Well Thursday was another frustrating day. I was convinced by Sylvester at Outback batteries that he had the solution for me and so we installed 2 of the Victron Connect MPPT 100/20 units.

These ‘produced’ 1w with the panel in full sunlight – my previous system produced 400w – but the argument was that the battery was so low that it would take time for the battery to come up enough for the full charge to be enabled. It is now 2 days later and little has improved. I am also very aware of the lack of weatherproofness of these units so am suffering from serious buyers remorse.

What I have discovered after trawling around the net is ‘confirmation’ of my suspicion that current backfed through the Elejoy charge controllers led to them failing – https://diysolarforum.com/threads/elejoy-el-md-warning-%E2%9A%A0%EF%B8%8F-high-voltage-backfeed.24619/

I have now ordered 2x Genasun 36V Lithium Solar MPPT’s which seem to have a good reputation, are IP68 rated so waterproof and fixed output set at the batteries capacity so have nothing to configure/go wrong and have a 5 year warranty.

These should be in Katherine at my Warmshowers hosts sometime next week so now to figure what to do meantime. I was taken out to Nitmiluk today, an Aborigine gateway to their lands down the Katherine river with a few local walks and similar to the Milford a several day walk that had been booked out for months. I wandered round one of the local walks and was treated to a meeting with a Black headed Cobra – non venomous apparently.