Eg4 Lifepower4 battery is ticking on start

[robby]

Hey Robby can you also include capacity test results with your evidence of grade b cells as well. I'm talking to another manufacturer who knows the company making eg4 packs and they claim to be grade a cells. Would love to see your evidence proving everyone to be false. Post it all here.

Hi Will
Sorry but there is really no chance of that happening as it is in parallel with four eFlex batteries powering my house.
In order to do that I would have to have to remove it from the group and I do not have another Inverter to test it on.
What I can show you when it happens again is how out of balance the cells are when it has two days of low charging.
While my eFlex batteries are still perfectly balanced at all times.

Grade b cells in the eg4LL?? Can you post pictures of these and the barcodes. I have not seen evidence of that before.

I tracked down the manufacturer website using the UL Listing number and posted the website link in another thread.
On the Website they state that the batteries are Telecom batteries. I will find the link again and post it tomorrow.

 

[Shimmy]

That's actually completely false. How do you arrive to this conclusion?

Market forces, competition, and comparison to cost of DIY. Cheap is not necessarily a bad thing... just a buyer-beware situation. I alluded to the fact before that it will be a great unit for >>90% of the users out there. The problem is that it is hard for the customer to know in advance if they will be in the <<10%.

My *perception* is that Signature Solar is doing about 10x the volume of Current Connected on the server rack batteries. I also have high comfort level that the SOK battery is worth its premium over the base EG4 battery for my personal needs. The EG4-LL might be a wash, but again my perception is that it is a comparable volume to SOK. With the LL and SOK having dramatically lower volumes the fact that we hear more about problems with the base EG4 is entirely predictable.

All of the BMSs we see seem to have crap software which is annoying because converting it to a simple web interface would be trivial and eliminate many of the issues people have with understanding how their battery is performing. The BMSs also appear to have limited balancing capability, which poses issues for long-term reliability.

And, I don't buy into the whole "Grade B Cells" stuff-- without a standard for cell grades it is meaningless. We do know that all of the server rack batteries common for the DIY market are automotive grade reject, and have varying degrees of quality. I do not know if either EG4 or SOK include a QA report with their units for either the cells or the assembled package (or both).

 

[robby]

Mainly from the orders for the cells. They can't advertise the cycle life they do unless they were grade a cells.

Your kidding right?
There were companies advertising 10,000 cycles just 5 months ago. Why on earth would you believe for a second that these Chinese manufactures have some sort of legal or ethical compass when dealing with goods shipped to America?
I have seen you open numerous battery packs that were outright lies according to the Specs! Batteries Advertised with low temperature cutout and there is not even a sensor. Why on earth would fudging the amount of cycles or grade of the battery matter to them?

 

[Will Prowse]

Your kidding right?
There were companies advertising 10,000 cycles just 5 months ago. Why on earth would you believe for a second that these Chinese manufactures have some sort of legal or ethical compass when dealing with goods shipped to America?
I have seen you open numerous battery packs that were outright lies according to the Specs! Batteries Advertised with low temperature cutout and there is not even a sensor. Why on earth would fudging the amount of cycles or grade of the battery matter to them?

No, I am not kidding. I want to see what you are talking about. Substantiate your claim with evidence. I want to see exactly which company you are talking about. Use screenshots of bad advertising like I do in all of my videos, or show exactly what numbers were false. I want to see it.

The companies that are honest, post their data. Look up SOK cell cycle life data. It is all there. They and others can use the cheaper cells (which are commonly ordered cells and very easy to find). I actually know exactly who is ordering those cells but I cannot publicly state who, and they put them in cheaper packs that I recommend people avoid.

This is not some kind of surprise or new information.

What I need you to do right now is post your evidence. I want to see exactly which company posted 10,000 cycles five months ago. Who was that? To what capacity?

I also want to see your proof for EG4. Your claims of using used grade b cells need to be posted. I want to see your evidence.

 

[Will Prowse]

Hi Will
Sorry but there is really no chance of that happening as it is in parallel with four eFlex batteries powering my house.
In order to do that I would have to have to remove it from the group and I do not have another Inverter to test it on.
What I can show you when it happens again is how out of balance the cells are when it has two days of low charging.
While my eFlex batteries are still perfectly balanced at all times.


I tracked down the manufacturer website using the UL Listing number and posted the website link in another thread.
On the Website they state that the batteries are Telecom batteries. I will find the link again and post it tomorrow.

Can you purchase another one to open so that we can all see. My videos would have zero use if I did not actually show people what is inside. What you are doing, making assumptions on the internals without sharing evidence, does not help anyone. If I did what you are doing, this forum and the channel would fail instantly. I want to see inside your battery, and I need proof of what you say. I don't care if it is powering your house. Get a flashlight and open it up. I can do it in 10 minutes. I do it every single day. And yes the cells are not matched. That is unfortunate but common. Even on expensive batteries, I see it. It depends on how they are batched at the factory. Sometimes you get a pack that is not matched perfectly. What are your capacity test results? Can you post them here?

Will be looking forward to see what telecom batteries you are referring to. And how they are "used grade b cells". I am amazed that those can be listed. Will be great to see your evidence.

 

[mmmnnn]

Yes and no. A clamp meter will show you the magnitude of the problem. If the BMS has an "instantaneous" protection feature for under voltage/over voltage/over current then that quarter-cycle value becomes more important.

The tick should be the pre-charge contactor kicking off (or on).

I would first record your startup procedure as you have been doing it.

If all you have is a clamp meter or multimeter, the first test is to look at battery bus voltage recorded at the battery terminals. Record a video of the meter screen as you start up; it isn't perfect since it is trying to not change the values often so you can actually read the value. (It's one of those times where old analog meters are great.) You should see the system start off at 0V, jump up to something under 40V when you close the breaker, and slowly approach the battery voltage. When you hear the click the voltage might jump up a little-- how much is important. When you hear subsequent clicks see if the voltage is varrying.

Then shut everything down, wait 60 seconds, and repeat the test measuring the voltage on positive from the battery terminal to the inverter terminal, repeating for negative (after shutting down and waiting 60 seconds again). This will hopefully give you an idea of current plus any potential high-resistance connections; you should see a voltage difference of under 5V initially, and ramping down to 0V.

After this baseline information, record current on one battery lead to the inverter as you do another start. I would be curious about current flow after the first click.

@Will Prowse

So as promised i bought the Clamp meter with inrush Current and an analog Voltmeter. I did multiple tests with same results, this is the latest one, i transcribed the events below since the sound is terrible (i'm not a youtuber )


0:00 Starts with main switch off for the whole system, inverter is off, analog multimeter connected, the rush current amp meter clamped on one of the battery terminals
0:12 turn on battery switch
0:22 hold reset to turn off the battery to prepare for the capacitor recharge
0:30 battery ready for recharge
0:35 turn main switch on
0:37 Hold reset button again
0:53 ticks while recharging the capacitor
1:03 reset the inrush current clamp meter to prepare for turning on the inverter
1:09 inverter contractors closes, inrush current 43 A, battery ticks and fails

 

[Will Prowse]

@Will Prowse

So as promised i bought the Clamp meter with inrush Current and an analog Voltmeter. I did multiple tests with same results, this is the latest one, i transcribed the events below since the sound is terrible (i'm not a youtuber )


0:00 Starts with main switch off for the whole system, inverter is off, analog multimeter connected, the rush current amp meter clamped on one of the battery terminals
0:12 turn on battery switch
0:22 hold reset to turn off the battery to prepare for the capacitor recharge
0:30 battery ready for recharge
0:35 turn main switch on
0:37 Hold reset button again
0:53 ticks while recharging the capacitor
1:03 reset the inrush current clamp meter to prepare for turning on the inverter
1:09 inverter contractors closes, inrush current 43 A, battery ticks and fails

Thank you for posting the video, but holy cow you really need to clean up your wiring. Is this a permanent install or just a bench test station?

And looks like the precharge circuit is failing to do its job. Can you send this video to signature solar?

A huge issue with signature solar is that they still do not have an official procedure to activate or use the precharge resistor circuit. I had to guess when I used mine.

I am hoping people posting videos like this will get them to add to their documentation.

SOK is not having this issue at all, so I am putting them higher on the list of recommended server rack batteries. They do not have this issue, and they have documentation stating exactly how to use the pre charge resistor from day one.

 

[Shimmy]

@Will Prowse

So as promised i bought the Clamp meter with inrush Current and an analog Voltmeter. I did multiple tests with same results, this is the latest one, i transcribed the events below since the sound is terrible (i'm not a youtuber )


0:00 Starts with main switch off for the whole system, inverter is off, analog multimeter connected, the rush current amp meter clamped on one of the battery terminals
0:12 turn on battery switch
0:22 hold reset to turn off the battery to prepare for the capacitor recharge
0:30 battery ready for recharge
0:35 turn main switch on
0:37 Hold reset button again
0:53 ticks while recharging the capacitor
1:03 reset the inrush current clamp meter to prepare for turning on the inverter
1:09 inverter contractors closes, inrush current 43 A, battery ticks and fails

Looking at the voltage meter I think your sequence is wrong. IIRC Richard said all you need to do is turn on the breaker. What should be happening here is that when you close the breaker the capacitors charge, and then when you reset the unit you are re-engaging the pre-charge resistor... only against charged capacitors.

What happens if you don't touch the reset button?

 

[mmmnnn]

Thank you for posting the video, but holy cow you really need to clean up your wiring. Is this a permanent install or just a bench test station?

And looks like the precharge circuit is failing to do its job. Can you send this video to signature solar?

A huge issue with signature solar is that they still do not have an official procedure to activate or use the precharge resistor circuit. I had to guess when I used mine.

I am hoping people posting videos like this will get them to add to their documentation.

SOK is not having this issue at all, so I am putting them higher on the list of recommended server rack batteries. They do not have this issue, and they have documentation stating exactly how to use the pre charge resistor from day one.

So this is an RV setup, was planning to replace the 3 yo tesla battery module with the 2 of the signature solar batteries and mount them to an 80/20 frame and wire them to a Victron power in / lynx distributer. However that's on hold until i figure out what the signature solar will do. I sent them an email, posted a screen shot of the email here on Monday @ 7 am , all i got back is a confirmation from customer No service that it has been forwarded to techs, and a promise from ben @ signature solar that he will call with nothing so far!

 

[mmmnnn]

Looking at the voltage meter I think your sequence is wrong. IIRC Richard said all you need to do is turn on the breaker. What should be happening here is that when you close the breaker the capacitors charge, and then when you reset the unit you are re-engaging the pre-charge resistor... only against charged capacitors.

What happens if you don't touch the reset button?

so i tried different combination, in my opinion, the charge capacitor process doesn't make a difference. the bms ticks the same way in both situation (I mean if i keep the battery connected directly to the inverter, turn the battery on, battery ticks but still charge the inverter).

I managed to get the inverter running if i turn off all circuit breakers in the RV the battery will be able to support the inverter turning on, if i flip the breakers one by one slowly, battery still works, the moment i turn on a heavier load e.g. electric water kittle or so, the battery fails. It's a garbage battery BMS!

 

[Shimmy]

@mmmnnn Please take a look at this:

EG4 LifePower Startup Procedure

I've had a ton of PM's and questions on what the start up order is for the EG4 batteries. I just wanted to let everyone know I just worked with Signature Solar to put out a new video showing the process and showing what to do if it goes wrong. I also wanted to type it out because I've seen a lot...

diysolarforum.com

 

[Shimmy]

I managed to get the inverter running if i turn off all circuit breakers in the RV the battery will be able to support the inverter turning on, if i flip the breakers one by one slowly, battery still works, the moment i turn on a heavier load e.g. electric water kittle or so, the battery fails. It's a garbage battery BMS!

How many watts is the water kettle? Can you measure how many amps is flowing from the battery when it fails?

 

[robby]

No, I am not kidding. I want to see what you are talking about. Substantiate your claim with evidence. I want to see exactly which company you are talking about. Use screenshots of bad advertising like I do in all of my videos, or show exactly what numbers were false. I want to see it.

The companies that are honest, post their data. Look up SOK cell cycle life data. It is all there. They and others can use the cheaper cells (which are commonly ordered cells and very easy to find). I actually know exactly who is ordering those cells but I cannot publicly state who, and they put them in cheaper packs that I recommend people avoid.

This is not some kind of surprise or new information.

What I need you to do right now is post your evidence. I want to see exactly which company posted 10,000 cycles five months ago. Who was that? To what capacity?

I also want to see your proof for EG4. Your claims of using used grade b cells need to be posted. I want to see your evidence.

The Real UL Listing for the EG4 Lifepower


If you go to Signature Solar Website you will see a UL certificate with the same MH65558 UL List number but they have some how made the Certificate holders name EG4 Electronics LLC.
https://signaturesolar.com/content/documents/EG4/1511006-ul.pdf

So going back to Jiangxi Ganfeng Battery you can find the battery on their Website here.
http://www.ganfenglithium.com/product11_en/typeid/24.html


That Battery pictured is the Eg4LL and it is a Telecom Battery which is always Grade B Cells.
Signature Solar has stated Numerous times that the EG4 Lifepower and the Eg4LL use the same cells.

UL Listing is not based on the quality of the cells and how long they will last, it's based on the safety of the product itself. You can most certainly get cells with a shorter lifespan listed.


Honestly Will what is up with the distraction from the fact that the battery BMS is giving customers problems?
Are all these people imaging that their Inverters cannot start and that they are tripping out under heavy loads?
You changed the Topic from the BMS problem to what kind of cells are in the battery. Why?

 

[mmmnnn]

How many watts is the water kettle? Can you measure how many amps is flowing from the battery when it fails?

1500w AC
my "impression" it fails once the battery inrush is over 4xA or so

 

[robby]

Can you purchase another one to open so that we can all see. My videos would have zero use if I did not actually show people what is inside. What you are doing, making assumptions on the internals without sharing evidence, does not help anyone. If I did what you are doing, this forum and the channel would fail instantly. I want to see inside your battery, and I need proof of what you say. I don't care if it is powering your house. Get a flashlight and open it up. I can do it in 10 minutes. I do it every single day. And yes the cells are not matched. That is unfortunate but common. Even on expensive batteries, I see it. It depends on how they are batched at the factory. Sometimes you get a pack that is not matched perfectly. What are your capacity test results? Can you post them here?

Will be looking forward to see what telecom batteries you are referring to. And how they are "used grade b cells". I am amazed that those can be listed. Will be great to see your evidence.

Purchase another one lol ?? I regret purchasing this one!
If I had waited a few more weeks and seen the SOK video that would be the battery I have now.

 

[mmmnnn]

@mmmnnn Please take a look at this:

EG4 LifePower Startup Procedure

I've had a ton of PM's and questions on what the start up order is for the EG4 batteries. I just wanted to let everyone know I just worked with Signature Solar to put out a new video showing the process and showing what to do if it goes wrong. I also wanted to type it out because I've seen a lot...

diysolarforum.com

so i watched it, seems he's initiating the capacitor charge from the EG4 inverter interface panel which i don't have. One more issue, the EG4 is 6.5KW inverter and 2 of the. Mine is much smaller (3KW).

Guess this video won't help any non EG4 inverter users

P.S. all these problems have been solved for another customer once they replaced his batteries to the LL model (after months of back and fourth between him and EG4) check post #162

Eg4 Lifepower4 battery is ticking on start

You need a scope for capacitor inrush; the clamp isn't going to read the transient. what do you mean? not familiar with scope for capacitor inrush

diysolarforum.com

 

[Will Prowse]

The Real UL Listing for the EG4 Lifepower
View attachment 105237

If you go to Signature Solar Website you will see a UL certificate with the same MH65558 UL List number but they have some how made the Certificate holders name EG4 Electronics LLC.
https://signaturesolar.com/content/documents/EG4/1511006-ul.pdf

So going back to Jiangxi Ganfeng Battery you can find the battery on their Website here.
http://www.ganfenglithium.com/product11_en/typeid/24.html

View attachment 105241
That Battery pictured is the Eg4LL and it is a Telecom Battery which is always Grade B Cells.
Signature Solar has stated Numerous times that the EG4 Lifepower and the Eg4LL use the same cells.

UL Listing is not based on the quality of the cells and how long they will last, it's based on the safety of the product itself. You can most certainly get cells with a shorter lifespan listed.


Honestly Will what is up with the distraction from the fact that the battery BMS is giving customers problems?
Are all these people imaging that their Inverters cannot start and that they are tripping out under heavy loads?
You changed the Topic from the BMS problem to what kind of cells are in the battery. Why?

No, you mentioned them using used cells. Grade b cells and used cells are different. How were they previously used?

And yes I understand people are having issues but I'm trying to get more people to post evidence. I don't care what people say, I care what proof they can provide. I've been doing this for a while now and user error is common and I get tons of people complaining about all products due to the traffic of this site and the channel. I have to sort through it all and see the actual evidence. I have ten packs, no issue. So I'm trying to get you and others to post actual evidence.

Now can you post evidence that these are used cells? I am waiting for others to post their evidence. I want to see you prove yours now. I have no idea why you went on a tangent saying the cells are used. Now I want to see your proof.

Also, can you create a video of the issue others are having? If youre posting here, I want to see what you can actually contribute to help others.

 

[Will Prowse]

I want to see what happens when people manually charge the caps with a resistor with these batteries experiencing these issues. Can everyone try that instead and post a video of your results?

 

[Will Prowse]

The Real UL Listing for the EG4 Lifepower
View attachment 105237

If you go to Signature Solar Website you will see a UL certificate with the same MH65558 UL List number but they have some how made the Certificate holders name EG4 Electronics LLC.
https://signaturesolar.com/content/documents/EG4/1511006-ul.pdf

So going back to Jiangxi Ganfeng Battery you can find the battery on their Website here.
http://www.ganfenglithium.com/product11_en/typeid/24.html

View attachment 105241
That Battery pictured is the Eg4LL and it is a Telecom Battery which is always Grade B Cells.
Signature Solar has stated Numerous times that the EG4 Lifepower and the Eg4LL use the same cells.

UL Listing is not based on the quality of the cells and how long they will last, it's based on the safety of the product itself. You can most certainly get cells with a shorter lifespan listed.


Honestly Will what is up with the distraction from the fact that the battery BMS is giving customers problems?
Are all these people imaging that their Inverters cannot start and that they are tripping out under heavy loads?
You changed the Topic from the BMS problem to what kind of cells are in the battery. Why?

No where in this post is evidence of used cells. How were they cycled? What was the application of these "used cells" that you claim to be? Can you post evidence of them being used and not new?

 

[Will Prowse]

The Real UL Listing for the EG4 Lifepower
View attachment 105237

If you go to Signature Solar Website you will see a UL certificate with the same MH65558 UL List number but they have some how made the Certificate holders name EG4 Electronics LLC.
https://signaturesolar.com/content/documents/EG4/1511006-ul.pdf

So going back to Jiangxi Ganfeng Battery you can find the battery on their Website here.
http://www.ganfenglithium.com/product11_en/typeid/24.html

View attachment 105241
That Battery pictured is the Eg4LL and it is a Telecom Battery which is always Grade B Cells.
Signature Solar has stated Numerous times that the EG4 Lifepower and the Eg4LL use the same cells.

UL Listing is not based on the quality of the cells and how long they will last, it's based on the safety of the product itself. You can most certainly get cells with a shorter lifespan listed.


Honestly Will what is up with the distraction from the fact that the battery BMS is giving customers problems?
Are all these people imaging that their Inverters cannot start and that they are tripping out under heavy loads?
You changed the Topic from the BMS problem to what kind of cells are in the battery. Why?

Heavy load? I thought this was inrush due to intial connection to charge caps. Which is in practice a dead short. Can you also provide evidence that heavy loads are tripping them out? I have not seen that yet!