Charge Controller w/ Bluetooth.

[Les7h]

Maybe when they changed the batteries - a fuse may have blown or something didn’t get hooked up correctly ( a lot of possibilities ) is the monitor showing any charging amps and voltage?
You shouldn’t need to use the house charger when on shore power or generator because the 12 volt usage will be very little ( lights and maybe water pump and heater ) and you have a massive amount of solar - we have 540 watts and until we added a residential refrigerator- we never needed more charge than the solar provided - now when dry camping in cloudy weather we will have to run the generator some Les

[Seek and Enjoy]

Originally Posted by Les7h

Maybe when they changed the batteries - a fuse may have blown or something didn’t get hooked up correctly ( a lot of possibilities ) is the monitor showing any charging amps and voltage?
You shouldn’t need to use the house charger when on shore power or generator because the 12 volt usage will be very little ( lights and maybe water pump and heater ) and you have a massive amount of solar - we have 540 watts and until we added a residential refrigerator- we never needed more charge than the solar provided - now when dry camping in cloudy weather we will have to run the generator some Les

Here’s a shot of what’s currently going on. Can’t figure out what’s drawing power.

[Les7h]

Very strange - good voltage but everything else looks bad - I could be wrong but I don’t think that it’s possible to use enough 12 volt power to be using 1200 watts of solar and be -6 amps - is your inverter on? What are the readings after dark? Possibly a defective battery? ( it appeared to work with the AGM batteries ) the relay shows to be “ open “ ( is it supposed to be open? I would think it should be “ closed “ ) I don’t have a relay so I don’t know
I suggest you make the installer find and repair the problem
Les

[Screwby]

Did you set your solar controller to Li Batteries? My Renogy controller has separate settings for charging Li Batteries as opposed to Flooded batteries. 6ah draw can’t be anything too big, possibly all your 12v items together equaling that. I’m assuming that reading is as you are currently using the camper and that everything isn’t shut down? If your still not charging there is an issue between the controller and batteries because the panels seem to be providing plenty of voltage.

[Bullitt6283]

The solar controller and the converter need to work properly with Li batteries.
The voltage coming out of Li batteries is higher than the voltage coming out of lead-acid batteries, and it remains high until the Li batteries are nearly dead.

The problem is, because the voltage stays high, the controller or converter don't even know that the batteries need charged.
So they don't try.

For Battle Born batteries, for the Bulk/Absorption stage charging, the ideal voltage is between 14.2v-14.6v.