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Rant: EG4 48v 100ah battery has faulty BMS. Signature solar customer service is TERRIBLE

Yes that is what I thought from reading this thread. I just tried to power a golf cart with a server rack battery (has the same exact BMS as the eg4) and it tripped the over current protection. It did not surprise me at all because that's what happens when the battery current supply is undersized. So I added a second battery and it works.

That's induction loads for you. Just make the battery bigger and problem solved. Not that mysterious of a problem.
It’s not that simple. Multiple people with four or more packs still seem to have this issue.
 
Just want to chime in here... Signature Solar definitely has the worst customer service I have encountered in many years... and I wont be buying from them again.

I ordered 4 x Eg4 6500ex inverters and 12 x Eg4 batteries. Spent a lot of momey. Got the inverters last week and installed them, and only 1 of them was working properly. Not knowing if it was my own mistake or not I emailed tech support and received no response. after a day or two i then emailed normal customer support.

The next day customer support emailed me telling me they have been discussing on my issue all morning and needed more information, so i sent them a video of the issues.

A few hours later, customer support emailed telling me to return the units I would need to pay a 30% restock fee and pay for shipping. I said woah hat wasn't fair if the product was defective... their response was because said I refused to receive technical support so they were going to charge me.

My mouth hit the floor... I sent them videos, emails of the issues, with no response.. how was that refusing to troubleshoot? so i asked them just that.. how was I refusing technical support.

They emailed back the next day that sorry they must of been thinking of a different customer... o my god i thought i was in the twilight zone. Then they emailed and said sorry the tech support guy wasnt in that day ( after remember they said they were working with tech support all morning )

So fast forward a day.. customer support emailed me and promised that Adam their top technical support would reach out to me that morning and help. Adam never contacted me... Nobody from technical support ever responded. I emailed again yesterday to inform them nobody has contacted me... and its been crickets.

So yeah... I know these units are new to market... i make electronics for a living so I know new things take a while to work out the demons... I have a lot of patience for that. But the horrendous customer service... dealbreaker.

Update.. they must be reading this forum because some guy named Alex just emailed me from tech support... but of course now its too late ive taken the eg4s down and put back up my 6548s and i will build those out.
This and other recent threads about poor customer service have me really concerned. I am wanting to purchase the components for my soar system very soon, and Signature Solar's Eg4 inverters and batteries were the top choice for my "budget" build (the more expensive build being a Sol-Ark/Fortress e-vault based system).

Can others shed light on this? Is this a few bad situations out of 1000's of satisfied customers, or is Signature Solar just a bad bet until they fix their support issues? SOK any better?

Thanks for any and all replies.
 
This and other recent threads about poor customer service have me really concerned. I am wanting to purchase the components for my soar system very soon, and Signature Solar's Eg4 inverters and batteries were the top choice for my "budget" build (the more expensive build being a Sol-Ark/Fortress e-vault based system).

Can others shed light on this? Is this a few bad situations out of 1000's of satisfied customers, or is Signature Solar just a bad bet until they fix their support issues? SOK any better?

Thanks for any and all replies.
Just the latest story of poor service from signature solar. Doesn't seem to matter how much you spend, they just aren't very good at resolving issues. If you're really lucky, the owner (James) will insult you on a public forum after taking thousands of your dollars!

SOK all day over eg4. I own both. Better battery and even better vendor. Just talk with Dexter at current connected and he will get you taken care of. It's not a coincidence that he sells thousands of batteries and you never hear about stories like this. These shit shows are a daily occurrence with signature solar and eg4 products.
 
Just the latest story of poor service from signature solar. Doesn't seem to matter how much you spend, they just aren't very good at resolving issues. If you're really lucky, the owner (James) will insult you on a public forum after taking thousands of your dollars!

SOK all day over eg4. I own both. Better battery and even better vendor. Just talk with Dexter at current connected and he will get you taken care of. It's not a coincidence that he sells thousands of batteries and you never hear about stories like this. These shit shows are a daily occurrence with signature solar and eg4 products.

I almost bought SOK instead of Eg4 but they were out of stock. Damn. I guess they probably were out of stock for a reason :)

Anyways lessons learned. I'm still new to all this stuff so yeah signature was a bad experience and it cost me a lot of money to find that out, but I am really excited about being off grid ( luckily by choice ) so if it takes me a few attempts and a few systems to get to where I want to be so be it. I've made more expensive mistakes before.

So yeah... in summary what I learned from this, lesson number one is that the company you buy from is almost, if not more important than the product you buy, and second lesson is to always test each component first before you spend 3 days on installing wiring and conduit etc :)
 
I almost bought SOK instead of Eg4 but they were out of stock. Damn. I guess they probably were out of stock for a reason :)

Anyways lessons learned. I'm still new to all this stuff so yeah signature was a bad experience and it cost me a lot of money to find that out, but I am really excited about being off grid ( luckily by choice ) so if it takes me a few attempts and a few systems to get to where I want to be so be it. I've made more expensive mistakes before.

So yeah... in summary what I learned from this, lesson number one is that the company you buy from is almost, if not more important than the product you buy, and second lesson is to always test each component first before you spend 3 days on installing wiring and conduit etc :)
Way to stay positive! I'm 100% off grid and love the independence.
 
Appreciate the sympathy. At least the batteries kind of work... i mean the BMS communication is spotty at best as can be seen by all the comments and the videos signature solar is putting out the last few weeks to address with no clear resolve... but to be honest just like Will , i was not planning on using the communication anyways. Im just grateful i didnt sell off the Mpp 6548s these were supposed to replace... those two MPP 6548 units have served me very well over the almost year or so.. no problems.

I guess on the bright side.. at least the 6500ex are relatively light so the garbage man wont break his back getting rid of them :) View attachment 100769
I don't understand why you would not just buy two more MPP's to begin with.
 
I don't understand why you would not just buy two more MPP's to begin with.
That's a good question... I have a lot of panels and the increased double the voltage handling of the 6500ex would allow me to use less strings and to rid the combiner box. That was my initial thought at least. In reality though I think actually going the other way and spreading the panels in more groups across the additional PV inputs that I get with 4 inverters may actually provide better results because i do have some shading on my roof. That was just my theory... I could have that completely wrong though, and I never got far enough to test it :).

But your answer is the right one.. I should of just bought two more MPPs
 
Just want to chime in here... Signature Solar definitely has the worst customer service I have encountered in many years... and I wont be buying from them again.

I ordered 4 x Eg4 6500ex inverters and 12 x Eg4 batteries. Spent a lot of momey. Got the inverters last week and installed them, and only 1 of them was working properly. Not knowing if it was my own mistake or not I emailed tech support and received no response. after a day or two i then emailed normal customer support.

The next day customer support emailed me telling me they have been discussing on my issue all morning and needed more information, so i sent them a video of the issues.

A few hours later, customer support emailed telling me to return the units I would need to pay a 30% restock fee and pay for shipping. I said woah hat wasn't fair if the product was defective... their response was because said I refused to receive technical support so they were going to charge me.

My mouth hit the floor... I sent them videos, emails of the issues, with no response.. how was that refusing to troubleshoot? so i asked them just that.. how was I refusing technical support.

They emailed back the next day that sorry they must of been thinking of a different customer... o my god i thought i was in the twilight zone. Then they emailed and said sorry the tech support guy wasnt in that day ( after remember they said they were working with tech support all morning )

So fast forward a day.. customer support emailed me and promised that Adam their top technical support would reach out to me that morning and help. Adam never contacted me... Nobody from technical support ever responded. I emailed again yesterday to inform them nobody has contacted me... and its been crickets.

So yeah... I know these units are new to market... i make electronics for a living so I know new things take a while to work out the demons... I have a lot of patience for that. But the horrendous customer service... dealbreaker.

Update.. they must be reading this forum because some guy named Alex just emailed me from tech support... but of course now its too late ive taken the eg4s down and put back up my 6548s and i will build those out.
I have been hinting about the hardware issues and the lack of service and I figured James would be too greedy to Invest more money in anything that he could not put a markup on and since CS and Warranties are not money making items I knew this would happen.
So i have just been letting this Train Wreck play out, knowing what the outcome will be.

It's kind of unfortunate that Will Prowse got duped into making that video on the EG4, he really thought they were a massive upgrade on the 6548, especially when he was told they were UL listed which ended up to not be true. BTW have you seen David Poz latest Video? Since Signature Solar gave him the boot, it looks like he has gone Ferrile.
 
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I went back and looked at the Will video. He says they are UL Listed. Doesn’t he?

I’m confused about the UL listing. Can you shed any light?

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UL Certified is pretty much useless. It's just an independent lab running a bunch of test of the main things you specify and then checking the basic safety of the Unit. Its a certification of the Unit itself that basically says it does what they say it will do. It does not delve into the reliability or safety of the unit in depth or the safety of the parts that make up the unit.

UL Listed means that UL Lab themselves have looked at the Inverter. They start by looking at the Parts that make up the Inverter from the BOM list and the documentation you have to supply on those parts.

So let me put this into context. If you have an Inverter and you say it has a 40 Amp Breaker on it. The UL CERTIFICATION company will just check that you have a 40 Amp breaker and that it trips at around 40 Amps when they test the Inverter. They don't care about reliability of the breaker itself, they are just evaluation the Inverter to see that it does what the company says it will do. (Breaker tripped at 40 Amps, Check)

To be UL TESTED that inverter company must first submit the paper work for all of the major components in the Inverter. Even before the UL labs test the Inverter they will check the components specifications. If you have a 40 Amp breaker they want to see that 40 Amp Breakers UL Compliance data. That data for the breaker will say the breaker trips at 42 Amps and can reliably do so at least 1000 times as specified by the manufacturer and it will always fail in an open state and is made of non flammable material. UL will then move on to capacitors, plug connectors, fuses etc. making sure all of them meet safety compliance standards. The BOM list once approved will now be compared against what is inside the units sent for testing to make sure they match.

Once this is all done and they know that everything inside the Inverter has been certified to work safely and reliably they will then start testing the Inverter Itself based on the specifications presented but in a much more rigorous manor than the Certification done by TUV etc. If the Inverter can pass things like dead shorts on the output without flaming and it can pass a whole host of test standards that are from organizations like the NEC and others then it will pass and get listed. This is not a cheap procedure, it is in fact very expensive and not worth it for most Chinese companies. Mainly because the parts they use inside are not UL compliant and to buy parts that would double the price of the Inverter.
 
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To test my understanding,

“UL Listed” only.

No other words “count” in terms of full underwriters laboratory endorsement.
 
To test my understanding,

“UL Listed” only.

No other words “count” in terms of full underwriters laboratory endorsement.
EG4 has officially confirmed that the unit is UL LISTED . If it actually is not.. they have some explaining to do :)
 
I ordered 4 x Eg4 6500ex inverters and 12 x Eg4 batteries. Spent a lot of momey.
Yikes. That is a lot of money. When I was getting ready to order my equipment, I called SS, the guy on the phone was so amazingly rude and unprofessional, I wouldn't buy anything just on principal.
 
Appreciate the sympathy. At least the batteries kind of work... i mean the BMS communication is spotty at best as can be seen by all the comments and the videos signature solar is putting out the last few weeks to address with no clear resolve... but to be honest just like Will , i was not planning on using the communication anyways. Im just grateful i didnt sell off the Mpp 6548s these were supposed to replace... those two MPP 6548 units have served me very well over the almost year or so.. no problems.

I guess on the bright side.. at least the 6500ex are relatively light so the garbage man wont break his back getting rid of them :)
Screen Shot 2022-06-30 at 12.44.14 PM.png
Dude, where are you located? I'll slowly drive by and grab those off the curb :ROFLMAO:
 
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