AgroVenturesPeru
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2020
- Messages
- 411
TLDR: troubleshooted MPPT remotely with an engineer from this website last year. Conclusion: unit bad/miscalibrated, send to distributor for warranty replacement. Instead of doing this, I just bought a new unit and stuck the old one in a box for ten months. Recently, I sent the old unit to a distributor, and they report that nothing is wrong with the unit.
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Last year, I posted about the problem I was having with my system, and a very knowledgeable member on here came to the rescue. He really went above and beyond to help me, and concluded that the problem was caused by a faulty 250/100 MPPT, which reported voltage roughly 3V higher than every other instrument inlcuding multimeter. A video we took showing this discrepancy:
Since the company I bought the unit from acted pretty shady post-sale, I decided to just go ahead and buy a new unit. I learned my lesson, and ordered off of Amazon USA this time, instead of one of the distributors in this country. I figured I'd rather deal with the international shipping than deal with the lousy cusomer service here. We disconnected the old, glitching unit, stuck it in its box and put it in a drawer, where it sat for the past ten months, meanwhile we installed the new one. It's been about ten months now, and it's been nothing but smooth sailing with the new unit. We didn't make any modifications to our system other than swapping out the MPPTs.
A month ago, my wife and I decided we need to do something with the old unit. Tackling this topic has become akin to unmedicated molar extraction, so we weren't eager. There were only a couple other options available on the V distributor list, beside the company that sold it to us. A couple companies were out of the question, because they just didn't want to deal with the hassle (really honoring their distributorship). We found one that was serious and sent the unit to them at the end of February.
They basically sat on the unit for three weeks, and we periodically checked in, and they mostly ignored our messages. Just yesterday my wife asked what was going on, and they responded that they were done with the "tests" and would send us the report that afternoon. Wow what a coincidence, the same day my wife asks, is the same day they conclude their tests!
Long story short, we received the report and it says the unit was fine.
Not sure if this detail is relevant: The V Pre-RMA bench test instructions say to connect to a 24V battery on the PV side and a 12V battery to the battery side, but their report says they connected to a PV array and an inverter, and shows some VConnect screenshots with input voltage 111V +. But who cares what the instructions say, anway. No photos or videos of their tests, but whatever.
I sent them the same video clip that I linked above and asked them the same thing that I will ask this forum:
How is it possible that the MPPT fixed itself by being in storage for ten months?
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I'm thinking about putting the unit in my carry-on, since I'll be travelling to visit family in Florida in a couple months and looking for a distributor stateside to test the unit. What do you think? If the US distributor says there's no problem, I guess I can just hand the unit off to my folks who live in California and they can work on re-selling the thing. Technically it only has three years of use, and I guess it will still have one more year of warranty left on it for someone who wants to take the gamble. Maybe one of the distributors would be willing to put their money where there mouth is and buy the unit, since they think "the unit is fine."
Do you think customs in the US will hassle me for having an MPPT in my carry-on? Do you think airport security in Peru will want me to confiscate the thing before boarding the plane? It's worth about a grand new, but this one is used obviously. Not sure how that would affect airport/customs shenanigans.
---
Last year, I posted about the problem I was having with my system, and a very knowledgeable member on here came to the rescue. He really went above and beyond to help me, and concluded that the problem was caused by a faulty 250/100 MPPT, which reported voltage roughly 3V higher than every other instrument inlcuding multimeter. A video we took showing this discrepancy:
Since the company I bought the unit from acted pretty shady post-sale, I decided to just go ahead and buy a new unit. I learned my lesson, and ordered off of Amazon USA this time, instead of one of the distributors in this country. I figured I'd rather deal with the international shipping than deal with the lousy cusomer service here. We disconnected the old, glitching unit, stuck it in its box and put it in a drawer, where it sat for the past ten months, meanwhile we installed the new one. It's been about ten months now, and it's been nothing but smooth sailing with the new unit. We didn't make any modifications to our system other than swapping out the MPPTs.
A month ago, my wife and I decided we need to do something with the old unit. Tackling this topic has become akin to unmedicated molar extraction, so we weren't eager. There were only a couple other options available on the V distributor list, beside the company that sold it to us. A couple companies were out of the question, because they just didn't want to deal with the hassle (really honoring their distributorship). We found one that was serious and sent the unit to them at the end of February.
They basically sat on the unit for three weeks, and we periodically checked in, and they mostly ignored our messages. Just yesterday my wife asked what was going on, and they responded that they were done with the "tests" and would send us the report that afternoon. Wow what a coincidence, the same day my wife asks, is the same day they conclude their tests!
Long story short, we received the report and it says the unit was fine.
Not sure if this detail is relevant: The V Pre-RMA bench test instructions say to connect to a 24V battery on the PV side and a 12V battery to the battery side, but their report says they connected to a PV array and an inverter, and shows some VConnect screenshots with input voltage 111V +. But who cares what the instructions say, anway. No photos or videos of their tests, but whatever.
I sent them the same video clip that I linked above and asked them the same thing that I will ask this forum:
How is it possible that the MPPT fixed itself by being in storage for ten months?
---
I'm thinking about putting the unit in my carry-on, since I'll be travelling to visit family in Florida in a couple months and looking for a distributor stateside to test the unit. What do you think? If the US distributor says there's no problem, I guess I can just hand the unit off to my folks who live in California and they can work on re-selling the thing. Technically it only has three years of use, and I guess it will still have one more year of warranty left on it for someone who wants to take the gamble. Maybe one of the distributors would be willing to put their money where there mouth is and buy the unit, since they think "the unit is fine."
Do you think customs in the US will hassle me for having an MPPT in my carry-on? Do you think airport security in Peru will want me to confiscate the thing before boarding the plane? It's worth about a grand new, but this one is used obviously. Not sure how that would affect airport/customs shenanigans.