PylonTech batteries apparently in protect mode. Will not discharge without reset

[Andrew.B]

Hi

i have a Solis 3.6KW system with two PylonTech 3000C batteries. The system has been generating Alarm_BMS messages, apparently due to excessive charging voltage from Solis, now reduced.
However now have a more worrying problem, the batteries charge normally in the morning, however when they reach about 100% the batteries go into an idle mode. The LED battery charge status LEDs turn off, the green run LED does 3.7 secs off, 0.3 seconds on.
The BMS display via the Solis App says the battery voltage is about 51.5 volts with no charging current.

When the sun level drops and the battery’s should cut in to remain off grid the batteries stay in the idle mode (Grey on the Solis App).
The only way we have found to restart the batteries discharging is to force them to switch off (3 second hold) using the Start Red button on the master battery, wait 30 seconds then press the Red button again.

it’s as if the batteries are going into a protect mode without the red led flashing.

all battery voltages and charge/discharge currents when operating appear normal.
Am I missing something?
I wondered if there is a history issue coming into play in the BMS which somehow I need to clear.

 

[robmurphy]

Hi Andrew,

Did you find a fix for this? I'm having the exact same problem, same batteries. Been working fine since going live a couple of months ago but just in the last two weeks I've been having to reset to get the batteries to discharge.

Something I've noticed is it only seems to happen when the batteries are full, or near full (generally over 95%). If its a cloudy day and the batteries only charge to say 70% its not a problem, but when they reach full or near-full capacity its like they go into a standby or hibernation mode.

As far as I can tell everything looks normal, and nothing has changed. If you do find an answer I'd be grateful if you'd let me know, and likewise I'll do the same.

Cheers,
Rob

 

[SeaGal]

Hi

i have a Solis 3.6KW system with two PylonTech 3000C batteries. The system has been generating Alarm_BMS messages, apparently due to excessive charging voltage from Solis, now reduced.

Welcome to you both....

Where did you specify charge voltage? Surely the PylonTech's tell the Solis what to do, assuming you have configured the Solis for PylonLV batteries?

 

[robmurphy]

Hello there, thanks for replying

Bad choice of words on my part, I'm not having the excessive charging voltage alarms, my problem is just with the batteries not always discharging when they have a full load. I should have been clearer on that, my apologies.

Grateful for any and all suggestions and recommendations.

Cheers,
Rob

 

[rostilfc]

I have a Solis inverter with Pylon batteries that was installed in January and I am currently having the exact same problem now that it's regularly sunny enough for the batteries to reach 100% during the day.

My system charges during the day, the batteries reach 100% and my house exports to the grid and uses the PV power generation to meet demand. However when the sun goes down, rather than switching from PV use to the batteries, the system leaves the batteries at 100% and instead imports from the grid. It does this until late evening at which point it will seemingly wake up and start to use the batteries instead. I've also had no errors in my system while this is happening.

 

[SeaGal]

That's not good - 3 people with a similar issue to each other. There are many on here who have Solis working fine with a variety of batteries - mine included, though they are a DIY battery pack.

So maybe someone with a Pylontech can chip in, as I don't have one of those myself.

Only suggestion (apart from getting installers back to fix it, if it wasn't a DIY install), would be to connect up a console port to the pylons and see if there is anything useful via its management system. See my posting via the link below about others that have connected up a data cable for more info...

Pylontech US5000 alarm light flashing

Hi had my system working for a few days now but have just noticed the red alarm light is flashing on the battery. The charge level lights are on but the run light is off. Does this sometimes happen for no apparent reason. I have read else where you can reset the battery. If I turn it off and...

diysolarforum.com

 

[rostilfc]

I did a bit of investigating with my system a couple of days ago.

Before really having a look, my assumption was the batteries were charging to some voltage which then caused either the batteries or the inverter to be reluctant to draw more than about 0.1kW via the batteries, though nothing had errored, but eventually the trickle discharge would bring things into a state where it was happy to use the full discharge capacity again. Digging around a little, I'm not sure this is the cause, primarily because resetting the batteries or the inverter seems to resolve the issue, despite the battery voltages not changing, and it seems logical to me that if there was a voltage threshold somewhere then this wouldn't happen.

Resetting the batteries seems to wake them up from idle and effectively resolves the problem until the next point in time that they go back to 100%, at which point they get stuck in idle again. However resetting my inverter by running a manual firmware update via the system interface, which I assume didn't actually update anything as I didn't have an update stick connected, tentatively seems to have solved the problem over the last couple of days.

It may be it hasn't actually fixed my problem and it's just a coincidence but I'd suggest at least giving it a try to other people with a similar sort of issue.

 

[robmurphy]

I did a bit of investigating with my system a couple of days ago.

Before really having a look, my assumption was the batteries were charging to some voltage which then caused either the batteries or the inverter to be reluctant to draw more than about 0.1kW via the batteries, though nothing had errored, but eventually the trickle discharge would bring things into a state where it was happy to use the full discharge capacity again. Digging around a little, I'm not sure this is the cause, primarily because resetting the batteries or the inverter seems to resolve the issue, despite the battery voltages not changing, and it seems logical to me that if there was a voltage threshold somewhere then this wouldn't happen.

Resetting the batteries seems to wake them up from idle and effectively resolves the problem until the next point in time that they go back to 100%, at which point they get stuck in idle again. However resetting my inverter by running a manual firmware update via the system interface, which I assume didn't actually update anything as I didn't have an update stick connected, tentatively seems to have solved the problem over the last couple of days.

It may be it hasn't actually fixed my problem and it's just a coincidence but I'd suggest at least giving it a try to other people with a similar sort of issue.

Thanks very much for this, I would never have thought about running a manual update, but yes it seems to have done the job, its been a couple of days since I followed your lead and so far the batteries have been kicking in as they should. How baffling lol.

Thanks again

 

[JonBloom]

I have the same issue and so far the supplier has not managed to fix it. Really annoying as I am on a variable tariff and with the battery not kicking in at the right time I end up resetting the batteries,(when I am home) or watching expensive power being imported. They have tried to fix a couple times (first time was to downgrade the battery firmware, the second was a remote upgrade to the Solis).

I am happy to try a manual update as ,mentioned but cannot find instructions. So any guidelines/help more than appreciated.

Of course only makes sens to do this if the fix is still holding

 

[aristos]

Hi all, newbie here with the same issue.
I had a Solis 3.6KW system with 3PylonTech 3000C batteries installed about a week ago.
It worked as expected for a few days but after the battery reached 100% SOC one day, the system started having the exact same symptoms described earlier in this thread.

The battery is engaged (discharging) in the early hours of the morning, then PV kicks in and starts charging the battery until 98%-100%. The battery then greys out (I assumed that was normal) while PV covers the consumption of the house for the rest of the day. In the evening when PV production falls, the inverter starts pulling from the grid while the batteries hardly contribute any power (0.01kW feed) and remain like this until the early hours of the next day (1:00am, 2:00am) when there is an abrupt handover from the grid to the batteries.
After reading this thread I did a soft reset on the batteries when again the inverter started pulling from the grid after the sun fall and immediately they engaged and took over the house consumption and continue working as expected.

All settings seem correct as far as I can see.

May I please ask how I can run a manual firmware update via the system interface? I thought I would give this a go before started calling the installer but I couldn't find anything in the mobile app nor on the solis cloud; not even what version of firmware the inverter runs.

 

[rpdom]

You can't update the firmware yourself. You need to ask Solis to do it. They can do it remotely using your datalogger. If you don't have a datalogger they can send you a firmware update stick to use.

Really you should be bothering your installer about this. They should contact Solis for you. They should also have the software and hardware to upgrade the firmware in the batteries if needed.

To find the current inverter firmware on the app, go to the Plant tape, select your plant, go to Device, Inverter, select the inverter, scroll down to Inverter Info and look at Version. Mine is 3D0037 which is the latest version for my S5-EH1P3K inverter. The version for my old RHI-3K-48ES-5G was 470044.

 

[SeaGal]

Really you should be bothering your installer about this. They should contact Solis for you.

^^^^ this ^^^^

If you've had it 'professionally' installed, that's what you've paid for. And if you try to update firmware yourself and anything goes wrong down the line (even unrelated to the update) your installer will have a get-out-reason to not fix it.

 

[JonBloom]

Picking up on the version number. Solis performed an upgrade to the firmware to (try) and resolve this issue for me. I was told by the supplier that they went from v42 to v44. Looking at the firmware it is saying 44003F.

But, reading online about the construct of the firmware number this appears to be the HMI that has been updated and not DSP. AFAIK HMI is the user interface part of the system and (in normal IT terms) would not have any affect of the data side of things (DSP I think). But then again elsewhere implies the other way around.

Can someone confirm which way round it is meant to be!

Thanks

 

[rpdom]

Yes, first two digits are HMI, last two are DSP. My old RHI inverter came with 30003A, then was upgraded to 430044, then shortly after (less than two hours), upgraded again to 470044

HMI is the display panel and menus (Human Machine Interface). The DSP is the the inverter processor board. I don't know enough about what each part does to say, but I suspect the HMI is possibly responsible for any external interfaces, not just the display?

The actual software version will depend on the inverter model.

 

[aristos]

Thank you, duly noted about getting support from my installer.

Luckily after reducing the Floating Charge to 52.5V and just soft resetting the batteries it seems to be working as expected for two days straight now. The batteries will still show "inactive" (i.e. not charging/discharging) once they reach full charge but once there is demand which is not covered by the PV late in the afternoon they kick in.
My inverter is S5-EH1P3K on HMI reporting software version 3D0037 (model number 3101).

 

[SolarPhil]

Hi - new poster here so forgive any idiocies on my part! I have a 2 year old Solis RHI-5k-48ES inverter with 2x Pylontech US2000 batteries. I was going to ask what actually triggers battery discharge, as I notice that during early evening that typically the batteries don’t seem to start discharging even when house load exceeds PV generation. At some variable time discharging does start - I’m just wondering what settings may need adjusting or what I should be asking my installer to change? Thanks for any advice

 

[SeaGal]

I’m just wondering what settings may need adjusting or what I should be asking my installer to change? Thanks for any advice

From what others are saying on this actual thread, it sounds like you need a firmware upgrade, probably to version 470044

 

[JonBloom]

I was upgraded to 470044 on 18th June and it does fix the problem of not discharging the batteries when they should start. Although so far only one decent day to be sure (should happen today as well - just checked and it is working).

The way they appear to have done this is to effectively 'ping' the batteries with a low level charge/discharge of 20W (when I was monitoring it) to keep the batteries from going to sleep.

An interesting by product of this is that the batteries now report 100% full - which was never achieved before.

 

[chaosnature]

In my DiY case it was the yaml code