Powmr 5kw all in one controller/inverter settings help

[42OhmsPA]

A shunt? I have what's in the photo.

Sorry I'm in to many threads, forgot you shared a photo. A shunt would be a good idea to track usage and know actual capacity.

Yes but they didn't run for that long, the coffee machine maybe 5 mins *2 and the water heater for max 30 mins, that shouldn't even make a dent in 48v * 100ah

How many watts is the water heater?

So they should be charged to 14.6v, I had them charging from the 15amp charger I bought pretty much for the last 2 days. And the max they would take was 13.4, do I need to leave them charging till they get to that amount?

Yes, you need to get them around 3.5V / cell.
What charger are you using?
It's entirely possible the cells within the packs are out of balance. You're positive the BMS for your batteries doesn't have bluetooth?

 

[ChrisB1234]

There's nothing in the manual about bluetooth, so I'm assuming not, they weren't the most expensive batteries to be fair but got good reviews on amazon.

Not sure about the wattage of the water heater it's an old RV one, but I had the batteries up to 51.6v yesterday (no sun all day sadly) and all I ran this morning was the coffee machine for 1 pot and my laptop it shutoff the power from the batteries after about 3/4 hour. Without looking I think I have the low voltage disconnect somewhere around the 48v and change mark.

We are supposed to have full sun today, so I will run off the jenny, and leave the solar array to charge the batteries (with no load on the AC), and see where they get too, just as an experiment, I don't have the time today to disconnect them and break the series to charge them individually with the charger. From my 'back of a fag packet' calculations I should have just enough solar up on the roof to get them pretty full today.

I will order a shunt off Amazon, if nothing but for the convenience of having the data inside the RV and not having to keep going outside into the storage compartment to check the values on the chargecont/inv.

The charger is a 15amp one which has a lifepo setting on it, most powerful I could get around here without ordering one in (I'm nearly 50 miles from civilization). It's possible I didn't leave it on each one long enough, I'll try again after today if the solar doesn't push them to the high 50's

Oh the joy!

 

[42OhmsPA]

There's nothing in the manual about bluetooth, so I'm assuming not, they weren't the most expensive batteries to be fair but got good reviews on amazon.

Not sure about the wattage of the water heater it's an old RV one, but I had the batteries up to 51.6v yesterday (no sun all day sadly) and all I ran this morning was the coffee machine for 1 pot and my laptop it shutoff the power from the batteries after about 3/4 hour. Without looking I think I have the low voltage disconnect somewhere around the 48v and change mark.

We are supposed to have full sun today, so I will run off the jenny, and leave the solar array to charge the batteries (with no load on the AC), and see where they get too, just as an experiment, I don't have the time today to disconnect them and break the series to charge them individually with the charger. From my 'back of a fag packet' calculations I should have just enough solar up on the roof to get them pretty full today.

I will order a shunt off Amazon, if nothing but for the convenience of having the data inside the RV and not having to keep going outside into the storage compartment to check the values on the chargecont/inv.

The charger is a 15amp one which has a lifepo setting on it, most powerful I could get around here without ordering one in (I'm nearly 50 miles from civilization). It's possible I didn't leave it on each one long enough, I'll try again after today if the solar doesn't push them to the high 50's

Oh the joy!

51.6V is nearly empty.
If the 12V packs are out of balance one of them could be disconnecting early as well.

I've been happy with my WonVon shunt from Amazon. The Victron shunt is also highly praised here.

Once you get everything working you'll be very happy.
I wish I were 50 miles from civilization.

 

[ChrisB1234]

51.6V is nearly empty.
If the 12V packs are out of balance one of them could be disconnecting early as well.

I've been happy with my WonVon shunt from Amazon. The Victron shunt is also highly praised here.

Once you get everything working you'll be very happy.
I wish I were 50 miles from civilization.

I'm beggining to think the batteries are the issue, non of the 4 would charge more than 13.4-13.6 and the charge even though it's set to stop charging at 58.6 volts is shutting off or maybe being shutoff by the batteries bms's at 53.7

I guess one savig grace is the Solar can run everything I need during the day so I'm not spending 8 bucks a day on gas to run the jenny.

 

[Mahendra Gomanie]

A consideration might be to ensure you have the latest firmware that seems to be an issue with all Powmr.
Additionally,I have noticed many AIO preset battery features do not work well.
The user setting works well and allows you to adjust your charge voltage to manufacturer's recommendations

 

[42OhmsPA]

I'm beggining to think the batteries are the issue, non of the 4 would charge more than 13.4-13.6 and the charge even though it's set to stop charging at 58.6 volts is shutting off or maybe being shutoff by the batteries bms's at 53.7

I guess one savig grace is the Solar can run everything I need during the day so I'm not spending 8 bucks a day on gas to run the jenny.

I would agree with that. I'm sorry you're learning the hard way why it isn't recommended to run 12v packs in series.
You could order a bench charger and hold the packs around 14V for days to let the cells balance out, I'd bet cells are out of balance causing a high voltage disconnect.

A consideration might be to ensure you have the latest firmware that seems to be an issue with all Powmr.

Where have you seen this before? It's the first I'm hearing of it.

Additionally,I have noticed many AIO preset battery features do not work well.
The user setting works well and allows you to adjust your charge voltage to manufacturer's recommendations

Agreed. Over 3.5mWh in user mode with no problems once I dialed voltages in.

 

[robbob2112]

So,

Unless you have low power stuff a typically coffee maker runs 1500w - so you can use that to do the math and figure out how many watt hours it used. Or you can probably find a sticker on it someplace that tells how many amps or watts it is and use that instead of a guess.

The water heater should have a sticker or plate on it someplace where it tells the specs on watts or amps. depending on the age it might have an energy start sticker on it.

Both of those have a duty cycle tied to a thermistor. So they aren't always on, the cycle off-on-off-on over and over depending on temp at the sensor. They are either fully on or fully off to keep that temp.

The shunt will tell you exactly what they draw and you can see if that matches the stickers if you want.

One other tidbit - I have a 12v battery charger that claims to be FLA, AGM, LFP, and something else. But when I monitor what it is doing through the shunt I have found it isn't doing a proper profile for the LFP at all and never fully charges them correctly. Once they are at 90% it just does a cycle of pulses like you would see an AGM use. And the other stupid thing is when you disconnect the battery it switches back to the default mode of FLA, so you have to turn it back to LFP. I would only ever use it in an emergency or on a standard FLA battery at this point. Even then it is a switching power supply and claims to push 10 amps. With the shunt it measures more like 3 amps. My standard FLA transformer based charger pushes a full 10amps.

So, in my case it was bought at the tractor supply in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere when I was hard up for a charger and it isn't anything like what the paperwork that came with it claims. Worked for me that night and not really since.

 

[ChrisB1234]

I have the powmr on user battery mode (I forget what they call it) but it's the setting 08 that allows for the user to configure max charge etc etc.

It disconnects the charge to the batteries at about 53.2v or there abouts, even though the max voltage disconnect is set at 56 or 58 I think, I will list all the settings on here when I get around to it.

When I googled the max voltage for a 12v lifePo it said 13.4-13.6v and that's what the charger pushes them to, so I figured they were maxed when I got them all to around 13.3 and change.

I won't get the shunt for a week or so, I will also get the balancer at the same time. Before I add those to the system, I will do another full charge of the batteries, and use the shunt to measure what is going on

 

[ChrisB1234]

So,

Unless you have low power stuff a typically coffee maker runs 1500w - so you can use that to do the math and figure out how many watt hours it used. Or you can probably find a sticker on it someplace that tells how many amps or watts it is and use that instead of a guess.

The water heater should have a sticker or plate on it someplace where it tells the specs on watts or amps. depending on the age it might have an energy start sticker on it.

Both of those have a duty cycle tied to a thermistor. So they aren't always on, the cycle off-on-off-on over and over depending on temp at the sensor. They are either fully on or fully off to keep that temp.

The shunt will tell you exactly what they draw and you can see if that matches the stickers if you want.

One other tidbit - I have a 12v battery charger that claims to be FLA, AGM, LFP, and something else. But when I monitor what it is doing through the shunt I have found it isn't doing a proper profile for the LFP at all and never fully charges them correctly. Once they are at 90% it just does a cycle of pulses like you would see an AGM use. And the other stupid thing is when you disconnect the battery it switches back to the default mode of FLA, so you have to turn it back to LFP. I would only ever use it in an emergency or on a standard FLA battery at this point. Even then it is a switching power supply and claims to push 10 amps. With the shunt it measures more like 3 amps. My standard FLA transformer based charger pushes a full 10amps.

So, in my case it was bought at the tractor supply in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere when I was hard up for a charger and it isn't anything like what the paperwork that came with it claims. Worked for me that night and not really since.

I've since used the batteries in the evening after a full day of full sun, and they last maybe 2 hours before the inverter disconnects running my laptop and maybe a phone charger, plus a small TV. I get measuring amps and working it out mathematically but there's no way a 48v 100ah setup should crap out after 2 hours running those.

I'll get the shunt in a week or so, so will use it to measure what the battery charger is doing.

 

[ChrisB1234]

Got the product spec sheet for the batteries today, seems 14.6v is what they should charge to

 

[ChrisB1234]

Also the spec sheet says the discharge cutoff voltage at 10v for each battery, so could I set my low voltage disconnect in the inverter settings to say 41v?

 

[42OhmsPA]

Got the product spec sheet for the batteries today, seems 14.6v is what they should charge to

View attachment 205521

I would recommend charging to around 14V max, if you look at a charge / discharge curve for LiFePo4 you'll see there is hardly any capacity at the top of the curve.

Also the spec sheet says the discharge cutoff voltage at 10v for each battery, so could I set my low voltage disconnect in the inverter settings to say 41v?

This would be 2.5V / cell, dead. I would set it around 46V, again check out a curve.

 

[42OhmsPA]

@ChrisB1234 check out this post from an extremely knowledgeable member here.
Post in thread 'New person, first post' https://diysolarforum.com/threads/new-person-first-post.75362/post-957297

 

[Mahendra Gomanie]

I would agree with that. I'm sorry you're learning the hard way why it isn't recommended to run 12v packs in series.
You could order a bench charger and hold the packs around 14V for days to let the cells balance out, I'd bet cells are out of balance causing a high voltage disconnect.


Where have you seen this before? It's the first I'm hearing of it.

Agreed. Over 3.5mWh in user mode with no problems once I dialed voltages in.

I have seen this with Growatt inverters,Mpp, and Powmr.
Some of these issues resolved with firmware updates but not all.
So I am guessing it’s a software issue if not the battery as mentioned.

 

[ChrisB1234]

ok so after charging the batteries to 14.2v (they would shutoff around there, or my charger would at least) I can now confirm that the charge controller, pushes the 4 series to <>57v, so more or less what I charged them all to. I did add a battery balancer on there, and added another 800w or solar on the roof. So total 2200w solar and 4*100ah batteries.

I haven't tried the batteries yet to see how long they run everything, currently plugged into shore power at an rv park, might try disconnecting from that tonight and see how long the batteries last. They would only be running the fridge and tv + a couple of phones charging so hopefully they will blast through the night.

 

[ChrisB1234]

Well on a day of full sun I'll get the batteries to maybe power the rig all night, 1 fridge, and a coupe of mosquito repellers. Pretty poor for 4 100ah batteries

 

[Mattb4]

Well on a day of full sun I'll get the batteries to maybe power the rig all night, 1 fridge, and a coupe of mosquito repellers. Pretty poor for 4 100ah batteries

4-12v 100ah batteries do not contain a lot of power. At most 5kWh and in normal use likely only 3.5 to 4kWh. I assume you know what your fridge draws as well as the mosquito repellers. Add to this 50-70w to run the PowMr. It alone overnight eats up ~ 14h X 70w = 980w

 

[Mahendra Gomanie]

4-12v 100ah batteries do not contain a lot of power. At most 5kWh and in normal use likely only 3.5 to 4kWh. I assume you know what your fridge draws as well as the mosquito repellers. Add to this 50-70w to run the PowMr. It alone overnight eats up ~ 14h X 70w = 980w

Yes PowMr are pretty power hungry even in idle conditions.