Parallel epever controller not charging

[off.the.grid]

It would be better to figure out what's going on now, while you have the AGM. They are far more tolerant of weirdness.

Once again:

"To be sure it's not a SCC issue with the "problem" device, temporarily take it out of the mix and set it up separately, with it's own panel and battery."

To that I would add: Pick one of the presets for AGM and let it overwrite all your manually entered settings. It might not be as "tweaked" as you want, but it will be as close to a reset as you will get. If that works, "tweak" from there.

I dont have any other batteries to test it with, but i was able to test it on its own and disconnect everything else out of the equation, given that the other controllers are having zero issues, even while working together, i doubt it has anything to do with the battery.
I do however suspect the battery bank is starting to get tired and its only 2 years old.
When i first sent the controller back to the retailer last year, he reset it to factory with the AGM preset and gave me a list of parameters to change it back to.
I thought it had been working OK since then, but only noticed it was not charging literally after I installed the wifi unit.
The charge voltages the retailer gave me were lower than the battery specs, but it seemed to work, so i didnt worry about it.
I get the feeling now that its uptime is still reasonably good, it has not gone down since, but what I did do was raise the shutoff voltage slightly higher than the rest of my controllers, as the settings i was given was to shut it off earlier. Equalise voltage was also over 1 volt lower, so i set that back to a fraction below that of my other controllers.
However after changing that, it only continued to charge for a short time more and then shut back off while the other controllers were still working. I turned those off and it still did not come back on, even after manually restarting it by removing and re-applying the power.

Now thinking about it, while playing around in the app to find my way around it, i found an option that was labelled clear accumulated energy, not sure what it does, but i selected it along with return to default which actually performed a reset, so i set the parameters back to where they are.

That being said, it appears to have settled down, but I will know in another hour or two if its going to repeat the same pattern as before.
Perhaps what I did as described has corrected it? Only time will tell, but im watching it closely.
Seems to be giving me more issues on a sunny day, was running all day yesterday in cloudy conditions averaging only 20-30w at the most.
Today its close to 200W, but in theory those panels should provide more than double that, but we are in winter.

Edit: been on the app while writing this and it seems to have jumped back at some point to the factory SLA profile over my custom user settings.
Could be an issue with the controller, but i definitely had written the settings to the unit and they were displaying correct last time.
Since they are not too far off the factory settings for these batteries, i may as well leave it run for diagnostic purposes.

I was running 5 EpNevers but.....I had the SAME problem running just one. I started a post way back when with a youtube video of someone having the same issue.

https://diysolarforum.com/threads/14v-low-light-epever-software-bug-or-back-feed-issue.46479/

Thats interesting to hear, i will take a look at that. For me, my issues appear to have happened in full sun rather than low light.

I do not have that problem with both of my epever
Wat i do have its that the float charge for lipo4 have to set on 14 volts or i do not have float charge .
Normal you set that on 13.6volt but than i have slow charge about 30%.
So the battery is stuck on 80% .

For the rest it charge now easy the max amps even in the morning.
Clouds a lot this last 3 weaks but i do have almost 10a Charge on the day. (Max is 16a)

But i have to say one epever is not the other epever .
Even if you program both the same way .

Ok, ive read around on here that the Epever controllers are not really designed for lithium batteries.
Not sure how true that is, given that they have built in charge profiles for lithium.
I do see users reporting that it can be a bit hit and miss with epever units, all I know is when they do work, they do work fine.
Not sure what other options for controllers there are other than victron, but I plan to switch over to lithium and since my other controllers are behaving OK, i think I will keep using them.
My main concern would be to make sure they can communicate with each other properly and putting the maximum amount of power from my arrays.

 

[sunsurfer]

Thats interesting to hear, i will take a look at that. For me, my issues appear to have happened in full sun rather than low light.

It could be a sunny day and a cloud would roll by dropping solar off, it would not start up again was the issue once the sun came back. I left one for an hour and still nothing. Unhook the solar string for 5 seconds and it would work again.

Also at first light in the morning. It would sit there all day unless I unhooked the string and reset it. After I found other with the issue and no fix I sent them back. Not all of them did it.

They also where pretty slow to capture sun when there was allot of clouds rolling through. They took forever to retrack. They would miss 20-30 seconds of sun between clouds. It adds up at the end of the day.

 

[v_green57]

"i doubt it has anything to do with the battery."

I am only bringing a battery into this because you need one to set up a full working separate system. Any old battery will do. Car battery, etc.

Had my first experience with Solar Guardian this morning as the new RJ45 WiFi dongles won't work with the older EPEVER apps.

I am not impressed. After I got through declining all its crappy attempts to get me to give it permissions it should not need for local operation (I will never let it touch the cloud - no trust there), I did get it to work OK. It has one feature I like - the ability to create a named entry in a list for each device you will be administering with it. Nothing else impressed me.

The only thing I need it for is to reset the real-time clock in my CC's, which flicks to some random value whenever I power things down for maintenance, etc. If the time is wrong, the accumulated daily kWh from the panels is wrong, which messes up the data I am harvesting from the CC's via MODBUS and storing in MariaDB. The time setting process is extremely unintuitive and requires many screen taps whereas the old one needed only two. Argh.

Anyway, not much is clear in Solar Guardian re: settings. I can see where it would be pretty easy to jack things up by mistake. Did you re-establish your manually set params? Or are you gonna see how it goes with a preset?

And EPEVERs work just fine with lithium. I have 3 separate installs that are doing so. If you want the best performance, you just can't take the lazy way out and use a preset.

Here are some links to other posts here that helped me get to LFP Nirvana:

Struggling with basic LiFePO4 settings in Epever Tracer

Hello all. I am struggling to justify some basic LiFePO4 charging parameters, and relate them to how to set up my Epever Tracer 2215BN. The Epever has many charge parameters geared toward charging older chemistries. This is very confusing to apply to LiFePO4, and the fact that terminologies and...

diysolarforum.com

Epever tracer bn series and lifepo4

Does anyone know where I can find some info obout EU lifepo4 suppliers(if there are any) or when can I find some qualiti lifepo4 cells in EU

diysolarforum.com

EPEVER 4215BN now has built in Lithium choices, but are these values recommended?

When I was reading up whether to get the 4215BN or not, one of the downsides is that it didn't support lithium batteries so folks had to use the 'other' setting. The unit I got though does have lithium choices, both LFP and NCM types. I can confirm that indeed my 4215BN has these as I used the...

diysolarforum.com

Epever controller settings for lithium.

Change fro Gel to Sunnytech 200amp lithium ion battery which think is only sold in New Zealand, but has a JBD-SP04S028A-L4S-150A-B-U BMS. Using a Epever Tracer3210AN which they say to stick with the Sealed settings. It does have user settings but suppliers recommendations are quite different...

diysolarforum.com

Lithium battery upgrade but inverter shutdown

My system is a 4048sw trace inverter, trace c40 cc with 1.2 array, and an epever 8415an cc with 1.6 array. I changed out my aging 20 kw fla batteries and put in 4 lifepower4s. I checked all connections and flipped the breakers on the batteries. All the pretty green lights came on, so I turned...

diysolarforum.com

 

[off.the.grid]

"i doubt it has anything to do with the battery."

I am only bringing a battery into this because you need one to set up a full working separate system. Any old battery will do. Car battery, etc.

Had my first experience with Solar Guardian this morning as the new RJ45 WiFi dongles won't work with the older EPEVER apps.

I am not impressed. After I got through declining all its crappy attempts to get me to give it permissions it should not need for local operation (I will never let it touch the cloud - no trust there), I did get it to work OK. It has one feature I like - the ability to create a named entry in a list for each device you will be administering with it. Nothing else impressed me.

The only thing I need it for is to reset the real-time clock in my CC's, which flicks to some random value whenever I power things down for maintenance, etc. If the time is wrong, the accumulated daily kWh from the panels is wrong, which messes up the data I am harvesting from the CC's via MODBUS and storing in MariaDB. The time setting process is extremely unintuitive and requires many screen taps whereas the old one needed only two. Argh.

Anyway, not much is clear in Solar Guardian re: settings. I can see where it would be pretty easy to jack things up by mistake. Did you re-establish your manually set params? Or are you gonna see how it goes with a preset?

And EPEVERs work just fine with lithium. I have 3 separate installs that are doing so. If you want the best performance, you just can't take the lazy way out and use a preset.

Here are some links to other posts here that helped me get to LFP Nirvana:

Struggling with basic LiFePO4 settings in Epever Tracer

Hello all. I am struggling to justify some basic LiFePO4 charging parameters, and relate them to how to set up my Epever Tracer 2215BN. The Epever has many charge parameters geared toward charging older chemistries. This is very confusing to apply to LiFePO4, and the fact that terminologies and...

diysolarforum.com

Epever tracer bn series and lifepo4

Does anyone know where I can find some info obout EU lifepo4 suppliers(if there are any) or when can I find some qualiti lifepo4 cells in EU

diysolarforum.com

EPEVER 4215BN now has built in Lithium choices, but are these values recommended?

When I was reading up whether to get the 4215BN or not, one of the downsides is that it didn't support lithium batteries so folks had to use the 'other' setting. The unit I got though does have lithium choices, both LFP and NCM types. I can confirm that indeed my 4215BN has these as I used the...

diysolarforum.com

Epever controller settings for lithium.

Change fro Gel to Sunnytech 200amp lithium ion battery which think is only sold in New Zealand, but has a JBD-SP04S028A-L4S-150A-B-U BMS. Using a Epever Tracer3210AN which they say to stick with the Sealed settings. It does have user settings but suppliers recommendations are quite different...

diysolarforum.com

Lithium battery upgrade but inverter shutdown

My system is a 4048sw trace inverter, trace c40 cc with 1.2 array, and an epever 8415an cc with 1.6 array. I changed out my aging 20 kw fla batteries and put in 4 lifepower4s. I checked all connections and flipped the breakers on the batteries. All the pretty green lights came on, so I turned...

diysolarforum.com

OK, i might throw an old battery on there if problems continue and see if behaves like this on its own. What I do know was at the time it stopped charging altogether even with no other units connected, would have been interesting to swap over to a different battery to see if it would charge that. I get the feeling it just didnt want to charge any more after hitting a certain voltage.

I get what you mean about the permissions, was a bit of a pain in the arse to get that to work for me too.
That being said I dont mind the app itself, seems to have useful data and has provided me with realtime info which i have not had access to prior.

Im not re-establishing my existing parameters yet, i am going to see how it goes for the next week and see if there are any drop outs, the app can give me this data quite easily on the graph, so for this purpose its going to be quite handy.

You make a good point about the clock, i wonder if the clock is out on my unit perhaps, does that have any bearing on solar tracking, or does it just use it for plotting the data?
Edit:
Just taken a look and it's shut down again.
Was putting out just over 200w.
Voltages are below the cut off.
See screenshots attached.

 

[v_green57]

OK, i might throw an old battery on there if problems continue and see if behaves like this on its own. What I do know was at the time it stopped charging altogether even with no other units connected, would have been interesting to swap over to a different battery to see if it would charge that. I get the feeling it just didnt want to charge any more after hitting a certain voltage.

I get what you mean about the permissions, was a bit of a pain in the arse to get that to work for me too.
That being said I dont mind the app itself, seems to have useful data and has provided me with realtime info which i have not had access to prior.

Im not re-establishing my existing parameters yet, i am going to see how it goes for the next week and see if there are any drop outs, the app can give me this data quite easily on the graph, so for this purpose its going to be quite handy.

You make a good point about the clock, i wonder if the clock is out on my unit perhaps, does that have any bearing on solar tracking, or does it just use it for plotting the data?

All the clock does is provide a basepoint for daily data - kWh collected, etc. It doesn't affect charging. If you're using EPEVER's cloud functions, the time *might* be kept on their server, rather than using what the RTC in the CC is set to. Do the graphs you view in S.G. seem to be correct as far as time? No crazy sh!t like showing power generation in the middle of the night? That would tend to point to EPEVER's servers using their time to create them if you have never bothered to set the time in the CC.

I am currently working on a coding workaround that would do something similar - get a kWh every 10 minutes along with the rest of my data and if it suddenly resets to 0 in the middle of the day according to computer time, not CC time, start adding readings to where the zero occurred and then calculate daily kWh. Start over at 00:00:00 each day.

Using the CC itself to do this is why I try to keep the clock more or less correct. I am inherently lazy and this is an easy way.

 

[Suijkerbuijk]

OK, i might throw an old battery on there if problems continue and see if behaves like this on its own. What I do know was at the time it stopped charging altogether even with no other units connected, would have been interesting to swap over to a different battery to see if it would charge that. I get the feeling it just didnt want to charge any more after hitting a certain voltage.

I get what you mean about the permissions, was a bit of a pain in the arse to get that to work for me too.
That being said I dont mind the app itself, seems to have useful data and has provided me with realtime info which i have not had access to prior.

Im not re-establishing my existing parameters yet, i am going to see how it goes for the next week and see if there are any drop outs, the app can give me this data quite easily on the graph, so for this purpose its going to be quite handy.

You make a good point about the clock, i wonder if the clock is out on my unit perhaps, does that have any bearing on solar tracking, or does it just use it for plotting the data?
Edit:
Just taken a look and it's shut down again.
Was putting out just over 200w.
Voltages are below the cut off.
See screenshots attached.

Clock .?
I never set it .
Its only that you can see the kwh a day it charge or use.
It do nothing on charge profile self
It see day or night on the solar panel self.
No power from the cells i see a night moon on my epever .
I have power than i see sun .
I use epever mt50 lcd screen .

If you need to knowy lipo4 settings let me know i set it for you (its night time here 01:45)

 

[off.the.grid]

All the clock does is provide a basepoint for daily data - kWh collected, etc. It doesn't affect charging. If you're using EPEVER's cloud functions, the time *might* be kept on their server, rather than using what the RTC in the CC is set to. Do the graphs you view in S.G. seem to be correct as far as time? No crazy sh!t like showing power generation in the middle of the night? That would tend to point to EPEVER's servers using their time to create them if you have never bothered to set the time in the CC.

I am currently working on a coding workaround that would do something similar - get a kWh every 10 minutes along with the rest of my data and if it suddenly resets to 0 in the middle of the day according to computer time, not CC time, start adding readings to where the zero occurred and then calculate daily kWh. Start over at 00:00:00 each day.

Using the CC itself to do this is why I try to keep the clock more or less correct. I am inherently lazy and this is an easy way.

All the data on the graph looks OK to me, so wont worry about the clock.
Since the controller has stopped charging, ive gone back to user settings.
Have increased the boost and equalise voltages back closer to 30V and it appears to be charging again, but not immediately, its taken a few mins while writing this and its on the charge again.

Clock .?
I never set it .
Its only that you can see the kwh a day it charge or use.
It do nothing on charge profile self
It see day or night on the solar panel self.
No power from the cells i see a night moon on my epever .
I have power than i see sun .
I use epever mt50 lcd screen .

If you need to knowy lipo4 settings let me know i set it for you (its night time here 01:45)

Thanks, will keep that in mind.

 

[off.the.grid]

Ok, so it's now at the end of the day and the controller has not missed a beat (it did cut in and out briefly during the float charge) but it kept running the whole day.
Sun is starting to go down and cloud has set in but still getting 8W or so.
Seems to have had the issue during the bulk charge, now it appears fixed.
What's fixed it was to increase the boost and equalise voltages.
Got them set to 29.9v
On my other controllers they are all at 29.2V temperature compensation is the same on all of them.
My main concern was if the controller was going to overvoltage the system, which it's not, it appears to keep track with the rest.

One small issue I noticed which I guess is a glitch is that it now says it's back in boost charge right at the end of the day.
Any ideas? Not too concerned since it actually appears normal.
See screenshots attached. You can see how last night didn't get much of a charge during the day with the cloud.

 

[Norwasian]

Edit: been on the app while writing this and it seems to have jumped back at some point to the factory SLA profile over my custom user settings.
Could be an issue with the controller, but i definitely had written the settings to the unit and they were displaying correct last time.
Since they are not too far off the factory settings for these batteries, i may as well leave it run for diagnostic purposes.

If you already indicated somewhere here, I didn't catch how you are adjusting the settings on the EPEVER. I found that the LCD on the unit itself would display the settings, but adjustments made through that display would not stick. I bought the MT50's for my two controllers, and found even those to come short for LiFePO4 settings. So I had to use the WIFI dongle to be able to set the EPEVER and save the setting so that it would not revert by itself back to what it had before. The manuals tell you that it has to be this way--I'm not sure why they do it this way. It seems the MT50 is only intended to be a remote display, for those wanting a display in some other location than the unit itself. But to actually set the parameters of the unit, the WIFI is needed--or else, perhaps, the USB connection to a computer (which I have not attempted).

 

[off.the.grid]

If you already indicated somewhere here, I didn't catch how you are adjusting the settings on the EPEVER. I found that the LCD on the unit itself would display the settings, but adjustments made through that display would not stick. I bought the MT50's for my two controllers, and found even those to come short for LiFePO4 settings. So I had to use the WIFI dongle to be able to set the EPEVER and save the setting so that it would not revert by itself back to what it had before. The manuals tell you that it has to be this way--I'm not sure why they do it this way. It seems the MT50 is only intended to be a remote display, for those wanting a display in some other location than the unit itself. But to actually set the parameters of the unit, the WIFI is needed--or else, perhaps, the USB connection to a computer (which I have not attempted).

OK, thats interesting to hear.
So far it seems OK, ive just refreshed everything and read from the controller and the settings appear to have stuck.
I had been using the new epever solar Guardian this time round.
Until getting the wifi module, I had to use the epever wifi box that used the older epever pair app which is now discontinued.
I notice that this app times out at times and doesnt always update itself, so im thinking it did not transmit the data when I updated it.
Will keep a close eye on this over the next few days.

 

[Suijkerbuijk]

If you already indicated somewhere here, I didn't catch how you are adjusting the settings on the EPEVER. I found that the LCD on the unit itself would display the settings, but adjustments made through that display would not stick. I bought the MT50's for my two controllers, and found even those to come short for LiFePO4 settings. So I had to use the WIFI dongle to be able to set the EPEVER and save the setting so that it would not revert by itself back to what it had before. The manuals tell you that it has to be this way--I'm not sure why they do it this way. It seems the MT50 is only intended to be a remote display, for those wanting a display in some other location than the unit itself. But to actually set the parameters of the unit, the WIFI is needed--or else, perhaps, the USB connection to a computer (which I have not attempted)

Strange i have set my epever with the mt50 with no problems at all.
Even my epever do not officially support lithium or lipo4 .
But warning old mt50 do not work with some new models mppt or after een firmware flash .
And a lot of old revisie are still sell on the web. .

A part from the link

Epever firmware update - Tracer AN, Triron, Xtra N

Found these links and files a few days ago when I was having issues connecting via RS485 to my EPEVER TracerAN 3210. I tried everything I knew and researched every thing I could find. Switched computers, comm ports etc but never connected. I am not new to interfacing via RS485m to industrial...

diysolarforum.com

Solution found! Many thanks to Epever support, thats, what has to be mentioned first. The problem really is an old software in my MT50 module. The firmware in the MT50 is not upgradeable, and although it might work with the original firmware of the Tracer, mine doesn't understand the upgraded protocol of the Version 2.0 . Solution is easy: Use the V . 1.56 ! Both the Station Monitor 1.95 AND the MT50 work with this version! I don't know which version of the MT50 works with V. 2.0 , but as you cn easily downgrade, I'd suggest yoou try the V2.0 first, annd when you encounter any problems, go back to V1.56 . New MT50 shouldn't have this problem at all.
I have no idea, what are the other differences between V1.56 and V2.0, as both support Li-Ion Batteries now, so if you can, use V2.0

 

[v_green57]

Ok, so it's now at the end of the day and the controller has not missed a beat (it did cut in and out briefly during the float charge) but it kept running the whole day.
Sun is starting to go down and cloud has set in but still getting 8W or so.
Seems to have had the issue during the bulk charge, now it appears fixed.
What's fixed it was to increase the boost and equalise voltages.
Got them set to 29.9v
On my other controllers they are all at 29.2V temperature compensation is the same on all of them.
My main concern was if the controller was going to overvoltage the system, which it's not, it appears to keep track with the rest.

One small issue I noticed which I guess is a glitch is that it now says it's back in boost charge right at the end of the day.
Any ideas? Not too concerned since it actually appears normal.
See screenshots attached. You can see how last night didn't get much of a charge during the day with the cloud.

"One small issue I noticed which I guess is a glitch is that it now says it's back in boost charge right at the end of the day.
Any ideas? Not too concerned since it actually appears normal."

It is normal. Toward the end of the day, your panel voltage falls off, the CC drops to the "Boost reconnect voltage", and it falls out of Float and back to Boost.

 

[Crowz]

"One small issue I noticed which I guess is a glitch is that it now says it's back in boost charge right at the end of the day.
Any ideas? Not too concerned since it actually appears normal."

It is normal. Toward the end of the day, your panel voltage falls off, the CC drops to the "Boost reconnect voltage", and it falls out of Float and back to Boost.

If it bothers you then change the reconnect voltage but at the end of the day its not going to do any real charging anyways so I'd leave it alone if it was me.

 

[off.the.grid]

Ok, that makes sense. Nothing to worry about then.
Looks like I've sorted the issue with the controller now anyway, so fingers crossed!