Solar drops of completely during the day
Hi guys,
My parents have a Smartsolar MPPT 100/30 with a small (maybe 150W panel) in their campervan charging a LiFePo4 battery.
For the last few months it has hardly been charging the battery at all (not been above 10Wh). The PV voltage gets up to around 20V in the morning as the sun comes up and starts to charge, but then completely drops off during the day before recovering in the evening as the sun goes down again.
Any ideas what might be causing this? Could it be the unit struggling to find the max power point?
My Dad reports it 'stopped working' after a firmware update. I have tried a reset from the app with no success. Maybe I will try completely disconnecting it next.
Update: After the PV voltage dropped off today, I disconnected the panel and measured the open circuit voltage and got nothing. I think this confirms the panel has failed.