EG4 LifePower4 battery refuses to charge beyond 64%
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Johno1066
Solar Enthusiast
I also have some EG4 batteries that were fully charged and reading from 70% to 80%, to fix this I let one of those batteries power my inverter overnite until it went down to 45 volts and my inverter is set to shut down at 45 volts, so when the inverter shuts down I turn off the battery and switch on one of the others to get the inverter back up again. Then hold down the reset button on the offending battery for a full 10 seconds and if you have incoming solar power turn the battery back on. If it starts taking a charge you can turn the second battery off again so that the low battery can then be fully charged to 56 volts. One of my batteries came up to 100% and the other to 99% and I am quite happy with that. If you are already at 56 volts from the good battery you swtched on in the beginning the offending battery might not begin charging, if you switch off the inverter for a minute and switch it on again it seems to start the charging cycle over again and the offending battery begins charging. I have 6 batteries running at present with cool temperatures and good sun so my batteries are all fully charged before mid day and overnight rarely go below 76% apparently low cycles like this messes up the battery calibration. I am going to try to run only 3 batteries overnight and alternate them with the other 3 to see if this will help keep the battery SOC more stable.
EJansen
Solar Enthusiast
Hi Travis,
By chance do you know how to re-calibrate the batteries? If so, would you or one of the techs please post the instructions here?
As soon as you guys get me good to go, I'll be ready for my next purchase.
Thanks,
Eric
Adam De Lay
Solar Wizard
This sounds kinda similar to what Jeff was experiencing and he had to have the BMS replaced.
EJansen
Solar Enthusiast
Yeah, I was watching a few of his videos and he's seen this thread and said it's the exact issue that he had, but I thought a battery re-calibration got him up and running again at least for the ones that didn't require a BMS replacement. I'm down for whatever - just want to get more than and 81% avg of my batteries.
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mountkay
Camper
@EJansen Im not sure what exactly you mean by "recalibration" but here is a post where I wrote out detailed instructions on how to top-balance each battery separately and then deep cycle them. Is this what you are looking for? I based my post off of a post Ben from SS made.
diysolarforum.com
eg4 6500 with eg4 battery operation question
Not sure if it matters but I have the first gen eg4 6500 that were sent out, I am just now getting it wired and connected. I have updated the firmware with the current upload and have removed the ground/neutral bond screw. I Have good communication now between the inverter and the battery. I am...
diysolarforum.com
mountkay
Camper
@EJansen Are you sure this is an issue with the batteries themselves and not the monitoring system you are using? In one of your posts you show the voltage of the batteries all pretty much the same, but the SOC all over the place.
Have you tried top-balancing each battery separately and then reconnecting them and deep cycling them?
Have you tried top-balancing each battery separately and then reconnecting them and deep cycling them?
Johno1066
Solar Enthusiast
I would come to the conclusion that if my batteries are charged to 56 volts and held there for a time then go down to float then they are pretty much charged and have a max cell differance of around 5 mili volts. However the battery monitoring system tells me it is 84% SOC, that tells me that the monitoring system is out of whack. The EG4 300 inverter is set to shut down at 20% of battery capacity if you are using their LI 4 parrameters so your inverter can shut down when you have close to 50% of your battery capacity available. The battery also alarms at 25%.
None of this really matters if you run on the user defined settings as you can set the shutdown on a set voltage say 45 volts. Once the offending battery gets down that low, is then shut off and a 10 second reset before going back into service it will reach close to 100% when again charged to 56 volts. Obviously we are talking about 48 voly systems but I am sure this will work for 24 volt or 12 volt EG4 lifepower batteries if the corresponding voltages are used.
None of this really matters if you run on the user defined settings as you can set the shutdown on a set voltage say 45 volts. Once the offending battery gets down that low, is then shut off and a 10 second reset before going back into service it will reach close to 100% when again charged to 56 volts. Obviously we are talking about 48 voly systems but I am sure this will work for 24 volt or 12 volt EG4 lifepower batteries if the corresponding voltages are used.
mountkay
Camper
Charging Voltage (Bulk/Absorb) is 56.2v for 48v EG4 batteries, both LL and LifePower4 as per the spec sheets of both batteries.
It is already tough to measure SOC for LFP batteries, add in 3rd party monitoring software and getting an accurate SOC probably becomes even more difficult.
@EJansen does the SOC on the LL batteries match what SA is saying? or is the SOC estimate only wrong in SA?
They where at one point all sync'd but now they are wonky... BMS_Test reflected the same results. About 5 mins later on my setup they all said 56.2-3 on the battery voltage and the MPPT was in absorption state... Been working with Sean at SS a couple times but calling is better than emailing...
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EJansen
Solar Enthusiast
@EJansen Im not sure what exactly you mean by "recalibration" but here is a post where I wrote out detailed instructions on how to top-balance each battery separately and then deep cycle them. Is this what you are looking for? I based my post off of a post Ben from SS made.
eg4 6500 with eg4 battery operation question
Not sure if it matters but I have the first gen eg4 6500 that were sent out, I am just now getting it wired and connected. I have updated the firmware with the current upload and have removed the ground/neutral bond screw. I Have good communication now between the inverter and the battery. I am...
@mountkay I also don't / didn't know what was involved in a recalibration, it's a term that I heard / read while researching my issue that worked for others. I was told by support that it's not supported and using BMS Test to do so just 're-writes data'. Not sure what that means, but Tim @ SS reached out today and said it wasn't supported anyhow and that per the manufacturer, the correct and only method for re-calibrating the SOC is the deep cycle the batteries and continued on saying the following:
"Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries are designed to be charged and discharged repeatedly; however, if they are only partially discharged and recharged each time, they can develop a memory effect. This means the battery "remembers" the smaller capacity and does not fully charge to its maximum capacity anymore. This can result in shorter battery life and reduced performance over time.
By deep cycling your lithium battery, you are resetting its memory and ensuring it is fully charged and discharged, which can help prolong its lifespan and maintain its performance.
To deep cycle an EG4 lithium battery, you can discharge it down to 20% DOD, then recharge it fully. We recommend having your inverter's battery type in a " User Defined" mode and manually setting your batteries' parameters.
For example, the CV would be 56.2V, Float would be 54v, and Low DC cut off would be 46V. We recommend doing these deep cycles for 7-10 days to ensure the battery is fully calibrated."
That made sense to me, but prior attempts to deep cycle didn't exactly work out, but I didn't do each battery separately so that is likely part of the problem.
Thanks for the link, I'll go check it out!
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EJansen
Solar Enthusiast
I wasn't sure if this was an issue with the battery / BMS or not. I was using Solar Assistant which just averages the SOC from each battery and reports that. I know some folks prefer to use the Victron Smart Shunt or others and add that into solar assistant as well, but I haven't gone that route as of yet - not sure I will.
Yeah, I noticed the voltages as being the same as well, so I wasn't sure what was going on.
I didn't do them all separately and I think that was part of the issue regardless of going well under 20% DOD on my test case / battery, so after going through what was sent to me today by Tim @ SS, I started with battery #6, the biggest problem child, and shut all other batteries off. I then set the dip switches on battery #6 to what I had on battery #1, disconnected all other battery communications, rebooted the battery, and then disconnected / reconnected SA. It now saw only that one battery in SA, and then I was on a mission to drain it to 46V. It took far longer than I thought it would. Even when it got to 0% and I was pulling almost 5K out of that one battery, it wouldn't die:
That appeared to be a good thing though. I got it down to about 47v before the larger loads couldn't be powered anymore, and the inverters kept shutting off, so I figured that was good (I had the inverters configured to shut off if the batteries were less than 5%). I then turned the solar and grid back on to start the charging process, but hours later, I'm only at 10% and the battery isn't charging for some reason - this is the part thats also been killing me. This screeshot is from a few seconds ago and it's currently set to 'Solar/Utility/Battery':
Now what? How do I get it to charge?
Also, since I didn't mention it earlier - I've been in USER mode almost since inception and I've stayed there. I had all of the settings that outlined below, I just had a different charging current. I set it to 40 just to try exactly what was suggested though, but it still doesn't charge.
Program / Description / Setting
02 / Maximum charging current / 40
05 / Battery type / USE
26 / Bulk charging voltage / 56.2v
27 / Floating charging voltage / 54.0v
Update, 15 mins later, it's now at 11% and charging at 56 watts, but then throttles back to 0 - I have no idea why it's doing that; that's definitely not 40 amps.
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Johno1066
Solar Enthusiast
All my charging was done by PV input, when I discharged one battery to 45 volts and shut down my inverter I turned that battery off to reset and also turned on another of the battery bank stated the inverter then turned on the reset battery and then I turned off the other battery so that just the reset battery would charge as the high voltage of the other could upset the charging. I then found that the reset battery was not charging well so shut off the inverter turned it back on again and the charging rate went up and eventually that battery che=arged to 99% SOC.
Adam De Lay
Solar Wizard
Be aware when charging that the inverter will not charge with both grid and solar at the same time. Even if you have it set that way. It will only charge from Solar first and then once Solar is completely gone, then it will charge from grid.
Not sure if the timing then you were trying to charge, so I figured I would throw that out there.
Also, there’s a max charge setting on the inverter for amperage but there’s also a grid charge setting as well. 2 and 11 I believe.
mountkay
Camper
Yeah you will probably have problems balancing all of them at the same time like that. Hopefully doing each one individually will work.
Spec sheet says to start with low voltage cutoff at 47v, so you should be fine using that, but there is also this quote ill leave below about what is 20%. Along with a chart that estimates Voltage to SOC.
EJansen
Solar Enthusiast
I was trying to charge at night, so there was no solar. As of this morning, it's still at 11% - but the screenshot below was what I sent to support last night.
It looks like this might be the culprit:
Every time it attempts to charge, Cell1 throws and over current protection alarm and then it stops charging. So the fans ramp up like it's ready to send it, then the over current protection is triggered and it goes back to not charging.
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EJansen
Solar Enthusiast
I tried a lot of the same stuff you mentioned, but nothing seemed to work. After seeing what appears to be an issue with one of the cells thats preventing the charging, that seems to be the culprit - at least based on what I was seeing when testing last night. As of right now, I just turned all of the other batteries back on since it's a good sunny day out - might as well collect some of it.
EJansen
Solar Enthusiast
Interesting update not 5 mins later... After turning all of the other batteries on it decided that it wanted to charge.. What is going on here? By itself it kept throwing the overcurrent protection on cell 1 and not charging - granted now I'm looking only at Solar Assistant and not BMS Test, so that's another changed variable - but it seems to be charging per SA.
Regarding solar, I don't think it had anything to do with solar, because it was clipping and only bringing in 700 watts to power the load. As soon as I turned the other batteries on the jet engines fired up on the inverters and it shot up to 3000w of solar.
Regarding solar, I don't think it had anything to do with solar, because it was clipping and only bringing in 700 watts to power the load. As soon as I turned the other batteries on the jet engines fired up on the inverters and it shot up to 3000w of solar.
Adam De Lay
Solar Wizard
It’s almost like the OCP isn’t set right in the BMS.
EJansen
Solar Enthusiast
I'm also wondering if maybe by itself it says that it doesn't want to charge, it rejects it and the inverter stops sending it - but as soon as the others say they do want to charge, and since it's on the same bus bar, it's somehow charging because of that? Pure speculation / no idea how it works.
There's no communication between the batteries in the inverter, so it sounds like it's up to the BMS if it wants to accept the charge.
Adam De Lay
Solar Wizard
Yeah, when you have the battery hooked up in parallel with the other batteries, the current is being split between all the batteries you have connected. So each battery is only getting a percentage of the total power coming in. I’m wondering if the current is under whatever threshold is set in that specific BMS, and that’s why it’s letting it charge.
Adam De Lay
Solar Wizard
Try looking at the different tabs in the BMSs test app and see if you can come across the overcurrent protection settings.
mountkay
Camper
Im guessing this is what was happening.
You can try lowering the charge amperage on the inverter to 10a and see if the battery will charge individually.
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mountkay
Camper
I also wanted to say @EJansen , I would try just charging each battery to full, and then hooking them all together and deep cycling them all together. I think that is what Ben from SS was talking about in his post, and it could be what your contact at SS was talking about as well because I didnt see your contact talking about deep cycling them individually based on what you posted.
It should just take one sunny day to top all of the batteries off. Just wait till they hit their CV and then drop back down to Float voltage. Then move on to the next battery until you have done that for each one. Then hook them all together.
I was able to deep cycle all 6 of mine together by running a 1500w space heater overnight. It worked perfect for this time of year.
I actually noticed results without even topping each one up individually, just switched from EG4 mode to USE and deep cycled them for about 14 days. Now the SOC (I dont really have a way to measure SOC besides the 4 lights on my batteries) is much closer together when before I had one battery that was lagging behind.
I was planning on topping each battery up individually, but when I went to do so after deep cycling them, I noticed the battery I was worried about was no longer undercharged and actually had a higher voltage than some of my other batteries.
It should just take one sunny day to top all of the batteries off. Just wait till they hit their CV and then drop back down to Float voltage. Then move on to the next battery until you have done that for each one. Then hook them all together.
I was able to deep cycle all 6 of mine together by running a 1500w space heater overnight. It worked perfect for this time of year.
I actually noticed results without even topping each one up individually, just switched from EG4 mode to USE and deep cycled them for about 14 days. Now the SOC (I dont really have a way to measure SOC besides the 4 lights on my batteries) is much closer together when before I had one battery that was lagging behind.
I was planning on topping each battery up individually, but when I went to do so after deep cycling them, I noticed the battery I was worried about was no longer undercharged and actually had a higher voltage than some of my other batteries.
Johno1066
Solar Enthusiast
If you take a look at table 3.7 EG4 battery manual you will find the low voltage warning is set at 45 volts and trip at 43.2. So according to the manual the alarm works off the battery voltage. However the SOC seems to work some other way as it alarms at 25% even though you might be above 52 volts under load. Anybody know which BMS EG4 uses, It might be worthwhile trying to find more information on this BMS.
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