EG4 6500EX48 bypass mode settings

[JCSchwarb]

Hello Solar Aficionados!

Appreciate sharing thoughts on bypass modes, what typically triggers them and out to exit out of them when inverters seem stuck in that mode.

I noticed this morning that my system defaulted to bypass mode sometime since last night. When I last checked at 6pm last night my 10 LifePower4 (48V) battery bank were at 53.4V. At 6:30 they were reading 52.9V (that is a huge drop of 25% according to attached chart) and nothing going on to justify such a quick demand. Fast forward to 9am today and my batteries are at 53V and over 1kW solar generation but still in bypass with very light demand. Seems that if the system triggers to bypass it doesn’t switch back when it seems reasonable to do so. From yesterday, my power meter shows 61 kW of demand. Any settings help is much appreciated. Also, my no 6 inverter is now making a clicking sound now when in bypass after my second day in use, arggg. Seems like a known EG4 6500 issue.

 

[Mattb4]

Check your settings. Depending on operating mode you will find Battery to Util, Util to battery and there may or may not be a Battery under voltage recovery setting. My EAsun has this setting as voltage. You might have battery capacity.

Also understand that battery voltage under charge/discharge will be different than battery at rest depending on load and charge rates.

 

[JCSchwarb]

TY Mattb4 - I checked all the settings and don’t see anything like that. The main setting is SBU priority and that is set.

 

[Mattb4]

TY Mattb4 - I checked all the settings and don’t see anything like that. The main setting is SBU priority and that is set.

SBU is a operation mode. Solar/battery preferred and switches to utility bypass if DC voltage drops to a set level or capacity. In the manual here: https://signaturesolar.com/content/documents/EG4/6500ex/EG4_6.5_manual_revision2.pdf Program 12, 13 and possibly 29.

 

[JCSchwarb]

SBU is a operation mode. Solar/battery preferred and switches to utility bypass if DC voltage drops to a set level or capacity. In the manual here: https://signaturesolar.com/content/documents/EG4/6500ex/EG4_6.5_manual_revision2.pdf Program 12, 13 and possibly 29.

View attachment 126178

Thank you for researching this and helping me. I think I understand the default on 13 needs to be set to a lower V set point.

 

[bob.longmire]

One other option, that is slightly controversial, is to use the "EG4" battery setting in option 5. If you select "EG4", and have the proper communication wire to your battery stack, you could setup your threshold for switching into bypass mode off the battery State of Charge %. Now, some people don't like this as it can be tricky, but I like to think in % rather than voltages. For me, I have mine set to switch into bypass mode at 5% and exit out of bypass at 10%.

Hope that gives you another possible solution.

 

[JCSchwarb]

One other option, that is slightly controversial, is to use the "EG4" battery setting in option 5. If you select "EG4", and have the proper communication wire to your battery stack, you could setup your threshold for switching into bypass mode off the battery State of Charge %. Now, some people don't like this as it can be tricky, but I like to think in % rather than voltages. For me, I have mine set to switch into bypass mode at 5% and exit out of bypass at 10%.

Hope that gives you another possible solution.

I wish I could get my system to lock into EG4 mode. It keeps failing as 61 so am using manual USE mode. I am not into flashing the software with 6 units and only 3 months new. Any thoughts is appreciated.

 

[bob.longmire]

Hi,

I was getting the dreaded error 61 when I first worked on my stack.

The Cat5 cable that comes with the EG4 6500s for battery communication is a special cable with a special pin out pattern. 1 side of the cable is for the inverter and 1 side for the battery. I don't remember exactly which, the manual would say. 1 cable uses pins 1,2 and the other like 1 and 4 or something like that.

The cable plus into the left port on the primary battery, then the small grey jumper goes from right port on the main to left port on battery 2, a new cable goes from right port on battery 2 to left port on battery 3, and so on.

The dip switches on battery 1 need to be all down to indicate it's the primary battery. Dip switches on the rest of the batteries should follow the pattern in the manual with unique addresses on each battery.

If you're using 2 EG4 inverters, set inverter 1 as EG4, and inverter 2 as "USE." Inverter 2 doesn't plug into the battery via a cat 5. I think the serial cables do the communicating.

To make all these changes would take a few power cycles, so do it during the daylight so your inverters can power up on solar, and then look for the batteries under these changes.

If you check your cable is plugged in the correct orientation, your main battery has all down pins, the pins are different and follow the pattern in the manual, and your inverter 2 is set to use those should take care of most problems.

 

[JCSchwarb]

Hi,

I was getting the dreaded error 61 when I first worked on my stack.

The Cat5 cable that comes with the EG4 6500s for battery communication is a special cable with a special pin out pattern. 1 side of the cable is for the inverter and 1 side for the battery. I don't remember exactly which, the manual would say. 1 cable uses pins 1,2 and the other like 1 and 4 or something like that.

The cable plus into the left port on the primary battery, then the small grey jumper goes from right port on the main to left port on battery 2, a new cable goes from right port on battery 2 to left port on battery 3, and so on.

The dip switches on battery 1 need to be all down to indicate it's the primary battery. Dip switches on the rest of the batteries should follow the pattern in the manual with unique addresses on each battery.

If you're using 2 EG4 inverters, set inverter 1 as EG4, and inverter 2 as "USE." Inverter 2 doesn't plug into the battery via a cat 5. I think the serial cables do the communicating.

To make all these changes would take a few power cycles, so do it during the daylight so your inverters can power up on solar, and then look for the batteries under these changes.

If you check your cable is plugged in the correct orientation, your main battery has all down pins, the pins are different and follow the pattern in the manual, and your inverter 2 is set to use those should take care of most problems.

Thank you very much. I will check my cable orientation. I had no idea this was setup that way. Have you been getting expected watts out of your batteries? I went with 10 for heavy overnight use in FL running several HVACs and tankless water heaters. By 7pm, my battery voltage is from 53.5 to 52.5 and by bedtime is around 51V. This is without any HVAC load. It doesn’t seem like my batteries are charging much past 50%, the SOC lights show three bars. Something seems off by a lot. Without HVAC demand, I was expecting at most 25000 watts consumption overnight. Appreciate the help.

 

[bob.longmire]

I think I am. I have 3 batteries, and when running 2 EG4-6500s the total stack will drops maybe 10% to 15% over night with no load.

Rumor has it that each inverter has a 300 watt idle consumption. So, that's 600 Watts times 8 hours of darkness. That'd be 4.8 kWhs each night to run for 8 hours.

I seem to be doing better than that, so maybe the online numbers for idle consumption are actually a little high. If that were true, my stack should drop by 33% (basically 1 whole batter just to run the inverters for a night). But, that doesn't seem to be the case.

I think you're having issues with your threshold settings. I honestly don't know how to troubleshoot charge and discharge based on voltages. It could be an equalization voltage, bulk charging voltage, so floating voltage setting somewhere.

The EG4 setting is what I used to handle all the settings. The only settings I changed were max charge rate to 100 AMPs, Solar only charging, switch to bypass mode at 5% , and return to battery only mode at 10%.

 

[bones1]

"The EG4 setting is what I used to handle all the settings. The only settings I changed were max charge rate to 100 AMPs, Solar only charging, switch to bypass mode at 5% , and return to battery only mode at 10%" Can you elaborate on this setting please.

 

[bob.longmire]

Sure. It's a combination of multiple settings on the EG4-6500 when you have EG4 batteries connected with the com cable (remember that com cable is a weird cat5 with a different pinouts on each end. It has an end that plugs into the battery and an end that goes into the inverter, if you switch it around, you'll get warning 6P battery not connected). Here's where I'm at with my settings to make this happen:

Setting 1: Output source priority. Set to SBU Solar, Battery, then utility. This runs the inverter in Battery Mode until the below thresholds are triggered.

Setting 2: Maximum Charge Current: Set to 100 AMPS

Setting 5: Battery Type: Set to EG4 for primary inverter and USE for second inverter (FYI, this will now ignore all voltage thresholds and settings and make the inverter work off State of Charge levels instead of voltages. This also only works if you have the EG4 inverter and EG4 battery connected properly with that cable. You also have to have the dip-switch settings correct on the batteries).

Setting 11: Maximum Utility Charge: Set to 5 AMPs. This is unnecessary as we'll select Solar Only in a different setting, so the inverter should never charge the battery from the grid. I set mine low just in case it ever did try to pull from the grid to charge the battery. Probably not needed.

Setting 12: Voltage back to grid. Since we selected "EG4" in setting 5, this will now be a state of charge % instead of a voltage. I have mine at 10%. So, when the stack gets to 10%, both inverters will go into bypass mode:

Setting 13: Voltage back to battery mode: Same thing, this is now state of charge rather than voltage. I have mine at 15%. So, both inverters will remain in bypass mode until the battery stack gets to 15% capacity.

Setting 16: Charge source priority: "OSO" which is only solar. The inverter will only charge on solar.

Setting 29: Low DC Cutoff. I didn't mess with this one. I left it at zero. In theory, it should never get here because the inverters should go into bypass mode at 10% SOC. I think the default is 0%

 

[bones1]

Excellent. Why do you never want to charge from the grid/utility?.

 

[PreppenWolf]

Excellent. Why do you never want to charge from the grid/utility?.

I have this question as well. Running to such a small available percentage and not grid charging means you're putting the entire system at greater risk should the grid go down.

 

[bob.longmire]

I run my system to lower my power bill. I charge via solar in the day, and use that power at night. If I were to charge the battery at night, it'd be full in the AM and I wouldn't utilize solar as much. It wouldn't reduce my bill as much if I do it that way.

You're 100% correct, my setup increases risk if the grid goes down. My goals are for reduced grid usage, not increased energy security.

This may not be the right choice for everyone. If you want to always have a battery at 100% SOC, then do Solar + Utility charging in setting 16.

 

[bones1]

Sounds like a good option.I was just curious, makes sense

 

[PreppenWolf]

Is your solar capable of filling your battery every day from 10%?

The choice is not purely charge to 100% or don't charge at all. I have mine set to 48V-52V charging range for winter. This gives me a buffer in case there is a storm and we lose grid power. Where I am (NH) I cannot fill my 105KWh bank half the year. In spring summer months I will likely bump the numbers to 48V-50V as a floor given I could technically do a 100% batt charge in a single day in July.