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Weird issue with 6000XP 🤷‍♂️

brucenolan said:
Well, you can leave the setting as adjusted by SigSolar and cells will eventually balance.
lowering the current will not slow the charge as the runner cells will over voltage protect (OVP) because even 2 amps at 56.4 V will push runner cells up, lower charge voltage will stop that and allow BMS to balance. I suggest start at 55.0 volts and check the cell voltage on the high cells to keep below OVP and move up charge voltage as delta come down, will take time.

My batteries float at 54.0 and show 100% after absorbing at 55.4 and all packs are < 0.020 delta at 55.4 (most are < 0.010)

I don't think the BMS looks at cell voltage for SOC, looks at total pack voltage
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Thanks! I’ll play with the settings again tomorrow and see if I can get it dialed in. It’s set to 56 right now. I’ll lower the voltage a bit and up the amperage a bit and we’ll see how she does. This was from a bit ago, not great sun today, actually, wild weather.

I lost a 250w panel from a skid today that blew away lol.
 

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ScrotusGobbleBottom said:
looks good at 10 amps. Give it some time.

Did you mean over voltage protection??
If it says over current protection that would be a different issue.
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10 amps worked well, I’m seeing about 1.6-2.xA per cell.

I’m still not getting above 3.3x ball park. I’m gonna try and charge at 55v/25A tomorrow. I’ll run the bank down a bit tonight.
 
Would you be able to try and remove the ComHub from the system and see if this allows you to charge the bank to a higher voltage? If this works, I would recommend updating the firmware on the communication hub.
 
EG4_Jared said:
Would you be able to try and remove the ComHub from the system and see if this allows you to charge the bank to a higher voltage? If this works, I would recommend updating the firmware on the communication hub.
Click to expand...
I’ll pull the comm hub right now. They definitely seem to be balancing better at the moment. Currently have them set to 55.2v and 50A charging.
 

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@brucenolan so playing with the voltage helped out a lot. I got them close with a higher setting, and I’m now slowly adjusting it based on what they’re reading. Currently set at 54.6, slowly had to bring them down.

Packs 3&4 are giving me overvolt alarm now but not going into protection so that’s good.

These are the most recent
 

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ScrotusGobbleBottom said:
This doesnt look good. not terrible, but wtf did they send you. The only thing that would make sense here is all 4 packs have been used 3 years and rarely got to balance voltage. This is not the case right?

EG4_Jared look at those deltas.​

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Negative. All of the packs are new. 2 of them were new, sitting off and in a float SOC, 2 are new from Signature. i just lowered charge current to 10A and set charging voltage at 54.6. None of the cells are going into balance yet, seems to happen around 3.43-ish.

Yeah, I’m pulling my hair out trying to get these things to balance out. I run off the batteries for a few minuets to get out of Over Volt alarm, turn PV back on, play with charge voltage to try to get them into balance. Then go into overvolt again lol.

At this point I just want my new chargeverter to try and balance them one at a time. I’m worried they’re still going to have issues though and also, if this is how the stack usually runs, will I not have issues all the time running them even if I balance them out one at a time?
 

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ChrisSwolls said:
will I not have issues all the time
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No you will not. The only way for them to get severely out of balance that I know of is self discharge over a long time (months/years) without being balanced. Or if the cell has a problem.
ChrisSwolls said:
At this point I just want my new chargeverter
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How do you think doing it one by one will help you?
I believe the limitation here is the balance current of the individual batteries. Doing it one by one could take 4x as long.

You should be able to adjust your charge voltage to a point where they are balancing.
Charge at 55.2 and wait however long till the delta is at .010 then raise the charge voltage to 55.4 and wait for the delta to hit .010 and then repeat this as many times as needed until they are all at 3.5 and .010 delta
Have you tried this? NEVERMIND you cant even get to 55.2

THATS THE PROBLEM

You hit over voltage before the balancer kicks in or right when it does.
You need to find the magic number and keep it there until a delta of .010
That is the only thing you can do
 
ScrotusGobbleBottom said:
No you will not. The only way for them to get severely out of balance that I know of is self discharge over a long time (months/years) without being balanced. Or if the cell has a problem.

How do you think doing it one by one will help you?
I believe the limitation here is the balance current of the individual batteries. Doing it one by one could take 4x as long.

You should be able to adjust your charge voltage to a point where they are balancing.
Charge at 55.2 and wait however long till the delta is at .010 then raise the charge voltage to 55.4 and wait for the delta to hit .010 and then repeat this as many times as needed until they are all at 3.5 and .010 delta
Have you tried this? NEVERMIND you cant even get to 55.2
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That’s what I’ve been slowly attempting to work towards. The problem is I keep getting a cell overvoltage alarm and/or cell over voltage protection. I’ve had to raise the float charge as well, they’re hitting float and getting no additional current to balance.

This sure is a headache lol
 

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I just cant believe you have a .194 delta at 3.43 average. I am sorry for you.
Have you tried what EG4_Jared said and bypass the communication board? he said "try and remove the ComHub from the system"
 
Ok looks like you can sit at 55v keep it there for as long as you can stand.
Current doesnt "need" to be flowing.
The only thing that matters is that the balancing is working.
Does it balance without charging? Or does it stop as soon as its in float?
Can you set the float to 55? Try 54.9

I wish I knew about these batteries more. I only have experience with DIY packs where you can adjust anything
 
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Like Scrotus said, set the voltage and leave it for several days, balance current on these BMS is weak. you might be able to move up 0.1 volt every other day once you get the delta down in the 0.030 - 0.020 V range but until then nothing you can change will help. goal is to have balance on and no over voltage protection and allow the BMS to work.

I'm going to guess this will take weeks.

that is why I open my packs and charge the cells manually, my newest Lifepower4 packs had similar deltas and each took me three days of manual charging before delta was in the range the BMS could manage, now I can push charge voltage up to 57.0 and deltas are < 0.020 where BMS stops balancing
 
Ok looks like you can sit at 55v keep it there for as long as you can stand. correct
Current doesnt "need" to be flowing. correct
The only thing that matters is that the balancing is working. THIS!
Does it balance without charging? Or does it stop as soon as its in float? Balance will continue while any one cell is above 3.45
Can you set the float to 55? Try 54.9
 
I’ll get the settings in for tomorrow.

Float: 54.9
Charge: 55.2

And I’ll just let her sit from there. This is turning into a giant headache. What do people do that run completely off grid and need a plug and play setup?? lol. This would be even more of a pain if the system was needed every night.

Thanks for all the input @ScrotusGobbleBottom and Bruce. Hopefully I’ll get this thing dialed in!
 
ChrisSwolls said:
That’s what I’ve been slowly attempting to work towards. The problem is I keep getting a cell overvoltage alarm and/or cell over voltage protection. I’ve had to raise the float charge as well, they’re hitting float and getting no additional current to balance.

This sure is a headache lol
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BMS does not need current to balance, passive balancer will bleed off current from the high cells, thats all that is happening

I'm not sure how much balance current these BMS have but do some math, if the high cell is 5 ah (5000 mAh) fuller than the low cell and BMS is maybe 150 mA - 5000/150 = 33.3 hrs to balance that ONE cell

thats why it will take a long time and you will be bald :oops:

Set the charge voltage at 55.0 and watch the deltas for a couple of days
 
I use two bench power suppy as I linked in #42, one set to pack voltage (start at 55V) and one I rotate to the low cells till all cells are at 3.550 then I let the BMS do its job, I can get a pack balance in 24 hours, I think thats a better invesment than a chargverter
 
brucenolan said:
I use two bench power suppy as I linked in #42, one set to pack voltage (start at 55V) and one I rotate to the low cells till all cells are at 3.550 then I let the BMS do its job, I can get a pack balance in 24 hours, I think thats a better invesment than a chargverter
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I think I may go that route. Would you mind shooting me a DM?
 
Well, no real new updates. I ordered the bench power supplies.

Still trying to get the Deltas closer for now. The cells are definitely balancing out more, going to do another cycle tomorrow and try to get them below 50%.

The cells start balancing out at 3.451-ish it seems, and hit 3.5ish. The Deltas are also slowly getting better but still aren’t good by any means.
 
ChrisSwolls said:
Well, no real new updates. I ordered the bench power supplies.

Still trying to get the Deltas closer for now. The cells are definitely balancing out more, going to do another cycle tomorrow and try to get them below 50%.

The cells start balancing out at 3.451-ish it seems, and hit 3.5ish. The Deltas are also slowly getting better but still aren’t good by any means.
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Progress is progress. You should only have to do this once.

But I digress, no one should have to do this at all, ever

However, this does seem to be the nature of lifepo4 and pre-assembled battery packs weather the user knows it or not.

You just happen to be smart and aware.
 
PotusGobbleBottom said:
Progress is progress. You should only have to do this once.

But I digress, no one should have to do this at all, ever

However, this does seem to be the nature of lifepo4 and pre-assembled battery packs weather the user knows it or not.

You just happen to be smart and aware.
Click to expand...
Well, like most of us I want the setups service life to be as long as possible. I agree, this shouldn’t be this large of a headache out of the box. There are MANY people that run these systems off grid and rely on them and most likely, don’t closely monitor them once they’re up and running.

I’ve seen plenty of people post on the different Solar Facebook pages that they do not have a laptop or ability to monitor. While the system obviously works, it makes me worried for it’s longevity.

Most of the packs are hitting 3.4v and going up to 3.5v and balancing out now, deltas aren’t where I want them but WAY better than before.
 

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Brucey said:
The eg4s sometimes need 10-20+ cycles some people struggle for months to get them to balance.
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I can certainly relate to that. I struggled for months trying to get my stack of 8 EG4 Lifepower4 batteries to charge evenly while hooked up to a pair of EG4 EX6500. I got so frustrated with EG4's inability to properly support the unit, I did the upgrade program and now have a single EG4 6000xp in service, and the other one as a spare. The batteries seem to balance a lot better now, I think that might have something to do with the firmware upgrade I did. I still am not out of the woods though as I know my system is not optimized. The thing that bothers the heck out of me with this new inverter is that I want to be able to set the charge amperage manually and the unit wants to determine it from what it sees from BMS and it seems to have a lot of problems talking to my batteries. I had upgraded my eight batteries with the upgrade dongle and thought I had done a good job, but my unit only sees 5 batteries. I never had the correct cable to hook my batteries up to a PC. Signature Solar is sending me one, but it literally takes them two weeks to process and internal order and ship anything. I'll confirm battery firmware once the cable arrives.
 
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