How to recover an EG4 WP in protect mode?

[OffGridPhilosophy]

are you reading 51/-.2v on the battery terminals?

Hi James! I didn't realize you were part owner of SS. Sorry for pretty much missing your actual question to me. I'm new to this site and didn't realize who i was talking to. I've been watching your videos for a few months now. I appreciate you reaching out to me here.

 

[OffGridPhilosophy]

The same thing happened to mine When I turned on my inverter after hooking up three of them in parallel. Within a few minutes though they reset themselves and worked fine.

If you get yours working please check them during charging and post whether the cells are balanced or not. 2 of mine are not near balanced when charging and go into protect mode with cells in each around 3.4 volts.

Protect mode when charging is 3.9 for individual cells which seems to me to be way too high. That gives me around half a volt difference at the top. No way those cells were top balanced before assembled into the batteries.

Mine went into protect mode today when one cell reached 3.9 volts. I've always assumed the bms would only put that cell into protect while the other cells played catch up.

 

[Trkarl]

Mine went into protect mode today when one cell reached 3.9 volts. I've always assumed the bms would only put that cell into protect while the other cells played catch up.

That happened to me several times on the two unbalanced batteries. Luckily I have one that is pretty well balanced so all the cells were around 3.45v. Otherwise the whole system would have shut down. That was when I was charging to 57.6v. Since then I dropped my bulk to 56 and that problem went away. I have since dropped it even more to 55.2 and float to 54.8v. All of the cells are above 3.4 when they float now so they are almost if not just under full capacity without running above 3.65 which I believe will now put much less stress on them.

 

[OffGridPhilosophy]

FINAL UPDATE; I recieved a replacement charger from SS today. I checked the voltage at the terminals of the charger and it was negative five volts on this one too. That was when i knew it must have been something that i did wrong rather than it being a faulty charger. This time i tried hooking up the terminals to the battery before i plugged the charger into an outlet. Well it worked perfectly and began charging. Apparently the circuit board detects a voltage and begins charging during the power up stage. I was plugging the charger in and waiting to hook to my battery. I owe Signature Solar an apology because this was all customer error on my part. I didn't use a precharge resistor and that sent my battery into protect mode and i didn't hook up and then power up my EG4 charger in the proper order. My EG4 battery and charger work exactly as advertised. I'm sorry for jumping the gun Signature Solar!

 

[OffGridPhilosophy]

That happened to me several times on the two unbalanced batteries. Luckily I have one that is pretty well balanced so all the cells were around 3.45v. Otherwise the whole system would have shut down. That was when I was charging to 57.6v. Since then I dropped my bulk to 56 and that problem went away. I have since dropped it even more to 55.2 and float to 54.8v. All of the cells are above 3.4 when they float now so they are almost if not just under full capacity without running above 3.65 which I believe will now put much less stress on them.

I'm going to try those same charging parameters! 3.4v is the sweet spot?

 

[jberger]

FINAL UPDATE; I recieved a replacement charger from SS today. I checked the voltage at the terminals of the charger and it was negative five volts on this one too. That was when i knew it must have been something that i did wrong rather than it being a faulty charger. This time i tried hooking up the terminals to the battery before i plugged the charger into an outlet. Well it worked perfectly and began charging. Apparently the circuit board detects a voltage and begins charging during the power up stage. I was plugging the charger in and waiting to hook to my battery. I owe Signature Solar an apology because this was all customer error on my part. I didn't use a precharge resistor and that sent my battery into protect mode and i didn't hook up and then power up my EG4 charger in the proper order. My EG4 battery and charger work exactly as advertised. I'm sorry for jumping the gun Signature Solar!

Glad you got it sorted, and thanks for posting how you fixed it.
We all make mistakes, it's sharing those mistakes that helps us all learn, even if we don't always like to admit we did it.

 

[Johan]

For me, charging 24h with the EG4 charger did not revive the BMS. I should recreate the problem and then try it with my bench top power supply.

Other "solution" to get the BMS out of protect mode:
https://diysolarforum.com/threads/signature-solar-eg4-wp-teardown.39768/

 

[Panhandler]

You are not connecting it to a charger for a charge cycle, you are connecting it so the BMS will reset.
Give it a try.

It's frustrating to have to buy a separate charger to, according to the Signature Solar tech support, MAYBE get the battery out of protect mode. Nowhere on the Signature Solar website does it mention "Hey, you'll also need a 48v charger because these batteries [according to SS tech support] go into protect mode much more frequently than the server rack batteries."

 

[Sbag]

After researching and testing by placing (3) 12 volt leads acid batteries in series to wake up a 36 volt battery, we found that by using a charger that doesn't require BMS communication, a WP battery can be woken up. It only takes a matter of seconds for this to happen, then you can use the charging technique you were using prior to the protect mode. One thing that seems to be causing this is sparking your battery.. Glad to help

 

[Microbiologycory@gmail]

It's frustrating to have to buy a separate charger to, according to the Signature Solar tech support, MAYBE get the battery out of protect mode. Nowhere on the Signature Solar website does it mention "Hey, you'll also need a 48v charger because these batteries [according to SS tech support] go into protect mode much more frequently than the server rack batteries."

I had this same issue. Signature solar tech support was not helpful. Now I have a battery that will only charge to 3.333V before charger shuts off, hard to tell if battery or charger but limits my capacity to 70% SOC.

 

[Dave_11]

That happened to me several times on the two unbalanced batteries. Luckily I have one that is pretty well balanced so all the cells were around 3.45v. Otherwise the whole system would have shut down. That was when I was charging to 57.6v. Since then I dropped my bulk to 56 and that problem went away. I have since dropped it even more to 55.2 and float to 54.8v. All of the cells are above 3.4 when they float now so they are almost if not just under full capacity without running above 3.65 which I believe will now put much less stress on them.

Are those bulk and float values still running well over a year later at this point?

 

[Trkarl]

Are those bulk and float values still running well over a year later at this point?

Yes they are. The cells have balanced pretty well. I now have a 304ah diy running paralleled with them which has been working out real well. It has a JK bms which balances perfectly every time. I have been tempted to either buy a neey active balancer to use or just replace the bms in each with a JK but I think I will just wait until the warranty runs out.

 

[LowerCarbonFootprint]

UPDATE; I bought a variable charger and used it to awaken the bms. I then used it to bring my inverter up to match the voltage of the battery. Everything is hooked up and running properly. I bought a charger from Signature Solar but it is faulty and has a -5 (negative five volt) voltage reading at its terminals.

So are you happy? Can you get full capacity if you are restricting charge voltage to 3.4 per cell?
I just purchased the 200a output 48v 100ah WP. Seeing these issues makes me nervous.

Still going well or do you need to. Keep balancing and lowering max voltage on charge?

Thanks!!!