For a couple of days, we struggled to keep batteries charged even though Sun was plentiful. Quick investigation revealed the charge controller taking pauses for no apparent reason.
I looked at the charge controller’s screen which had some sort of fault, the manual wasn’t particularly helpful but the screen did show that the battery temperature sensor was reporting 67°C, which was absurd (and checked by hand).
The culprit was the sensor, which held against the batteries inevitably got acid water splashed on while refilling the batteries.
The charge controller does not need to know the battery temperature, but it is better for charging decisions and fault protection. So it can simply be unplugged for a bit, but also… I actually have been slowly accumulating double our solar setup, 18 more panels, 1 more charge controller, 1 more inverter, and all the bits and pieces to put them together. We are slowly getting our ducks in a row for an electric car and this currently not deployed expansion is for it. In any case, I just grabbed the sensor from the extra charge controller and plugged it in and ordered another one. It’s nice to have backups of everything too :).
I also added to the monitoring script so it would bark if no amps were coming in during day hours, this really should never be the case.
