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Schneider xw pro 6848 not powering up with eg4 lithium battery

Koldsimer said:
James, read this thread in its entirety. Your tech dept is well aware of the issue i am having. My experience is not a one-off anomaly. There are many others having issues.

Share my feelings with them? How will that resolve my issue? I haven't heard anything directly from them since Jan 4th but i will call them tomorrow and express how i feel. Who should i ask for?
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Ray is the head of tech, the dept is tactical, so if you want to keep a convo going that is out of trained scope then it could go on for a long time.

The situation here from a business standpoint is that if you have done way more than plug and play then you deserve to get a set of packs that work out of the box, we would probably prefer that we could compensate you the shipping value to us both ways in hope that it more than covers a drive to review live.

I am well aware but the battery has been out for long enough, several thousand shipped before the backlog we should have known about schneider XW PRO issues long ago, maybe dumb luck or maybe other factors are being overlooked here, either way you have a customer service problem here. we have given all kinds of situations the "benefit-of-the-doubt" and swapped or upgraded for people when service options ran out.

This crew is 50-60% strength in the service and repair dpt with how many people are sick this week: if you can make it here your situation will end, it would be great if you could bring your inverter for the benefit of this forum and we could do a video, otherwise we won't have live data on the PRO until next week.

Pls holler at customer service and ask for the RMA dept tomorrow and, shipping or driving, either way get a plan locked down.
 
Mr-Sandman said:
No, no need for you to "make sense of making me happy".
I made the choice to spend the extra $$$ to get the EG4 LL to have a useable battery on my inverter. I could have just cancelled my order and had you refund my thousands of dollars I paid months ago, but I really needed these batteries, so I paid you even more.

I'm good, you focus on making those LifePower4 batteries work for for these people that pre-paid thousands of $ and waited months to just receive a battery that won't even power on. They should be your #1 priority right now. If you haven't personally returned their emails or phone calls, that should be on to-do list tomorrow.

As far as the 10 year warrantee, I'll be honest, I just hope if I ever need to use it, you guys provide better support than you do on a NEW batteries with 5 year warrantee. To be fair, I personally have not had to engage Signature Solar Support, my EG4 LL batteries work so far, but I don't like what I'm hearing from fellow forum members on the EG4 LifePower4 batteries. And to think I would be in the same boat as them, if I didn't stumble across this thread and take action, just irritates me even more....
Click to expand...

To be clear, no "batteries that don't power on" are being discussed on this forum sir.

This is a singular issue with a Conext Pro 6848.
 
SignatureSolarUS said:
Ray is the head of tech, the dept is tactical, so if you want to keep a convo going that is out of trained scope then it could go on for a long time.

The situation here from a business standpoint is that if you have done way more than plug and play then you deserve to get a set of packs that work out of the box, we would probably prefer that we could compensate you the shipping value to us both ways in hope that it more than covers a drive to review live.

I am well aware but the battery has been out for long enough, several thousand shipped before the backlog we should have known about schneider XW PRO issues long ago, maybe dumb luck or maybe other factors are being overlooked here, either way you have a customer service problem here. we have given all kinds of situations the "benefit-of-the-doubt" and swapped or upgraded for people when service options ran out.

This crew is 50-60% strength in the service and repair dpt with how many people are sick this week: if you can make it here your situation will end, it would be great if you could bring your inverter for the benefit of this forum and we could do a video, otherwise we won't have live data on the PRO until next week.

Pls holler at customer service and ask for the RMA dept tomorrow and, shipping or driving, either way get a plan locked down.
Click to expand...
I will call and speak to Ray tomorrow. My family lives 100% off grid with no grid backup. I can't un-install my inverter for testing at your shop.

Maybe i'm reading your post wrong but returning them is not an option. Even driving to swap them out will leave me in a pickle as I have no way to power the house without a battery hooked to inverter. Schneiders wont run on just generator input.

Thanks again for the updates- it gives me hope we can work something out.
 
SignatureSolarUS said:
To be clear, no "batteries that don't power on" are being discussed on this forum sir.

This is a singular issue with a Conext Pro 6848.
Click to expand...
Sorry, maybe I should have said "Won't power on an inverter", the batteries power up just fine with nothing hooked to them. There is more than the Schneider XW Pro 6848 having issues. There's another member reporting the same issue with Magnum inverters.

I've spoke my peace on the situation and tried to help @Koldsimer get resolution to his issue. I will be watching the outcome though. How this is handled is a telling of the support we might receive if needed. Hope you find a resolution to the issue soon.
 
SignatureSolarUS said:
To be clear, no "batteries that don't power on" are being discussed on this forum sir.

This is a singular issue with a Conext Pro 6848.
Click to expand...
There are two other users that detailed their same exact experience i had when attempting to start the inverter. They posted in this thread. @Scott Martinez @HighCountryBill

I'm only 45 minutes from your shop. I would be happy to have a tech come by to witness the startup problem if there are any questions about what is happening. It may help solve the problem.
 
Last edited:
Just to add another data point...

A co-hort who has installed lots of Sol-Ark inverters and Signature Solar lithium batteries today said that he has not had any issues like this. Or other lithium batteries with other inverter installations.

I am at Intersolar this week. Maybe, if I get the chance, I could ask some of these companies if they have seen this issue before. Growatt and others are here.
 
H
SignatureSolarUS said:
We have been working with a stack of schneider 5548 and Xantrex 6048, irritating enough the 6848 is on the way but not here

the 5548 and 6048 all work with 2-3 batteries we have a video showing our demo on the way to our site

we will have all the stats on the ancient Outback and schneider 24v as well,



the upgrade is for the 10 year warranty, if you feel the circumstances in which you made your decision were unfair you can contact us directly and we will make sense of making you happy
Click to expand...
How about the Magnum MS-4448-PAE?
 
MrM1 said:
It will be interesting to see if the EG4 Lifepowers have trouble with the Magnum as well. I would say it's a 50/50 chance they will.
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Got conformation my order is sitting at the FedEx dock and ready to pick up tomorrow. But have no clue where my inverter is at this moment. It will probably be a week or two before I get everything together and setup. I was told by Ray at Signature soon as I’m ready to give him a call and he will walk me though startup step by step.

I guess if they don’t work I’ll just have work A deal with them to exchange them for the LL models.

I did so much research before I bought these. I couldn’t find a single negative review from YouTube influencers or even just plain old people as myself. I even went far as PMing people on YouTube to ask the personaly months after they have owned them. Also asked about the long wait for shipping not a single negative remark from any of them. I was very hesitant to drop 10k on something from an internet company that I wasn’t going to see for at least two months. it Would be nice if they would take a deposit and payment in full when they ship. They would probably sell even more of them.
 
SpongeboB Sinewave said:
Just to add another data point...

A co-hort who has installed lots of Sol-Ark inverters and Signature Solar lithium batteries today said that he has not had any issues like this. Or other lithium batteries with other inverter installations.

I am at Intersolar this week. Maybe, if I get the chance, I could ask some of these companies if they have seen this issue before. Growatt and others are here.
Click to expand...

One thing you guys should do is measure current vs. time when voltage is applied to each inverter.
I'm guessing the one that has problems boots up instantly and starts generating output, rather than taking more time at low power for self-test.
 
I ordered one of the LifePower4 batteries from sig solar to pair with the 5k Growatt inverter/charge Controller. The battery is on back order, I'm supposed to be picking it up beginning of March. @MrM1 pointed me in the direction of this thread. Its pretty worrying, condolences to the people affected by this.

I'm totally new to solar, hence why I bought a 'plug and play' system. I've read this whole thread and think I've grasped it. There is a problem with the BMS and resistor.

What do people think I should do? Obviously I don't want a dud battery. Shall I cancel the order and look for a different battery? Or is this an irrational decision.

Do the batteries work fine with Growatt? Is it a fault with the BMS and resistor or is the battery just not compatible with certain inverters.

I've tried to contact customer support a couple of times for a different reason and haven't being able to get through. I guess they are all hands on deck trying to sort this out.
 
JamesHird said:
What do people think I should do? Obviously I don't want a dud battery. Shall I cancel the order and look for a different battery? Or is this an irrational decision.

Do the batteries work fine with Growatt? Is it a fault with the BMS and resistor or is the battery just not compatible with certain inverters.
Click to expand...

I suspect it is a problem the inverter manufacturer can fix with a firmware update (or hopefully a user-settable parameter.)
If the inverter waited a few seconds after battery voltages is applied before drawing significant power, that should allow any precharge circuit to compete its job.
 
@JamesHird I'm guessing it will be just fine with the Growatt inverter. That's a brand they sell and the batteries are supposed to even talk to them, so surely they have tested that well. Be nice if they would tell you that though...
 
Hedges said:
I suspect it is a problem the inverter manufacturer can fix with a firmware update (or hopefully a user-settable parameter.)
If the inverter waited a few seconds after battery voltages is applied before drawing significant power, that should allow any precharge circuit to compete its job.
Click to expand...
I doubt seriously Schneider is going to issue a firmware up because of one battery-powered manufacturer. Their whole business model seems to be structured around the pro installed not the DIYer. They're not going to issue a fix based on a few outlier cases
 
When Schneider had problems with stackability of their SW line, the opted to discontinue stacking rather than fix the firmware

But I honestly still don't see this as a inverter firmware problem
 
MrM1 said:
I doubt seriously Schneider is going to issue a firmware up because of one battery-powered manufacturer. Their whole business model seems to be structured around the pro installed not the DIYer. They're not going to issue a fix based on a few outlier cases
Click to expand...

If my guess is correct, it could be a problem with many batteries having a precharge circuit.
Perhaps they have a couple lithium batteries in mind for pro installers?
But if performance is on the edge for those batteries and causes problems for a number of their customers, it would have to be fixed.
It may vary with battery cable resistance, and how much/how long BMS tolerates overcurrent (for those with no precharge circuit.)

MrM1 said:
But I honestly still don't see this as a inverter firmware problem
Click to expand...

What do you think is the root cause of the problem?
 
BMS and resistor. If you took that out there would not be a problem. If a user is concerned about blowing capacitors they can use an external resistor
 
JamesHird said:
I ordered one of the LifePower4 batteries from sig solar to pair with the 5k Growatt inverter/charge Controller. The battery is on back order, I'm supposed to be picking it up beginning of March. @MrM1 pointed me in the direction of this thread. Its pretty worrying, condolences to the people affected by this.

I'm totally new to solar, hence why I bought a 'plug and play' system. I've read this whole thread and think I've grasped it. There is a problem with the BMS and resistor.

What do people think I should do? Obviously I don't want a dud battery. Shall I cancel the order and look for a different battery? Or is this an irrational decision.

Do the batteries work fine with Growatt? Is it a fault with the BMS and resistor or is the battery just not compatible with certain inverters.

I've tried to contact customer support a couple of times for a different reason and haven't being able to get through. I guess they are all hands on deck trying to sort this out.
Click to expand...
I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you should work just fine with your inverter. It’s us guys that have the huge heavy old iron with big copper coils and caps that need to worry.

Think of it like this. If my 6 don’t work for me I’ll return them and they can send one to you. Hopefully they will still have 6 of the LL’s in stock that I can upgrade to.
 
I can duplicate exactly what @Koldsimer has described with his XW using my SW and holding the pre charge resistor button I installed . My SW does exactly what he describes until I let go of the button
 
Mr-Sandman said:
@JamesHird I'm guessing it will be just fine with the Growatt inverter. That's a brand they sell and the batteries are supposed to even talk to them, so surely they have tested that well. Be nice if they would tell you that though...
Click to expand...
You would think so :LOL:
 
MrM1 said:
BMS and resistor. If you took that out there would not be a problem. If a user is concerned about blowing capacitors they can use an external resistor
Click to expand...

Yes, if BMS bypassed and cells connected directly to inverter, it would draw a few thousand amps surge and come up.
Given a BMS, transistors might get damaged. Over-current protection designed in. Maybe some BMS can handle it.
One guy has GigaVac contactor between his lithium battery and Sunny Island, had problems welding contacts.

You might fix it with a heavier duty BMS.
I think the answer is for inverter to not draw power until some delay after voltage is applied (or better yet handshaking).
I think that needs to be part of the new generation systems with lithium and BMS. Lead-acid didn't require BMS, so not a problem.

Likely high frequency inverters have smaller caps. Also, a boost converter, which ramps up current over time. So problems less likely.
 
Oh by the way - just applying AC to a toroid transformer causes a huge current surge for a moment. Enough to trip breakers, so slow-blow or soft start circuit recommended.

The top low-frequency inverters have large silicon-steel toroid transformers (instead of conventional "E" core), because they're the most efficient. And enough transistors to deliver surge current.
Sunny Island for instance specs 180A (at 120V) for a couple cycles. That would be 450A at 48V. So whatever the transformer wants it can deliver.
An inverter could soft-start its AC waveform into the transformer when first starting, if the firmware cared to do so.

The start-up current, not just capacitor charging, could cause problems for BMS. Well-behaved inverter should be part of the system solution.

 
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