New owner concerns about battery life

On June 10, I set up my new Tempest. The process was incredibly simple and quick. I placed it outside, not permanently mounted, but it gets sunshine a majority of the day, that is, when it is sunny (in the PNW, that can be rare).

Three days later, on Saturday the 13th at 10:10pm at night, the Tempest went offline, I believe the battery voltage was too low.

Sunday morning, with some sunlight, it charged up enough to come back online. But not enough as it went offline again Sunday night.

It didn’t charge up enough to come back online until Monday afternoon. But then Monday night it died again, and still is offline on this overcast day as I type this.

This has me concerned. It’s June. It could only stay online for 3 days before it ran out of power. How in the world is it going to make it thru a PNW Winter, during arguably the most interesting time weather-wise?

PS. station ID: 20905

Welcome to the Weatherflow community chrismac88,

Had a quick look at your station and I think you need to open a ticket with support, your battery doesn’t charge indeed … panel default, bad connection or regulator …

Support will help you and/or send another unit depending on their findings .

Sorry for the problems and hopefully you’ll have a working unit

That is definitely not normal. Even my field test unit with a sub-optimal charging setup (don’t worry, it is a very early test unit) has been doing fine and I’m down in Kelso. That very long dark period we experienced was a good test of things which resulted in improvements in Tempest. WF will take care of you.

Thank you both, it’s good to hear that this isn’t normal, though disappointing that there’s something wrong with mine. Looking forward to get it taken care of.

That said, it did finally come back online at 12:17pm today, and the battery card is currently showing 2.37v

I’m noticing this too, I’ve never gotten above 2.48V since I bought the unit, sits in hours and hours of full sun.

2.48 is a good voltage.

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I would just like to update this thread: weather flow support looked at my Tempest and confirmed that it was not charging when it should. I received my replacement unit yesterday, and all is good. I can see it charging quite a bit during sunny weather—-which it was not doing before.

Station ID: 22063

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