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71! on EG4 6500EX

jwoh

New Member
Joined
Jan 24, 2024
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18
Location
Tennessee
I have 2 EG4 6500EX in split phase connected to 12 Lifepower4 batteries. Last week two batteries drained completely overnight, just red light flashing and 71! on my inverter. I pulled them, charged them up completely and reinstalled. Yesterday the same happened again to the same two batteries, all other batteries are at 80%+ charge. I pulled the two batteries from my setup for separate testing, and it ran for about 12 hours with just the 10 known good batteries before giving me the code 71! (again) and shutting the whole system down. All batteries still in the setup have over 80% charge. Where should I start looking for an issue?
 
Split the 6500EX and run them seperate to see if 1 is causing the problem....yeah sucks to break your 240V but this is what SS will ask you to do.
 
I just had the same thing. 12 Lifepower4 batteries. Just updated the firmware on each one. Came out to alerts and 3 batteries that had NO lights.

Main inverter shows error 71. No fault light. I can't find anything in the manual about error 71. I put a 48v charger on the bus bar and let it go. I start turning off 'good' batteries to get the bad ones out of alert. It took awhile to get those 3 back to life. Still working on getting them topped off.

What is going on with 71?
 
I just had the same thing. 12 Lifepower4 batteries. Just updated the firmware on each one. Came out to alerts and 3 batteries that had NO lights.

Main inverter shows error 71. No fault light. I can't find anything in the manual about error 71. I put a 48v charger on the bus bar and let it go. I start turning off 'good' batteries to get the bad ones out of alert. It took awhile to get those 3 back to life. Still working on getting them topped off.

What is going on with 71?
Same boat here, I completely charged the two that drained out causing the first shut down before reinstalling them, they were at 80%+ at 8pm and by 7am they were blinking red and main inverter showing 71!

71! states "If battery status is not allowed to discharge after the communication between the inverter and battery is successful, it will show code 71 to stop discharging battery"

I have another 'spare' 6500ex inverter I am going to swap out for the main tonight and see if that solves the issue or not.
 
This is so frustrating....mostly for the money spent.

Could a Signature Solar rep comment on Error 71, that seems to a be new issue?
 
Last edited:
I have 71!, not the firmware 71 code.
After testing last night with two different inverters from another setup, I got the same 71! code.
I guess it is a battery issue and I will begin testing that
 
I had the same last night. 6 EG 4 batteries. I’ve been watching the last couple days because the SOC lights have been different on all the batteries. one battery had one light two had 3 lights and the rest had 2 . I thought I would see if the more charged battery leveled out by morning this morning. The system said it was at 51.2 when I went to bed.

I woke up to my inverter not making any power with two batteries showing three green and the rest of the batteries totally dark. I’m worried the inverter thought it had more voltage than it did from the batteries it wasn’t drawing from and deep discharged my 4 batteries badly. But there is no way I used that much energy last night. I probably had a phantom draw of about 40 watts. Make 150 when the fridge kicked on

The inverter firmware is up to date. Any recommendations? To say this system has been unreliable is an understatement. One inverter is sent back for repair, the other one is going to back to repair too as soon as I hear back from my ticket that I opened last week. I’m completely off grid and I told them that I need new inverters ASAP and they said they don’t do that and someone would call in two days. It’s been a week now with no call and now the batteries are doing this and potentially damaging them selves
 
Sounds like an almost identical issue as mine. I am also 100% offgrid and this system has been a constant source of misery for over a year now. At least you are getting somewhere with warranty. After running through all of their test procedures on a previous issue and bugging them for assistance for over almost 8 weeks they told me they were intentionally ignoring me since they did not know how to handle my issue.
 
On my second inverter I literally plugged a cat cable into the rs45 port to extend the monitor and I fried one half of my PV. I’m limping along until my other one comes back but they haven’t even gotten back to me about this one.

Have you updated the firmware on the batteries? I was told that I didn’t need to but I’m going to try that today
 
The inverter I had an issue with had a bad MPPT board but I still have it shelved since they never got back to me.
I will be checking/updating firmware on all batteries. I apparently need to buy another different cable than the inverter update cable from signature solar in order to do this though.
 
I had similar issue with this cold snap. System shutdown low SOC. 8 of the 10 batteries came back and charged ok. 2 are basically dead. the come up flashing red with an alarm. I broke them out of the battery bank and put them on the 18A charger but they will not charge.

hopefully SS will get back soon. sales gets back quickly once they have your money not so much.
 
Now that you mention it, this issue started last week during the cold snap. The room they are in did not drop below 40 degrees F though so I hadn't considered the cold
 
Mine happened last night 20C or around 70F

I can’t get 4 of the 6 batteries to take a charge now.
 
IMG_0306.jpeg

What does the “warning” category mean. It doesn’t say in the manual from what I can see. I’m getting the Charge warning light blinking sequence and then the battery turns off
 
Maybe someone from SS can chime in since it looks like quite a few people are having very similar issues
 
Update: after cycling the battery about three times, it started charging. I’m isolating each battery and bringing them up to full SOC individually.

Reading other threads it sounds like the BMS sucks at actually knowing when the batteries are full and they slowly start giving erroneous readings. The way to solve it is to hold a full high voltage for a few hours to reset it all. This is really unfortunate because being true off grid in the winter I don’t have too many days with sun where I can do that and I don’t want to needlessly run my generator for hours just to reset the BMS
 
So if this is the case, I would have something like this to look forward to each winter when the batteries do not get consistent full charge each day.
 
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