Battery banks, parasitic loads and low sun hours

[MurphyGuy]

MURPHY! I THINK I FOUND IT!!!!!!!

Take a look at the files for batteries 3, 6 & 8. Make note of the unit current. Then look at battery 5. I had my Pop with me (good 82 year old neighbor who was an electrical engineer). I was showing him the BMS software screens and noted that every battery in our string was showing a unit current of -0.3 except #5 which was showing a 0.5 (positive, not negative like the others). I said, "OMG, Pop, is battery 5 bad?" He said he felt we'd had a bad battery this whole time!

If this is the case, I'm beyond angry because I kept trying to get help from Fortress only to get no answers, straw men, and bad answers and an insult along the way... $35k investment in their products. I cannot tell you how mad I am.

My husband had that Fluke 789 for work. Like I said, he was an electrician for over 40 years. He has lots of equipment and what he doesn't have, my neighbor does. It's just that I don't know how to use it myself and my poor hubby is struggling these days with simple instructions. :-(

We'll continue with the experiment but I wanted you to know I had Pop come over and work with Kevin to eliminate the very small draw the Sol-Ark was still taking though powered off. That adjustment was made right between 3 & 4 pm PST.

The voltage readings so far have been as follows:
2:43 pm 53.27
3:43 pm 53.25
4:43 pm 53.24
5:43 pm 53.23

The draw down is certainly a lot slower than the initial drop we were seeing.

Hmm.. Lets walk through it..

Most of your modules are reading a discharge (negative) current of 0.3 amps, which means they discharging (0.3amps x 53.2 volts)=15.96 watts. Wow, that's actually quite a lot of juice just for a battery to be turned on. Fortress claimed 30 watts and that never made sense.

Since your Bat5 has a positive value (charging), that means that the other batteries are feeding it juice. This would be expected if Bat5 cells were out of balance, but they seem to all be within 0.001 volts of each other at 3327 and 3328. Bat3's cells are 7mV out of perfect balance so it doesn't make sense.. (yet).

Most BMS's do not balance cells unless they are being charged or unless any cell reaches a high voltage level set by the BMS.

Bat5 is being charged at 0.5 amps so (0.5 amps x 53.2 volts) = 26.6 watts charging. But its cell voltages are all in line so where's that energy going?
If you had a bad cell within Bat5 that was bleeding off energy due to an internal problem (short), then I would be inclined to think that one or more cells would have a lower voltage than the rest, but that's not the case. Bat5 is very well balanced at just 0.001 difference. As far as I know, the battery module does not have the ability to suck in energy and deliver it to only one cell out of the 16.
So lets assume for diagnostic reasons that Bat5 has a bad cell.. but not catastrophically bad, just a big bleeder that likes to self drain. So that cell starts to go lower in voltage, which drops the entire pack voltage as a whole, which causes the other 9 batteries to deliver current to Bat5 in order to keep it in line with the rest of the pack.. which the other 9 MUST do.. (laws of physics thing). As that bleeder gets lower in voltage, it goes out of line with the other 15 cells (16 cells total, assuming just 1 is bad). This would cause the BMS to start bleeding down the other 15 to keep the pack balanced. As those other 15 bleed down, the module voltage sinks, which causes the other 9 modules to feed energy to it.

Would be really cool if you had a thermal scope.. you could look at the entire bank and I bet that #5 would be significantly warmer than the others. In fact, I'm wondering if you could feel the difference just using your hand.. but you'd have to know where the BMS resistors are located within the case for that.

So yeah.. you might have a bad module.. but lets not jump to conclusions just yet.

What you want to do now is disconnect it from the battery bank, set it on a table, and take a reading at its voltage terminals. If you can hook up a computer to it and get the BMS info during this test, that would be fantastic.. then we can see WHICH cell is bad because I'm betting it won't attempt to balance the cells unless it has juice coming in. (but it might, not all BMS's work that way). Doesn't matter, if you have a bleeder, it will bleed even if the pack is turned off..

At this point, for diagnostic reasons, I suggest the following: 1) Remove Bat5 from the pack 2) Set it on the table and turn it off. 3) Wait 1 hour, turn it on, give it 10 minutes, then take a voltage reading with the good meter. 4) Turn it back off and let it sit for 24 hours. 5) After 24 hours, turn it on and take a voltage measurement at the terminals. It would be great if you could hook up a computer and get the BMS data too at the end of 24 hours.

If a cell is bleeding, 24 hours should show some results, we can go 48 or 72 hours to get clearer results if needed.

I'll be surprised if Bat5 is the problem, but it certainly could be at this point. That 0.5 amps translates to 638 watt-hours per day of wasted energy because of a bad cell That is significant.

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

Reading at 7:47 pm 53.22

I now see BMS alarms (level 3 - no flashing warning lights on the batteries themselves so supposedly not critical per the same "applications engineer" who told me the batteries consume 30 watts so take this for what it's worth. The warnings are for High Cell Voltage on batteries 1, 2, 4, 5 & 9. When I looked at the cell voltages and compared to one without an alarm they appeared to be the same... I don't get it.

 

[RV10flyer]

I have around 33kWp. My diy batteries consume 1-3W each. They only balance during charging above 3.4VPC.

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

Hmm.. Lets walk through it..

Most of your modules are reading a discharge (negative) current of 0.3 amps, which means they discharging (0.3amps x 53.2 volts)=15.96 watts. Wow, that's actually quite a lot of juice just for a battery to be turned on. Fortress claimed 30 watts and that never made sense.

Since your Bat5 has a positive value (charging), that means that the other batteries are feeding it juice. This would be expected if Bat5 cells were out of balance, but they seem to all be within 0.001 volts of each other at 3327 and 3328. Bat3's cells are 7mV out of perfect balance so it doesn't make sense.. (yet).

Most BMS's do not balance cells unless they are being charged or unless any cell reaches a high voltage level set by the BMS.

Bat5 is being charged at 0.5 amps so (0.5 amps x 53.2 volts) = 26.6 watts charging. But its cell voltages are all in line so where's that energy going?
If you had a bad cell within Bat5 that was bleeding off energy due to an internal problem (short), then I would be inclined to think that one or more cells would have a lower voltage than the rest, but that's not the case. Bat5 is very well balanced at just 0.001 difference. As far as I know, the battery module does not have the ability to suck in energy and deliver it to only one cell out of the 16.
So lets assume for diagnostic reasons that Bat5 has a bad cell.. but not catastrophically bad, just a big bleeder that likes to self drain. So that cell starts to go lower in voltage, which drops the entire pack voltage as a whole, which causes the other 9 batteries to deliver current to Bat5 in order to keep it in line with the rest of the pack.. which the other 9 MUST do.. (laws of physics thing). As that bleeder gets lower in voltage, it goes out of line with the other 15 cells (16 cells total, assuming just 1 is bad). This would cause the BMS to start bleeding down the other 15 to keep the pack balanced. As those other 15 bleed down, the module voltage sinks, which causes the other 9 modules to feed energy to it.

Would be really cool if you had a thermal scope.. you could look at the entire bank and I bet that #5 would be significantly warmer than the others. In fact, I'm wondering if you could feel the difference just using your hand.. but you'd have to know where the BMS resistors are located within the case for that.

So yeah.. you might have a bad module.. but lets not jump to conclusions just yet.

What you want to do now is disconnect it from the battery bank, set it on a table, and take a reading at its voltage terminals. If you can hook up a computer to it and get the BMS info during this test, that would be fantastic.. then we can see WHICH cell is bad because I'm betting it won't attempt to balance the cells unless it has juice coming in. (but it might, not all BMS's work that way). Doesn't matter, if you have a bleeder, it will bleed even if the pack is turned off..

At this point, for diagnostic reasons, I suggest the following: 1) Remove Bat5 from the pack 2) Set it on the table and turn it off. 3) Wait 1 hour, turn it on, give it 10 minutes, then take a voltage reading with the good meter. 4) Turn it back off and let it sit for 24 hours. 5) After 24 hours, turn it on and take a voltage measurement at the terminals. It would be great if you could hook up a computer and get the BMS data too at the end of 24 hours.

If a cell is bleeding, 24 hours should show some results, we can go 48 or 72 hours to get clearer results if needed.

I'll be surprised if Bat5 is the problem, but it certainly could be at this point. That 0.5 amps translates to 638 watt-hours per day of wasted energy because of a bad cell That is significant.

It's pretty cold tonight so we'll remove battery 5 tomorrow morning when we have light and the physical energy to move that monster out of the rack and into the garage where there's more insulation and heat. I only have one computer with the BMS software but will try to get another setup tomorrow with Fortress so we can leave the remaining 9 connected to a laptop as well. Hopefully we'll get good information at that point.

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

I have around 33kWp. My diy batteries consume 1-3W each. They only balance during charging above 3.4VPC.

NICE! Drooling over here.

 

[MurphyGuy]

I have around 33kWp. My diy batteries consume 1-3W each. They only balance during charging above 3.4VPC.

Yeah, that's why I've been a bit curious about the Fortress units. My bank is 25kWh and it only consumes about 1 watt of energy for the BMS, and about 2 watts for the Kilovac contactor. That assumes of course it isn't balancing, which it doesn't do unless charging or any cells is over a set point.

 

[MurphyGuy]

It's pretty cold tonight so we'll remove battery 5 tomorrow morning when we have light and the physical energy to move that monster out of the rack and into the garage where there's more insulation and heat. I only have one computer with the BMS software but will try to get another setup tomorrow with Fortress so we can leave the remaining 9 connected to a laptop as well. Hopefully we'll get good information at that point.

One of the nice things about your setup, and it's an advantage over setups like mine, is you have redundancy. If we find your Bat5 is bad, you're going to have to send it back to Fortress.. and in the meantime, you'll still be able to run your system.

By the way, in case you didn't know, I'm going to say this to make sure because it is that important.

When you connect a battery module to your battery bank, IT MUST be at the same voltage as the other modules in the bank.. If your battery bank is at a different voltage, it will throw a huge spark and can damage the module.

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

One of the nice things about your setup, and it's an advantage over setups like mine, is you have redundancy. If we find your Bat5 is bad, you're going to have to send it back to Fortress.. and in the meantime, you'll still be able to run your system.

By the way, in case you didn't know, I'm going to say this to make sure because it is that important.

When you connect a battery module to your battery bank, IT MUST be at the same voltage as the other modules in the bank.. If your battery bank is at a different voltage, it will throw a huge spark and can damage the module.

Frankly, that's a big reason we don't want to take one out of the line up because we don't currently have a way to remedy that situation.

Did you see my post about the new alarms showing high voltage on several batteries?

And just an FYI, we used our temperature gun on battery 5 and saw no anomalies between it and the battery next to it. They're, while wrapped in insulation, sitting at 66-67F in a shop that's hovering in the low 40's tonight. I just wanted to crawl on top of those batteries and take a nice warm nap.

 

[MurphyGuy]

Frankly, that's a big reason we don't want to take one out of the line up because we don't currently have a way to remedy that situation.

It isn't hard. You simply wait until your battery bank is at the same voltage, or really close. Then connect the new module through an old fashioned 60 watt incandescent light bulb. The bulb acts as a resistor and limits how much current can flow between the pack and the new module.
Once your fancy meter says they are at the same voltage (within 0.005 to 0.010), you simply remove the bulb from the circuit and connect the wire directly. Easy peasy.

Did you see my post about the new alarms showing high voltage on several batteries?

Yes, but I would have to go through the fortress manual AND have full access to your BMS to see what is going on. Not sure what to tell you here.
The BMS will protect the battery module, if something really bad happens, it will open the contactor and self-isolate.

And just an FYI, we used our temperature gun on battery 5 and saw no anomalies between it and the battery next to it. They're, while wrapped in insulation, sitting at 66-67F in a shop that's hovering in the low 40's tonight. I just wanted to crawl on top of those batteries and take a nice warm nap.

That's an unexpected result. Maybe the gun isn't precise enough to measure it and the heat sink is dissipating better than what I'm giving it credit for? Hard to tell..

If you have an electrician there, you might want to have him test to see if that 0.5amp charge current going into bat5 is real, or if the BMS reading is off. Just an option, you're going to find out when you isolate Bat5 either way. If its self-discharging and sucking the other modules down, it WILL show it's ugly self on the table.

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

Argh

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

Yes, but I would have to go through the fortress manual AND have full access to your BMS to see what is going on. Not sure what to tell you here.
The BMS will protect the battery module, if something really bad happens, it will open the contactor and self-isolate.

There is literally nothing in the Fortress eFlex documentation about the use of the BMS software. I kid you not. Their manual is ridiculous.

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

If you have an electrician there, you might want to have him test to see if that 0.5amp charge current going into bat5 is real, or if the BMS reading is off. Just an option, you're going to find out when you isolate Bat5 either way. If its self-discharging and sucking the other modules down, it WILL show it's ugly self on the table.

The 0.5 unit current has now turned to the same -0.03 as the rest of the batteries but the level 3 alarm for high cell voltage remains.

Reading at 9:43 pm is 53.21

 

[MurphyGuy]

The 0.5 unit current has now turned to the same -0.03 as the rest of the batteries but the level 3 alarm for high cell voltage remains.

Reading at 9:43 pm is 53.21

I think it's becoming safe to assume that 0.3 amps is the BMS draw + Contactor.. and it works out to 15.963 watts. That's 16 watts x 24 hours = 383 watts per day, per module. X10 modules, 3830 watts. Wow.. that's ridiculously high. That's 7.1% of your stored energy being used just to maintain your stored energy.

For reference, my BMS and Contactor pull 72 watts per day.

However, there might be some good news.. nothing fantastic, but maybe. The BMS reading is only 1 digit resolution, so if the module is actually pulling 0.25, the reading you see in the software is going to round up to 0.3. It's not an earth shattering difference, but every bit helps.

Lets see what happens as the test continues.

There is something else I just thought about.. It's kind of obvious you can't just return the batteries and say you don't like them, so maybe we can figure out a way to increase your efficiency. I'm not actually sure if this would work, it would kind of depend on how your inverters are set up, how much solar you generate every day, etc.

So your battery bank is 5.4kWh x 10 modules = 54kWh of capacity.. and to utilize that capacity, you must turn on and activate all 10 modules, which each module using 7.1% of its storage capacity to keep itself active. During the summer when solar is plentiful, this probably isn't a big issue.. you most likely generate so much juice that your inverter shuts down charging so an inefficient BMS is not a problem.

So what we know about your situation:
1) You have 2 inverters and I think you said you don't need all that power all the time. Might be helpful if you elaborate on that..
2) During the winter months, you don't generate enough solar to fully charge your batteries. IE: Your battery bank is larger than your solar generation can fill up.

So I'm thinking, if you shut down one inverter, you eliminate the 100 watt parasitic draw on that inverter.. that automatically saves 2.4kW of energy per day.

But what if you could shut down some of those BMS's too? If you were to split your battery bank into two groups of 5 modules each, then each inverter gets its own battery bank. During the summer, you use both inverters and thus both battery banks, but during the winter, you only use one inverter, and only 5 of the battery modules. Sure, your battery bank in the winter is reduced to half capacity, but you can't fill it up anyhow so its not like you're losing anything.

In your situation, it's better to have one (5 module) battery bank full with 27kWh of capacity available and a battery parasitic load of only 1800 watts, then it is to have all ten modules going with 54kWh of capacity, but still only 27kWh available, and a 3600 watt parasitic load.

And you could always flip a switch and engage the 2nd inverter and 2nd battery bank at any time.

The idea here is to only have enough modules active to satisfy your needs.. Any modules that are active that are not being fully charged are also adding to your parasitic load loses. Obviously, because of the requirement that all modules in a bank be at the same voltage, you can't just randomly turn off modules and then turn them back on. But if you have two battery banks, then they are isolated from each other and its not a problem.
And you don't have to split them 5x5 evenly. You could have a primary inverter with 6 modules and a second inverter with the other 4, or visa versa.
The only caveat to this suggestion is that I'm unsure of how your system uses solar input. You would obviously want full solar power available at all times. Since my working knowledge of the SolArks is limited, I'm not sure how that would be handled, but I'm confident there should be a work around.

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

I think it's becoming safe to assume that 0.3 amps is the BMS draw + Contactor.. and it works out to 15.963 watts. That's 16 watts x 24 hours = 383 watts per day, per module. X10 modules, 3830 watts. Wow.. that's ridiculously high. That's 7.1% of your stored energy being used just to maintain your stored energy.

For reference, my BMS and Contactor pull 72 watts per day.

However, there might be some good news.. nothing fantastic, but maybe. The BMS reading is only 1 digit resolution, so if the module is actually pulling 0.25, the reading you see in the software is going to round up to 0.3. It's not an earth shattering difference, but every bit helps.

Lets see what happens as the test continues.

There is something else I just thought about.. It's kind of obvious you can't just return the batteries and say you don't like them, so maybe we can figure out a way to increase your efficiency. I'm not actually sure if this would work, it would kind of depend on how your inverters are set up, how much solar you generate every day, etc.

So your battery bank is 5.4kWh x 10 modules = 54kWh of capacity.. and to utilize that capacity, you must turn on and activate all 10 modules, which each module using 7.1% of its storage capacity to keep itself active. During the summer when solar is plentiful, this probably isn't a big issue.. you most likely generate so much juice that your inverter shuts down charging so an inefficient BMS is not a problem.

So what we know about your situation:
1) You have 2 inverters and I think you said you don't need all that power all the time. Might be helpful if you elaborate on that..
2) During the winter months, you don't generate enough solar to fully charge your batteries. IE: Your battery bank is larger than your solar generation can fill up.

So I'm thinking, if you shut down one inverter, you eliminate the 100 watt parasitic draw on that inverter.. that automatically saves 2.4kW of energy per day.

But what if you could shut down some of those BMS's too? If you were to split your battery bank into two groups of 5 modules each, then each inverter gets its own battery bank. During the summer, you use both inverters and thus both battery banks, but during the winter, you only use one inverter, and only 5 of the battery modules. Sure, your battery bank in the winter is reduced to half capacity, but you can't fill it up anyhow so its not like you're losing anything.

In your situation, it's better to have one (5 module) battery bank full with 27kWh of capacity available and a battery parasitic load of only 1800 watts, then it is to have all ten modules going with 54kWh of capacity, but still only 27kWh available, and a 3600 watt parasitic load.

And you could always flip a switch and engage the 2nd inverter and 2nd battery bank at any time.

The idea here is to only have enough modules active to satisfy your needs.. Any modules that are active that are not being fully charged are also adding to your parasitic load loses. Obviously, because of the requirement that all modules in a bank be at the same voltage, you can't just randomly turn off modules and then turn them back on. But if you have two battery banks, then they are isolated from each other and its not a problem.
And you don't have to split them 5x5 evenly. You could have a primary inverter with 6 modules and a second inverter with the other 4, or visa versa.
The only caveat to this suggestion is that I'm unsure of how your system uses solar input. You would obviously want full solar power available at all times. Since my working knowledge of the SolArks is limited, I'm not sure how that would be handled, but I'm confident there should be a work around.

If you look at the start of this post, my question had been, what's YOUR parasitic load. This is because I had no frame of reference but felt like this loss was truly unacceptable and that the response from Fortress was both a long time in coming and weak at best. When I bought the six additional batteries (an investment of $21,060), it was so we could make it through longer periods of no sun. I don't need that kind of energy storage in good PV production. I had no reason to suspect my biggest energy suck was the damn batteries themselves. To have received such lame statements from Tom Honey suggesting that their battery consumption was not significant seems like pure gaslighting at it's best especially when I explained to him that our PV was not even as much as the system was consuming for days at a time! His idea was for me to add wind or micro hydro. That'd be great but how about an efficiency from their equipment that matches what they state instead? How can they show such high efficiencies on their documentation to have such big losses when people like you scream "BULLSHIT!"? And how is this not a type of fraud, really? I'm frankly, beside myself. We literally spent a huge chunk of our life savings on a set of bricks not batteries!

I'm curious to know why you believe these are higher quality products that say an EG4-LL. Because I have heard nothing but responses like, "Those are pretty spendy batteries for what you get." This suggests to me that these are overpriced and have no exceptional features. Sadly, I picked these batteries because it was what I saw Engineer 775 installing along with the Sol-Arks. I looked at other batteries but didn't know what characteristics I was really looking for. I was trying to buy high quality so I wouldn't have issues. All I've had are issues. My heart literally hurts.

The way this system is supposed to work is every Sol-Ark is attached to the same battery bank. So your suggestion would not fly with the manufacturers unless I broke the system up to power different things but, at that point, I've destroyed the design I was going for in the first place which was to be able to power as much of my house as I can (ie, to keep comfortable as best I can) during periods of good PV and to at least maintain water and refrigeration at all other times. I can't even get this basic level of coverage with this equipment at an investment of over $70k. I literally, doubled my original investment for garbage.

This morning's reading, for what it's worth, was 53.18 at 7:46 am.

Again, thanks for all of your help and feedback.

 

[MurphyGuy]

If you look at the start of this post, my question had been, what's YOUR parasitic load. This is because I had no frame of reference but felt like this loss was truly unacceptable and that the response from Fortress was both a long time in coming and weak at best. When I bought the six additional batteries (an investment of $21,060), it was so we could make it through longer periods of no sun. I don't need that kind of energy storage in good PV production. I had no reason to suspect my biggest energy suck was the damn batteries themselves. To have received such lame statements from Tom Honey suggesting that their battery consumption was not significant seems like pure gaslighting at it's best especially when I explained to him that our PV was not even as much as the system was consuming for days at a time! His idea was for me to add wind or micro hydro. That'd be great but how about an efficiency from their equipment that matches what they state instead? How can they show such high efficiencies on their documentation to have such big losses when people like you scream "BULLSHIT!"? And how is this not a type of fraud, really? I'm frankly, beside myself. We literally spent a huge chunk of our life savings on a set of bricks not batteries!

Well, like most products out there today, there's a lot of exaggeration and wiggle room in what a seller can claim and what a buyer expects based on those claims.
I have to say, even at the reduced self consumption of 15 watts, I am also dismayed at how much juice a Fortress battery wastes. That said, we need to continue your test to see if that little black box surprises us.

I'm curious to know why you believe these are higher quality products that say an EG4-LL. Because I have heard nothing but responses like, "Those are pretty spendy batteries for what you get." This suggests to me that these are overpriced and have no exceptional features.

I am baffled by the high parasitic loading to be upfront about it. And as your testing continues, if we find that our initial indications continue and the parasitic load is really that high, I will be making some serious adjustments to my opinions on Fortress. Like you, I have based much of my thoughts on what I have read, what I've seen on Youtube, and what their spec sheet says.

Sadly, I picked these batteries because it was what I saw Engineer 775 installing along with the Sol-Arks. I looked at other batteries but didn't know what characteristics I was really looking for. I was trying to buy high quality so I wouldn't have issues. All I've had are issues. My heart literally hurts.

I understand your frustration and have experienced the same with other things in life. Lets keep going with the testing.. play it through and maybe we can figure something out.

The way this system is supposed to work is every Sol-Ark is attached to the same battery bank. So your suggestion would not fly with the manufacturers unless I broke the system up to power different things but, at that point, I've destroyed the design I was going for in the first place which was to be able to power as much of my house as I can (ie, to keep comfortable as best I can) during periods of good PV and to at least maintain water and refrigeration at all other times. I can't even get this basic level of coverage with this equipment at an investment of over $70k. I literally, doubled my original investment for garbage.

This morning's reading, for what it's worth, was 53.18 at 7:46 am.

Again, thanks for all of your help and feedback.

Like I said, lets play it through with the testing. I have a few thoughts on what we're seeing so far...
1) I think Fortress Power's 30 watt spec is based on a BMS that is going full throttle trying to balance all the cells. This means the BMS load is intermittent and won't always draw juice that way.
2) I can tell you that when my system is doing nothing and the inverters are turned off, that my current shunt will frequently still read phantom currents at such low readings. This means that the 0.3 reading might not be accurate or meaningful.
3) I don't know the specifics of how the BMS in a Fortress Power unit works, but in my system, as well as many (all?) others, the BMS is not even capable of reading its own draw. This is because the BMS power connections are BEFORE the current shunt the BMS uses to determine battery charge/discharge currents. And on that note.. All BMS's draw their balancing currents DIRECTLY from the individual cells.. this means it is not possible for balancing operations to register on the current shunt.

Lastly, Fortress power is not some new Chinese brand with a grand total of 50 units sold so far.. If Engineer 775 was using their products than Fortress is either a rather popular brand, or they paid the guy to say nice things. I'm going to tentatively assume he wasn't paid, and if their parasitic draw is really so large that it is causing the problems, then there would be a lot of other people out there complaining about it, and I'm not seeing that. I've searched around google, duckduckgo, youtube, and forums, and I'm not seeing anyone complain about their products. In fact, I'm seeing a lack of complaints..

So we're going on about 12 hours right now. You should copy and paste the below readings and include in each post. I'm writing them to a txt file to track it. Just to verify, this is a single module that is disconnected from the pack correct?

03/05 7:47 pm 53.22
03/05 9:43 pm 53.21
03/06 7:46 am 53.18 (first 12 hours)
Drop so far = 40mV

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

03/05 7:47 pm 53.22
03/05 9:43 pm 53.21
03/06 7:46 am 53.18 (first 12 hours)
Drop so far = 40mV

Thank you for continuing to listen and to help me work through this. I'm so tempted to pay a consult to Practical Preppers (Engineer 775) just to talk to him about what we're seeing and to see if this is why I'm not seeing more recent videos from him using the eFlex.

We have not yet taken battery 5 out of the line up. We just finished farm chores and were looking over the overnight data. Sadly, the laptop that's been setup with the BMS software is on it's last legs with a failing motherboard. I've been fighting to get it to work for the last hour and a half. It's not working. I'm just "battin' a thousand" these days. It's impossible to do proper monitoring without that laptop. We'll continue to take readings and I'll post them in a few minutes once I get my bearings on what to do with laptops and connectivity to the system.

As for battery 5, I wanted to look at the overnight monitoring data to see if it ever went back to drawing like it did initially. I was not even half way through gathering those files together when the laptop started to die. :-(

 

[MurphyGuy]

Thank you for continuing to listen and to help me work through this. I'm so tempted to pay a consult to Practical Preppers (Engineer 775) just to talk to him about what we're seeing and to see if this is why I'm not seeing more recent videos from him using the eFlex.

We have not yet taken battery 5 out of the line up. We just finished farm chores and were looking over the overnight data. Sadly, the laptop that's been setup with the BMS software is on it's last legs with a failing motherboard. I've been fighting to get it to work for the last hour and a half. It's not working. I'm just "battin' a thousand" these days. It's impossible to do proper monitoring without that laptop. We'll continue to take readings and I'll post them in a few minutes once I get my bearings on what to do with laptops and connectivity to the system.

As for battery 5, I wanted to look at the overnight monitoring data to see if it ever went back to drawing like it did initially. I was not even half way through gathering those files together when the laptop started to die. :-(

I'm confused..
Which battery module number are the voltage readings coming from? Are you providing voltages for the entire battery bank or have you isolated one module for the experiment?

 

[welnat]

Excuse my language to get your attention.

Get that F'ing battery out of the circuit now before you go to sleep again!

If that battery is a load and no longer a power source, and it sees enough charge to it, you could ventilate it.

I haven't read the finer points. I skipped pages 3 and 4. I don't care. If you don't know it is safe (by disconnecting from string and testing resting voltage, applying manual low amp charge, etc.) then treat it as ready to compromise your whole array.

CBDC may be coming, but you have a more direct problem that you are aware of and are very responsible to take care of.

TAKE IT OUT NOW!!

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

I'm confused..
Which battery module number are the voltage readings coming from? Are you providing voltages for the entire battery bank or have you isolated one module for the experiment?

The voltages we've been reporting all this time have been for all 10 batteries. Battery #5 had not shown that .5 unit current at all again, from what we could see from the reports. It had returned to -.3 unit current like the rest of the batteries so we were trying to look at this morning's reports to see if we saw that anomaly again. That's when the computer crashed. I was able to recover it and replace the computer in the shop but can't get the new computer to record a damn thing so I finally broke down and contacted Fortress (twice) with the second attempt being in writing stating all of the issues we've been having and asking for a written response back at this point. Based on the alarming message below your last post, we have literally shut down all of the batteries while we, again, try to figure out what the heck is going on. When my husband shut off all of the batteries he tested at the Sol-Ark battery connections and he's seeing voltage which started at 15 and has since risen to 24. Our neighbor is now here helping him while I type this to you.

I should note also that when I finally did get the original computer recovered, I did see a brief moment on battery 5 when it showed that 0.5 unit current. It occurred at 2:13 am and again at 2:20 and lasted only seconds each time. I'm still trying to get through more of those files to see if I see this activity on any of the other batteries. I lost that system monitoring recording around 10 am and have not been able to get it back online.

The voltage readings for the entire 10 batteries together have been as follows:

3/5/2023 14:43​	53.27​
3/5/2023 15:43​	53.25​
3/5/2023 16:43​	53.24​
3/5/2023 17:43​	53.23​
3/5/2023 18:50​	53.22​
3/5/2023 19:47​	53.22​
3/5/2023 20:43​	53.21​
3/5/2023 21:43​	53.21​
3/6/2023 7:48​	53.18​
3/6/2023 8:48​	53.18​
3/6/2023 9:48​	53.18​
3/6/2023 10:48​	53.18​
3/6/2023 11:43​	53.17​
3/6/2023 12:43​	53.17​

 

[SHTF Power Anyway]

Excuse my language to get your attention.

Get that F'ing battery out of the circuit now before you go to sleep again!

If that battery is a load and no longer a power source, and it sees enough charge to it, you could ventilate it.

I haven't read the finer points. I skipped pages 3 and 4. I don't care. If you don't know it is safe (by disconnecting from string and testing resting voltage, applying manual low amp charge, etc.) then treat it as ready to compromise your whole array.

CBDC may be coming, but you have a more direct problem that you are aware of and are very responsible to take care of.

TAKE IT OUT NOW!!

Feel free to let it fly, my friend! I sound like a truck driver over here!

The entire battery bank is off while my team works to get battery 5 out of the string. There are now more issues. I will continue to report back here as things evolve for anyone who might be interested. Meanwhile I've sent a support ticket to Fortress as I could not get through to support by phone the 2nd time I called so I opted not to leave a message (it would have been me screaming). I assume they won't like my "tone" as I'm pointing out a long list of issues with their documentation and support.