Alpine 40’ Solar hooksup

[Owlhh]

Hi I have the 2 solar panels on the coach

My batteries are not staying charged

I took the two wires that hooked to ybatteies off and measured 12v
But the positive wire was hooked to the negative terminal on the chassis battery and the negative on the house battery negative. I thought it was not right so I hooked the negative wire to the negative post on chassis battery and the positive wire to positive post and it sparked and now on 12vdc from the wires coming from the solar panel power controller box in the coach. Please help thank you

[paul65k]

Originally Posted by Owlhh

Hi I have the 2 solar panels on the coach

My batteries are not staying charged

I took the two wires that hooked to ybatteies off and measured 12v
But the positive wire was hooked to the negative terminal on the chassis battery and the negative on the house battery negative. I thought it was not right so I hooked the negative wire to the negative post on chassis battery and the positive wire to positive post and it sparked and now on 12vdc from the wires coming from the solar panel power controller box in the coach. Please help thank you

If you are only getting 12V from the circuit that won't charge anything

You need to work back from the wires to the solar controller and measure there and eventually at the panels..... your panels should be putting out around 17-19V and the controller should be outputting around 13-14.5V.

If you are not seeing this kind of voltage you either have a panel, wiring or a controller problem.......... you have the measurement at the output, I would suggest you work your way back to the controller, then up to the panels and see where you are having the issue.

[Ljwt330]

I think you have two issues.

Paul answered the first, mainly that 12v is not adequate to charge the batteries.

Second issue is you probably fried your controller, or popped the fuse, so now you have zero voltage reaching the batteries. Check the fuse on the wire from controller to batteries. With luck, that is all you need to replace.

You did not mention if the batteries were ever charging with the solar arrangement so we don’t know if the wiring was correct.

Remember, many battery banks are wired both in series (+ to -) and in parallel (+ to +, - to -) so the og wiring you changed could be correct.

A picture of your batteries and the location of the OG solar wires will help greatly.