Going on two years of continuous issues, very poor family living off grid so we can rarely replace or upgrade items. We started out with all in one system from eco worthy off of Amazon and also got a moving tracker for the 6 bifacial panels it came with. We have the house wired with 12v lights (originally just run off a separate battery) 12v water pump, we have a small fridge that was the lowest energy efficient one we could find ( usually draws 100w at most) when the sun is out we charge our phones.
Picture one: original setup with 280ahr batteries, one battery was DOA eco worthy walked through fixing it didn’t work, they sent a replacement battery. Guy on phone confirmed my power draws in the house that when fully charged it should run off the batteries for almost 4 days. From the beginning they would show 💯 and then die completely in the morning. Rarely, it wouldn’t drop under 50% mind you no change to the amount of power we are drawing. Eventually the charge controller melted inside and we got the next one that takes less amps. We also got a smaller and cheaper 12v inverter to replace with the 24v inverter thinking that could be a problem. We seemed to have better luck temporarily. Still same problem, the batteries drop instantly when the sun goes down. We’ve even disconnected the fridge and have had no draw, still drops with inverter off. Oddly over the winter we discovered that running a 12v diesel heater would work all night until the sun came back out. Again, a few days of the week it wouldn’t run all night (same draw, same full charge) no rhyme or reason scratching our heads.
Picture 2+3: we’ve just decided our batteries were shot. Spring is here and the battery goes to 100 in the morning with the sun out, we can use the window ac while the sun is out for a few hours to cool off. But only having the fridge on when the sun moves off the panels it’s lasting only a few hours. A friend has loaned his good batteries (200ahr) and we have trialed this with both inverters we have, tried parallel and series setup but the same thing is happening. Battery will hit 100 but the sun goes down and immediately the percent drops in half. Now these good batteries don’t die overnight like our last ones but will get done to around 20%.
Please advise on what we need to try to replace next so we can plan accordingly. It would be nice to use lights inside when the sun goes down instead of lanterns. It’s doesn’t look like the controller will accept larger wires than what we have already. The battery has 2/0 on it. We are only able to use 5 of 6 panels (brought it to 4 this morning since it had an over current error for the first time) because they are almost 10amps each and we went from a 60a to 40a controller. We regret putting all our money into purchasing eco worthy and are still trying to purchase better brands in the future.
If you have all this I appreciate your time and advice more than you know and pray you have a blessed day!