diy solar

diy solar

Batteries drained!!!

I really appreciate all your inputs, being new at this, and hoping all the equipment is working as it should, (including batteries), it’s giving me a few more grey hair, that’s for sure.
Let me know what other kind of wiring picture you suggest I should post, other than the ones I posted earlier, only thing I haven’t posted is the wiring inside the dedicated solar load center but that’s the AC circuitry after the inverter, all I did was to remove the house wiring Hot and Neutrals to the circuits I’m feeding with the inverter and ran those wires to the new load center, (except the ground wire of the circuits), those ground wires I left connected in the grid powered load center, I did ground the solar fed load center to the house load center leg, which I think it does not matter here, since we are having issues with the DC section.
But who knows.
 
Here are the pictures, but this time with the Shunt in line, pic 2, on the negative cable, right now it’s disconnected since I’m charging the batteries individually, as you can see on the first pic, I also have the main switch after the inline fuse on the positive side in the off position, to make sure nothing is in the way.
 

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I read/skimmed from the top. Sorry for asking for more pics, everything looks good to me.

A lot has changed and I do not have a feel for what problems you are experiencing other than your shunt and EPever Soc readings differing (significantly).

It looks like the EPever is basing the Soc on voltage similar to the chart in my signature (53.5V = 85% Soc). It does not see current flows that the shunt does so I would say this is reasonable.

I am wondering if the shunt has seen enough charge cycles to have learned YOUR systems voltage range properly. I still do not like the (seemingly low) full charge setting of 52.x volts.

What is the highest voltage that you have charged your batteries to with the EPever? What is causing termination of solar charging? Sundown or EPever terminating charge?
 
I read/skimmed from the top. Sorry for asking for more pics, everything looks good to me.

A lot has changed and I do not have a feel for what problems you are experiencing other than your shunt and EPever Soc readings differing (significantly).

It looks like the EPever is basing the Soc on voltage similar to the chart in my signature (53.5V = 85% Soc). It does not see current flows that the shunt does so I would say this is reasonable.

I am wondering if the shunt has seen enough charge cycles to have learned YOUR systems voltage range properly. I still do not like the (seemingly low) full charge setting of 52.x volts.

What is the highest voltage that you have charged your batteries to with the EPever? What is causing termination of solar charging? Sundown or EPever terminating charge?
Epever termination charge, once it shows 100% it goes down to a lower amperage charging, a t it’s 56.29
volts check this pic. And the Shunt shows 100% at 53.52 volts I did take these pics at different times of the day however.
 

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I guess since the Shunt just monitors it’ll show 100% over the set 52.8 and the Epever will continue to boost charge until the 56.00 volts, it’ll actually reconnect the boost feature at the 52.8 volt 100% SOC entered on the Shunt, but, leaving aside the Epever numbers, as long as I’m within the Shunt’s manufacturer’s specs I should have reliable info, specially when the Epever is charging beyond those Shunt specs.
Would you agree?
I think you are correct about waiting a few days to let the Shunt use some extend data to come up with better numbers.
Since I have everything disconnected while I charge the batteries, I’ll imput the numbers once again, but this time with the higher voltage on the Shunt battery charged voltage and synchronize it, to match the 56 volts on the Epever as you stated.
 
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A question about battery equalization, after I get charging all 4 batteries individually, how should I make sure they are all equalized?
Because I already have 3 of them charged, one took about 2 hours, the other two about 5 minutes each, but there is a discrepancy of about 0.08 volts between them, I’m waiting for the last one to get charged, to see the voltage, but should that be ok?
Will they all not need to be equalized since they all have a BMS board in it?
Or should I connect them all together back in Series to just the charge controller but without the solar array feeding power to it and the inverter off, so they see a small load and start moving some current around so they all get comfortable the same voltage?
 
A question about battery equalization, after I get charging all 4 batteries individually, how should I make sure they are all equalized?
If you are talking about using the EPever equalization mechanism then no. Lithium should never be equalized.

If you are talking about a battery balancer then maybe but i do not have any experience in that area.
Because I already have 3 of them charged, one took about 2 hours, the other two about 5 minutes each,
This is a little concerning. Which one took 2 hours and which took 5 minutes each? Battery 1 (negative end of series) or others?
Hopefully you are taking notes on these types of things as well as voltage differences.

At some point if you have oddities, you may need to swap 2 batteries around in the series to see if the behavior follows the battery or is related to the position in the string. Gathering data and looking for patterns is important in figuring things like this out.
Will they all not need to be equalized since they all have a BMS board in it?
I am not sure what you are thinking about here. The BMS is pretty much a cutoff mechanism. Probably just a little cell balancing (is that what you are mistakenly calling equalization?).
I think you are correct about waiting a few days to let the Shunt use some extend data to come up with better numbers.
Yea, you need a few charge cycles before the shunt identifies your voltage range. Hopefully it will ignore the full charge setting at that point. I am hesitant to tell you to raise it because its pretty clear in the Victron manual and i have not used my Victron shunt in a couple years (i go by voltage and Soc based on the charts in my signature).
Maybe you can use the voltage charts as a 3rd source of info until you get this figured out (you'll probably find that it matches your EPever but i dunno for sure).

Let the solar charge it up until its 56V setting. When it stops, take some measurements of the different batteries and take notes on the voltages (if they're not very close, then we should look into this by swapping battery positions and making more observations).
 
The ones connected to both ends are the ones taking the longer, the two in between took very little
 
The ones connected to both ends are the ones taking the longer, the two in between took very little
Interesting. You should label your batteries (A, B, C, D) and make note of their voltages and their positions in the string (- end) 1, 2, 3, 4 (+ end).

If looking to investigate/experiments, I'd switch 1 and 2, 3 and 4 to see if the behavior moves with the batteries.
 
Ok, after charging all the batteries, they all have a combined charge of 53.9 volts, ( did not get quite to 14.6 on each battery). But, according to some online research, 13.3 to 13.4 per battery is an acceptable standard, so, I’m a bit over that, I will connect them back to the system but with the inverter turned off, that way the solar can bring them up to the 56 volts, then I will synchronize the SOC of the Shunt to 100%
 
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Well, think I found a clue to my issues, I was in the garage this morning and I heard a long beep coming from the inverter, guess what? It’s shutting off due to over voltage, (inverter specs are 60 volts over voltage protection), it suddenly comes back on, all this within a matter of one second, I stayed there and waited until it did it again, because I thought I’ve heard that beep a couple minutes before, just didn’t think it was serious, when it beeped again I had a multimeter on the DC input of the inverter and it went up to 66.7 volts, I proceeded to check all the batteries voltage individually and one of them (the one that took the longest to charge with the 12 volt charge,r was fluctuating between 14.6 and 16.7 volts) (that battery was also the one with the positive cable going out of the bank),( I swapped locations with another one and the issue remained in that battery) , all other 3 were exactly at 13.3 volts, I contacted Amperetime and I’m waiting for their response, perhaps this is the issue I’ve been having about the full charge confusing the charge controller with higher total voltage when the other 3 batteries were not full, not sure.
 
(the one that took the longest to charge with the 12 volt charge,r was fluctuating between 14.6 and 16.7 volts) (that battery was also the one with the positive cable going out of the bank),
Thats a little odd. The one that normally takes the longest to charge (and slowest to discharge) is usually the one with the highest capacity.
A battery that rises quickly in voltage in the extremes is usually the weakest. So thats got me scratching my head a little.

Take good notes!

Its good you identified something! If that battery got to 16.7V its BMS ain't working. And its likely that cells were damaged when charged this high.
 
Well, think I found a clue to my issues, I was in the garage this morning and I heard a long beep coming from the inverter, guess what? It’s shutting off due to over voltage, (inverter specs are 60 volts over voltage protection), it suddenly comes back on, all this within a matter of one second, I stayed there and waited until it did it again, because I thought I’ve heard that beep a couple minutes before, just didn’t think it was serious, when it beeped again I had a multimeter on the DC input of the inverter and it went up to 66.7 volts, I proceeded to check all the batteries voltage individually and one of them (the one that took the longest to charge with the 12 volt charge,r was fluctuating between 14.6 and 16.7 volts) (that battery was also the one with the positive cable going out of the bank),( I swapped locations with another one and the issue remained in that battery) , all other 3 were exactly at 13.3 volts, I contacted Amperetime and I’m waiting for their response, perhaps this is the issue I’ve been having about the full charge confusing the charge controller with higher total voltage when the other 3 batteries were not full, not sure.
That sounds like a bms issue
 
Thats a little odd. The one that normally takes the longest to charge (and slowest to discharge) is usually the one with the highest capacity.
A battery that rises quickly in voltage in the extremes is usually the weakest. So thats got me scratching my head a little.

Take good notes!

Its good you identified something! If that battery got to 16.7V its BMS ain't working. And its likely that cells were damaged when charged this high.
Dam your quick don’t want to play jeopardy with you?
 
Thats a little odd. The one that normally takes the longest to charge (and slowest to discharge) is usually the one with the highest capacity.
A battery that rises quickly in voltage in the extremes is usually the weakest. So thats got me scratching my head a little.

Take good notes!

Its good you identified something! If that battery got to 16.7V its BMS ain't working. And its likely that cells were damaged when charged this high.
You might be right, I’ll wait and see what amperetime says, meanwhile I have things running with the grid, don’t want to damage the refrigerators with all the intermittent shutting off and on every few minutes.
Thanks for the fast replies and for patiently keeping up with a newbie here.
 
Update, so far I’m still waiting for Amperetime to make some decisions while they keep asking me questions about the issue, by the way, they reply one answer per a 24 hour period, been 3 days so far, now they are telling me that the battery voltage at 14.6 volts should be ok, I told them that the battery will start spiking to over 16.7 volts and acting up once a load is connected to the inverter, now they are asking me for videos to prove my statements.
 
Update, so far I’m still waiting for Amperetime to make some decisions while they keep asking me questions about the issue, by the way, they reply one answer per a 24 hour period, been 3 days so far, now they are telling me that the battery voltage at 14.6 volts should be ok, I told them that the battery will start spiking to over 16.7 volts and acting up once a load is connected to the inverter, now they are asking me for videos to prove my statements.
They are going to make you jump threw hoops then offer you some partial compensation hold your ground!
 
They are going to make you jump threw hoops then offer you some partial compensation hold your ground!
You bet I will, made the video showing everything, luckily as soon as I put a load on the inverter, the voltmeter showed the spike on the voltage and proved that the battery in question was going way too high on voltage, hopefully that’s enough for them to see everything is there.
I’ll write to Amazon as well in case they try to screw me.
 
Update, after submitting all the videos and waiting over 36 hours for an answer they say they don’t know what’s wrong with the battery, and offered to refund or replace the battery, after I return this one, of course, I told them I just want a replacement and that I’ll be waiting for the return shipping label.
Will see how long this will take, so far one day to answer each email.
 
Update, ready for this? Finally got a replacement battery today, a different brand since they rebranded, and a bit smaller, (had to make a longer jumper), not a deal breaker, after putting everything together, another battery started acting up the same way as the previous one, this one going pass 26.5 volts every once in a while, frustrated to say the least. Just sent them the video, let’s hope they don’t come back with some weird excuse.
 

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