Epever + lithium battery

[carlosspicyweiner]

Hello all,
Anyone know why The Epever controller instructions say -

"When the lithium battery and the inverter are used together, connect the controllers (load) dry contact to the inverters start/stop dry contact. Otherwise, the controller may be damaged."?

None of my inverters have a start/stop dry contact point, nor do other inverters i've looked at in store. I'm guessing this is just communication between CC/BMS and inverter? Can find no information on this, Epever support (surprise) hasn't responded.

First time entering the world of lithium batteries, not as fun as I thought it would be - "suitable for lithium batteries" they say*

*(after getting an Rs485 - maybe rewire it...maybe fiddle with your PC com ports..and take a guess at matching any poorly translated directions you find to install the correct drivers/files)
Cheers

 

[carlosspicyweiner]

Hoping this doesn't get lost in the sea of replies to my original post

Epever responded! - in broken English, but was nice to hear back nonetheless.

The tl;dr is...wire the lithium battery to the inverter..

The instructions specifically say not to do this without linking dry contacts or you could damage the controller, but apparently this is just an optional extra to safeguard against battery over-discharge - possibly if you are using a cheap lithium battery with a crappy or non existent BMS?

Funfact - probably most relevant for Australian users - Epever and Powertech (Jaycar) charge controllers are almost identical under the hood with the exact same instruction manual and software - be interesting to see how many other brands are also just a reskin.

Anyway, hope this helps save someone a lot of time and frustration trying to decipher poorly written manuals and janky software.