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Eg4 Lifepower4 battery is ticking on start

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Koldsimer said:
Yeah, i'm aware of all of that. I just wonder if they replicated the settings of the LL with the new firmware. It would have been the first thing i would have tried since the LL has ZERO startup issues reported that i know of.
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Good question. I am ready to buy 1 "LL" and replace the two 12v "Big batteries" I am using as a crutch. But it really depends on this solution before I toss in another $2k to sig solar
 
Koldsimer said:
Yeah, it has a poor track record.

I wonder if they simply replicated the bms settings in the LL model? That shouldn't take months to test and release especially if the LL has never exhibited any issues in the field.

Funny this came out one day after Will's video where he changes his go to rack mount battery recommendation to SOK and Current Connected. Wayyyy too much coincidence for me.
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Actually, he recommended all of them. Each for different reasons, depending on your needs. Which is the correct thing to do, in my opinion. Since there's no proof of a consistent issue. A handful of people, out of thousands sold. Is more than likely a few bad units, slipping through the cracks. In some cases, it is just people trying to do too much.
 
Will Prowse said:
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.
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timselectric said:
Actually, he recommended all of them. Each for different reasons, depending on your needs. Which is the correct thing to do, in my opinion. Since there's no proof of a consistent issue. A handful of people, out of thousands sold. Is more than likely a few bad units, slipping through the cracks. In some cases, it is just people trying to do too much.
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I don't know, i got the impression he's definitely ranking them ahead of EG4 LIfepower at this point. Accurate product documentation, a superior product and excellent customer service must have moved the ball.

And i really don't think it's just a few bad units. Like you said, the bms probably just needs it's parameters/settings adjusted. It's been proven to be problematic, especially with larger, LF inverters.

Way back in my thread about this issue, Signature Solar admitted that they changed some settings to the pre-charge parameters in their latest shipment of lifepower batteries (the ones i bought) and that could be causing the issue. Unfortunately, they were unable to change any of the settings in my situation, even after months of trying. Maybe they got it figured out now? The video they made raises more questions as far as i'm concerned. What changes did they make? Is the pre-charge circuit part of the changes they made? If so, what are the parameters? Did they actually have trouble starting an inverter with the old firmware and were they able to verify this firmware fixed it? Last i heard, they have never been able to duplicate the problem in house, which makes me skeptical this 'fix' will work.
 
Koldsimer said:
I don't know, i got the impression he's definitely ranking them ahead of EG4 LIfepower at this point. Accurate product documentation, a superior product and excellent customer service must have moved the ball.

And i really don't think it's just a few bad units. Like you said, the bms probably just needs it's parameters/settings adjusted. It's been proven to be problematic, especially with larger, LF inverters.

Way back in my thread about this issue, Signature Solar admitted that they changed some settings to the pre-charge parameters in their latest shipment of lifepower batteries (the ones i bought) and that could be causing the issue. Unfortunately, they were unable to change any of the settings in my situation, even after months of trying. Maybe they got it figured out now? The video they made raises more questions as far as i'm concerned. What changes did they make? Is the pre-charge circuit part of the changes they made? If so, what are the parameters? Did they actually have trouble starting an inverter with the old firmware and were they able to verify this firmware fixed it? Last i heard, they have never been able to duplicate the problem in house, which makes me skeptical this 'fix' will work.
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I guess that time will tell.
 
Quattrohead said:
It's still the customers fault is what I got from this video. Bollocks.
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That's exactly right. He keeps suggesting "people operating outside the normal industry standards" Man, I had 20kwh of batteries that refused to start a 6.8kw inverter. And so did about 10 other people in that thread. I can only imagine how many people aren't aware of this forum and have had issues that aren't reported here.
 
Koldsimer said:
That's exactly right. He keeps suggesting "people operating outside the normal industry standards" Man, I had 20kwh of batteries that refused to start a 6.8kw inverter. And so did about 10 other people in that thread. I can only imagine how many people aren't aware of this forum and have had issues that aren't reported here.
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same problem here, 1 battery unable to handle 3KW victron inverter, 2 batteries barely getting it on.
 
There are 2 entirely separate issues going on here but they can present in similar ways and I think this is confusing the discussion.

Issue 1. Some battery packs are not be able to provide the full rated output current and shut off.
Issue 2. Some battery packs pre-charge circuit cannot handle the initial current rush when connected to some inverters.

Issue 1 could be due to an electrical problem in the battery pack like a faulty BMS or bad cell that cannot pass enough current itself hence the BMS will cut off due to low voltage. This is why knowing your cell voltages is important. It could also be poor programming of the BMS parameters, simple as "max amp out" set to 10 instead of 100.

Issue 2 could be the pre-charge time is just too long. Whilst EG4 and JBD both use a 10 ohm resistor, the EG4 is a 200W resistor where the JBD is 10W, this tells me the EG4 is expected to dissipate far more power over a longer period of time.
The pre-charge time will vary depending upon the input capacitance of the inverter, so this is a tough one to have a fixed time constant, but it needs to be a few 10's of milliseconds, not 100's
The EG4 looks to be a simple timing circuit switched by a relay, the JBD does not have a relay so I assume it is MOS-FET controlled and therefor could be variable based on feedback.

Both of these could be a single batch problem only or a longer term design change that was rushed without full testing.
They are both easy to solve if you know what you are doing. If anyone want's to send a faulty battery to me, I will find out what is wrong and either permanently and properly fix it, or lash up a temp work around to test.
This lack of QA comes from the modern world of pile them high and sell them cheap.
 
timselectric said:
Just bad settings.
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I have been considering replacing 1 of the bms just to see. But I was hoping this "firmware" change would solve the issue
Quattrohead said:
There are 2 entirely separate issues going on here but they can present in similar ways and I think this is confusing the discussion.

Issue 1. Some battery packs are not be able to provide the full rated output current and shut off.
Issue 2. Some battery packs pre-charge circuit cannot handle the initial current rush when connected to some inverters.

Issue 1 could be due to an electrical problem in the battery pack like a faulty BMS or bad cell that cannot pass enough current itself hence the BMS will cut off due to low voltage. This is why knowing your cell voltages is important. It could also be poor programming of the BMS parameters, simple as "max amp out" set to 10 instead of 100.

Issue 2 could be the pre-charge time is just too long. Whilst EG4 and JBD both use a 10 ohm resistor, the EG4 is a 200W resistor where the JBD is 10W, this tells me the EG4 is expected to dissipate far more power over a longer period of time.
The pre-charge time will vary depending upon the input capacitance of the inverter, so this is a tough one to have a fixed time constant, but it needs to be a few 10's of milliseconds, not 100's
The EG4 looks to be a simple timing circuit switched by a relay, the JBD does not have a relay so I assume it is MOS-FET controlled and therefor could be variable based on feedback.

Both of these could be a single batch problem only or a longer term design change that was rushed without full testing.
They are both easy to solve if you know what you are doing. If anyone want's to send a faulty battery to me, I will find out what is wrong and either permanently and properly fix it, or lash up a temp work around to test.
This lack of QA comes from the modern world of pile them high and sell them cheap.
Click to expand...
So in my correspondence with Richard I also stated that in my case the bms can't meet the electrical timing/switching requirements of the inverter. He responded and said they did adjust timing with this firmware change (you cant call it an upgrade, or they would recommend everyone to use it).

My question is, how do you adjust timing in software?

Also, has anyone applied this change and found it solved their issue?

As @Koldsimer pointed out in the video they reference a fault that was not demonstrated in the video.
 
McRod said:
I have been considering replacing 1 of the bms just to see. But I was hoping this "firmware" change would solve the issue
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Replacement of the bms was done in another thread and it did fix the issue. It was also stated by SigSolar the warranty would remain in place if you replaced the bms with their approved bms.
 
Kornbread said:
Replacement of the bms was done in another thread and it did fix the issue. It was also stated by SigSolar the warranty would remain in place if you replaced the bms with their approved bms.
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Yes. Richard explained that to me. Seems willing to work down any path to resolve. He also mentioned just today that the overkill bms is identical to their bms with the exception of form factor, which I would have to work around. Unfortunately, overkill solar doesn't have the 8S bms in stock that I need for my 24v system. Worldwide chip shortages.
 
Oh goodness ok. Good to know. I don't think that would solve the issue because it uses the shunt to monitor the inrush.

I'm going to stick with manually charging all inverters with a resistor. I wouldn't want to risk damaging something on this size battery anyways. Would be nice if they just removed the precharge circuit entirely.
 
Koldsimer said:
View attachment 105550


Just got my firmware update kit from signature. Instructions were as follows:

1) Remove pre-charge resistor.

2) Good luck!
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Joking aside I am almost 100% certain that all they did was bypass the Pre-Charge resistor subroutine from the Firmware. @Will Prowse here is an excellent video for you to make. Update a single battery and see if the Precharge circuit works anymore. I am pretty sure when you power on the battery hooked up to an Inverter that your not going to see the relay power up anymore. Then when your done just flash back to the old firmware.
 
robby said:
Joking aside I am almost 100% certain that all they did was bypass the Pre-Charge resistor subroutine from the Firmware. @Will Prowse here is an excellent video for you to make. Update a single battery and see if the Precharge circuit works anymore. I am pretty sure when you power on the battery hooked up to an Inverter that your not going to see the relay power up anymore. Then when your done just flash back to the old firmware.
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What's difficult is my batteries work perfectly. Off camera I connected it without precharge multiple times to growatt inverter and an lv5048, and they never tripped. I also have the 24V model. When I did use the precharge resistor circuit, it just worked. So I'm kind of scared to update ?
 
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