Leonardo Chen's posts

Thanks for the suggestion. I verified that the charge controller is working properly. I connected a fan to it, and it turns on.

I will try to find a AC battery charger and see if that is able to power the battery up. I'll let you know how it goes.

If I use the solar panel on the charge controller and the battery the voltage goes up slowly to about 8V and then it stops there. As soon as I remove the panel, the voltage on the battery drops to 0.5V.
I hope I can save this battery....

Hello

I have a small solar panel I use to charge a battery to power a water pump.
-30W solar panel
-Morningstar Sunguard 4.5A, 12V Pwm Charge Cntrlr

I didn't use it for about a year, and it's now completely depleted. I put it out in a sunny day, but to my surprise, it didn't charge.
I read 20V on the input of the charge controller (panel), and 0V on the output (battery).

Is this evidence that the charge controller is defective and I need to buy a new one, or is this caused because I made the mistake of letting the battery go completely dead?

I ask because I noticed that other charge controllers such as the Morningstar SunKeeper has the ability to "restart from zero voltage (boot strap mode) to recover the system in case of a fully depleted battery"

Anything I can do to get this back on track?
Thanks
Leo