What am I doing wrong?

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I set up my solar system the day before yesterday. 2 100watt Renogy panels, 40a mppt controller with mt5 meter, 155ah Vmaxtanks agm. Whynter 45quart freezer set in low setting and 10*f drains the battery to shutoff threshold in a few hours at night and did the same thing again today while it was cloudy out. Pulled freezer off 12v and have running on 120v from house now. Endless breeze 12v fan at 1 battery stayed at 98-100 soc on meter during day use. Putting can on 3 for 1-2 hours with cloudy sky took battery to 70-75 soc on meter.

Is my battery draining too fast? Do I just not have enough ah? I read reviews/forum posts saying people pulled off similar set ups with less.

Pease advise.
 
What sort of specs -particularly amps - does the whyntner list, and approximately how long out of every hour is it running?  10 degrees F is using it as a freezer, not a fridge, and it will take quite a bit more power that way.
 
10F is definitely freezer temp although a little high for true deep freeze - 0F is the recommended setting for deep freeze.

40F is the appropriate setting for fridge temp.

I have two Whynter 65 qt units, 1 set up as a fridge and one as a freezer and without doing scientific measurements I'd say that the freezer uses at least 5 times the power at 0F that the fridge uses at 40F. I also have 4 - 6V Trojan batteries in the bank and use a generator at least every 4 days even when in Arizona in full sunshine to keep the battery bank happy.

I'd suspect that you're not getting the battery to the fullest charge, particularly on cloudy days.

Try charging the battery with another charging source (shore power/generator and an appropriate charger) and get it full to the brim - then set the fridge at normal temp and try again.

If you're trying to run the Whynter as a deep freeze, I'd say you don't have enough battery bank.
 
I have seen from 4.5ah claims (maybe fridge setting) to 6amp draw on 40 mins/hour. The 6a 40min was in south FL at 10*. I haven't sat with it to time it but it is running nearly all the time. It is not very loud and difficult for me to hear unless right by the vent. Would a fridge setting make a dramatic difference?

Thanks for responding.

Edit: thanks Almost There! Fridge attempt it will be. By the way this started from a day of solar charge on new battery with no load. It showed full charge on meter. Then added load and quick drain occurred.
 
I would first try just charging the battery until you are sure it is full. Get the Whyntner cold with a gallon of water inside to act as temperature buffer before running it on your battery. I think you need more battery.
 
The reviews of the MT5 meter on Amazon suggest that a lot of people are having accuracy problems with it.  Do you have a decent digital multimeter?  I would use that to determine whether the battery is actually full or not.  Should see between 12.6 V and 12.7 ish V when it is fully charged and at rest.
 
Weight said:
I would first try just charging the battery until you are sure it is full. Get the Whyntner cold with a gallon of water inside to act as temperature buffer before running it on your battery. I think you need more battery.

I was not sure if I needed more battery or to settle for less cooling. Battery was full as far as I could tell. Full day charge from solar on new battery. Freezer was on shore power to -8* fast freeze. As soon as I hooked it up the battery soc quickly plummets. Freezer was originally set to 0* and low voltage. By 11pm freezer shut off due to low battery setting. 

Any guesses on will I still need more battery if I go with 40* fridge?
 
Optimistic Paranoid said:
The reviews of the MT5 meter on Amazon suggest that a lot of people are having accuracy problems with it.  Do you have a decent digital multimeter?  I would use that to determine whether the battery is actually full or not.  Should see between 12.6 V and 12.7 ish V when it is fully charged and at rest.

12.6 at rest earlier today.
 
what type of battery is this? AGM or flooded? voltage alone will not tell state of charge. it sounds to me like your battery was never fully charged. is your solar working? highdesertranger
 
I'll wager that if SternWake read this he'd have more than a few lines of comments about your situation.

I'm no rv electrician however when you say that the battery drops right after a load, "[font=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]As soon as I hooked it up the battery soc quickly plummets" that your problem is with the actual battery. Either it's specific gravity reading isn't really fully charged, you have a dead cell or something of the sort. A freezer/fridg should not draw down a 155 amp hour battery like that. Not that quickly anyway. [/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]A unit like that, set to 10 degrees should be somewhere around 4.5 to 5 amp draw however I can't see that as continuous. Don't know what the actual duty cycle would be however even 12 hours of that x 5 amps (ridiculous draw) wouldn't kill your battery.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]SW, where are you SW?[/font]
 
I suspect fridge is shutting off prematurely to too thin of wire to ciggy receptacle and ciggy plug and wire to whytner from ciggy plug.

Too much voltage drop triggering low voltage shut off on fridge

Chop off plug. Wire to fuse block.

Set charge controller to hold 14.5ish volts. Hold until amps taper to 0.75.

If it reverts to float voltage before this battery definitely not getting full charge.
 
SternWake said:
I suspect fridge is shutting off prematurely to too thin of wire to ciggy receptacle  and ciggy plug and wire to whytner from ciggy plug.

Too much voltage drop triggering low voltage shut off on fridge

Chop off plug. Wire to fuse block.

Set charge controller to hold 14.5ish volts. Hold until amps taper to 0.75.

If it reverts to float voltage  before this battery definitely not getting full charge.

This is possible. Whynter battery meter tends to drop very quickly once it has cycled a few times. It will say 11.4 or so and the cutoff is 10.8, that drop happens as soon as the compressor kicks on and then it will shut off. Also the EB fan caused similar drop on same ciggy plugs on high setting. 
If I rewire with 10awg spanning 12-20' (depending on direction wires are ran) to a 15amp fuse on the block would that be adequate? If so, does my system have the ability to sustain this setup properly? Should I run at fridge temps or should it be able to handle the freezer draw once wires are of proper quality? 
Sorry for all the questions but you may understand my hesitation at cutting the plug when I am not convinced my 155ah 200w can run it, perhaps I should return for refund and not cut plug which might negate that option? I would love to have it and have it work right, but if it is unrealistic I would rather cut my losses and pay for return shipping.
Thanks you to everyone for the brilliant input.
 
I run a compressor fridge and much more on 90ah of battery and 200 watts of solar.

If cord cutting is not desirable then perhaps run fatter gauge individual wires to the 12v dc input on whytner and keep original cord whole for portable duty when driving a different vehicle. Need to identify + and - wires

how long and thin are wires to ciggy receptacle now?

are you obstructing cooling unit vents? What is ambient temperature?
 
The wires currently running are really thin coming out of ciggy receptacles like maybe 16-18 guage, I figured since the original wires were so thin splicing 14guage would be sufficient since it's only a 15amp line. I'm okay cutting plug if it will work, though I am going to try running it on my blue sea outlet that is wired with 10awg today and evaluate results.

Ambient temps were in low 90s yesterday.
 
Two tangential points. If you deep freeze during the day on panel power you can disconnect at night and not need any additional battery. If it cloudy for a couple of days I'll do a town day charging up with the driving and hanging out in the library, catching a movie, or somesuch.
 
When the volt meter on the fridge says 11.4 what does the voltmeter say connected directly to the battery?  If battery voltage is 12.2 or above the wire to the fridge is too small or too long.  If the battery voltage is less than 12 the battery needs charging regardless what the MT5 says.  If you don't have a meter, get one.  Amazon has a bunch under $10.  Harbor Freight has one that is sometimes free with a coupon.
 
 
90s will cause fridge to consume a lot more energy than 70's, as will as 12f setting, but the 10 awg wire blue seas receptacle should likely solve the low voltge cut off.

The MT5 meter is not really to be trusted in terms of battery capacity remaining. it only has an idea of the loads based on what is wired to go through controller.

A big inverter cannot be wired through the controller and its load would not be recognized nor displayed.

Instead of going by % remaining, what is the voltage reading on meter when the fridge was cutting out?

The panel meter is nice for displaying what the solar panel is making, and can perhaps monitor smaller loads wires through the controller, and make a guestimate as to remaining percentage, but a real battery monitor has a shunt, which is a precision resistor with a known value. The more amps it passes the more voltage drops across it, and the drop can then infer amperage. The monitor then monitors actual total amps into and out of the battery. the MT-5 meter cannot do this.

An Ammeter is a wonderful tool for learning. It can show how much the battery is accepting at a certain voltage when charging, or another way of putting it, it will show how much voltage X amount of charging amps have been able to bring the battery to. Under discharge an ammeter will show just how much load there is on the battery.

I recommend people carry a digital multimeter, and go one step further and get the clamp on AC/DC Ammeter such as this:

https://www.amazon.com/Uni-T-B4Q094-UT210E-Current-Capacitance/dp/B00O1Q2HOQ

Clamp the meter over any single wire, the + or the -, not both at once, and it will show amperage flowing through that wire/cable.

If your Whytner compressor is not functioning properly it might be drawing way more amperage than the 4.5amps/ 65 watts it specs.

That 4.5 amps would be at 14.4v though, at 12.6v 65 watts is 5.15 amps. If the clampmeter showed much more than 5.5 amps 15 seconds after compressor fired up, I would return the whytner. The compressor will always require about 65 watts when running so the lower the voltage it receives the more amperage has to flow through the wiring. the more amperage that flows the more heating and resistance and voltage drop occurs.


If one is using alternator to charge house battery, then one can clamp the meter over the cable from alternator to see how much it is delivering to battery when engine is running.

The DC clampmeter is a wonderful diagnostic and learning tool when learning to live on battery power. the MT-5s limitations are more confusing than helpful to a newb, in my opinion.
 
First thing I did was test bore seas outlet, worked fine. Because I really didn't want to cut the permanent fan plug (whynter is easily replaced) I wired in new 12v receptacles with 10awg. Display meter on freezer reads much better and isn't shutting down. Had some clouds yesterday so I was able to see pseudo-nighttime operation. It looked fine. Over night the freezer held strong even with fan on low. Thanks for all the support!
 
Good news.

The Blue seas 12v plug really mates firmly inside their receptacle. I'd recommend having one of those on hand to wire in when/before the whytner 12v plug inevitably starts acting up.


I think it is cumulatively hard on the electronics in the compressor controller when the 12v plugs become intermittent, so it might be wise to eliminate that possibility sooner rather than later, in the interests of fridge longevity.

Plug.jpg


They are very easy to wire up, but getting 12 gauge into them might require some finesse ( a file) where wires exit the back of the plug.
 
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