Rant: EG4 48v 100ah battery has faulty BMS. Signature solar customer service is TERRIBLE

[Bluedog225]

[deleted]

 

[Mahendra Gomanie]

I'm not interested in going through 11 pages of posts.
Don't care if everyone on the internet disagrees with me.
I run my own company and would never dream of assuming a defensive
posture and/or engaging an unsatisfied customer in an internet forum.
This is merely one man's opinion, but the only thing you should have posted
in this thread was a profuse apology to the customer and an offer to either
replace his battery and you eat the shipping, or refund his money in full.
Going on about how you lost money on the deal and how tight
your margins are is whiny, unbecoming, and super unprofessional.
Rule #1- The customer is always right.
Rule #2- If the customer is wrong, refer to rule number 1.

This has been my point exactly all along and i keep to this point,though i agree that customer can be wrong in many cases.
From a business perspective a customer's concern is not who manufactured your battery and what faults they made and of course the costing.
These things if thats your way of doing business should be clearly stated not vaguely.

And for that reason i keep mentioning about outback and midnite solar.
Even in cases where the customer was wrong guidance was given.

 

[Mahendra Gomanie]

I respect your opinion.

Yes, the customer is always right. However, in the world of social media (newsgroups aka message boards like this were the ‘original’ social media before farcebooker and nitwitt-er) that has progressed (sic) to the point that so many ‘reviews’ are fake and complaints have become an undue visible portion of the total customer experience of any product I don’t think being silent in defense of an overall company mission is entirely the only acceptable ’response.’
Naming the elephant in the room when adversarial public posts to a newsgroup that likely contains no one NOT in your primary market didn’t hurt my feelings at all. It’s 2022

Most people willfully expose themselves to media on a daily basis in which ‘news’ is gathered primarily in a one-sided confirmation-biased manner. In this situation, both sides engaged on the issue, others with varying opinion chimed in, and a best-case outcome was achieved.

Way more palatable than trying to sort out if the complainant was ignorantly venting- or not. The flaws and pluses of both the vendor and customer were made plain to see. The customer is always right- accept when they aren’t- and respectful expression of that with ‘social media’ is no longer taboo like it would have been in 1994.

While this may be true.
In my experience the best pr for any company is a customer or customers who recommend their product to friends family etc.
This has been and will remain regardless of social media.
Reason:when these recommendations are made its somewhat firsthand and coming from a point of' trust'My point is your product may be good but if the there isnt that trust then i wouldn't buy it.
I maybe be wrong but thats my summary of this.
This social media wave isnt going to last forever as well.Nothing as.the saying goes and even stone dont last.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

coming from a point of' trust'

A customer i had been doing work for for ~8 years was wrong in many aspects of a kitchen remodel. I didn’t even get the $10k deposit (my fault for starting the job) and I stood my ground, I wasn’t underperforming. So I took a $23k bath because that was significantly less than keeping on going and then owing $15k PLUS going unpaid on the $23k

The customer is not always right is the lesson I learned from that. .

 

[ColeMan]

The customer is always right- accept when they aren’t.......

Not sure if this a a typo or not,
but if it is, the irony is rich.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

Not sure if this a a typo or not,
but if it is, the irony is rich.

My own pet peeve bites me!
(Always proofread voice-to-text)

 

[AKvalleyguy]

I'm not interested in going through 11 pages of posts.
Don't care if everyone on the internet disagrees with me.
I run my own company and would never dream of assuming a defensive

Get some Street Cred on the forum before blasting people.

I will agree with you on one thing, I probably would not have engaged, to this degree, with the OP on a forum. When people are behind a keyboard they tend to act out like school children on a playground. That doesn't play well for the business owner who is going to attempt restraint.

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

Get some Street Cred on the forum before blasting people.

I will agree with you on one thing, I probably would not have engaged, to this degree, with the OP on a forum. When people are behind a keyboard they tend to act out like school children on a playground. That doesn't play well for the business owner who is going to attempt restraint.

I tend to agree but I’m on the forum quite a bit and so it doesn’t bother me much - I also think I do pretty well in representing myself and EG4 and Signature Solar.

 

[ColeMan]

Get some Street Cred on the forum before blasting people.

I will agree with you on one thing, I probably would not have engaged, to this degree, with the OP on a forum. When people are behind a keyboard they tend to act out like school children on a playground. That doesn't play well for the business owner who is going to attempt restraint.

What you call "blasting" used to be called "candor".
It was how men interacted.
Too boomer?

 

[Browse]

Honestly I’m just being transparent. I’m not taking a ‘defensive stance’ - I am simply sharing the what, why, and how so everyone understands what the customer experience is like when working with EG4 or Signature Solar. Sharing more information only helps everyone to improve their processes so the entire industry can grow. You can have your opinion and everyone else can have theirs. As soon as people don’t want me on this forum en masse I will gladly depart and only engage from a personal account.

I think the community benefits from your presence here.

My PM to you from 5/18/22 went unanswered though. Maybe you could forward the questions to the right people at SS? The Lifepower4 BMS issue seems like it could affect my anticipated purchase based on the setup and scenario indicated, so any purchase is on hold for now. I went out and purchased a portable inverter AC that we can use for power outages since my generator can't handle the main HVAC unit, but I would still like to have a battery backup system in addition to my generator.

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

I think the community benefits from your presence here.

My PM to you from 5/18/22 went unanswered though. Maybe you could forward the questions to the right people at SS? The Lifepower4 BMS issue seems like it could affect my anticipated purchase based on the setup and scenario indicated, so any purchase is on hold for now. I went out and purchased a portable inverter AC that we can use for power outages since my generator can't handle the main HVAC unit, but I would still like to have a battery backup system in addition to my generator.

Looking at my PMs now. I really try to keep up on them but I get a surprising amount of PMs and especially if I look at them at night I miss responding.

 

[robby]

Looking at my PMs now. I really try to keep up on them but I get a surprising amount of PMs and especially if I look at them at night I miss responding.

Richard I really hope they are paying you one hell of a salary!
Your on this forum just about 24/7 trying to put out fires. At some point the realization must be sinking in that this Surge issue with the LifPower4 is not just an occasional fluke caused by faulty wiring, bad Inverters or Alien space craft hovering overhead.
I see another case was just added today about an SunGold Power 6KW Inverter tripping the BMS into overload with just 1500W of load. The owner is just ripping out the BMS and putting in another brand.

As I stated before I think this problem is going to become self evident by the sheer number of posts. I really hope you guys have a plan to deal with it, because your ability to smooth things over is going to be moot at some point and people are going to want to see a comprehensive plan for a fix.

 

[Mahendra Gomanie]

Richard I really hope they are paying you one hell of a salary!
Your on this forum just about 24/7 trying to put out fires. At some point the realization must be sinking in that this Surge issue with the LifPower4 is not just an occasional fluke caused by faulty wiring, bad Inverters or Alien space craft hovering overhead.
I see another case was just added today about an SunGold Power 6KW Inverter tripping the BMS into overload with just 1500W of load. The owner is just ripping out the BMS and putting in another brand.

As I stated before I think this problem is going to become self evident by the sheer number of posts. I really hope you guys have a plan to deal with it, because your ability to smooth things over is going to be moot at some point and people are going to want to see a comprehensive plan for a fix.

I like this. While some of us may came off as blasting it was not our intention.

The bms issue seem to be a problem that is not going away.
And smoothing has a limit.
We do like the smoothing but it jas to stop at a point.

 

[Hedges]

Because these are "server rack" batteries, I think they are intended as backup for computers and disk drives. Not powering A/C and well pumps.
The BMS they come with is probably fine for intended application.

SS ought to get manufacturer to ship them a version with suitable BMS for inverter users.

 

[jberger]

I haven't had any issues with the BMS under high loads, I think it's simply programmed with too short of a time window on startup.
If the BMS could be adjusted, it would probably be an easy fix, but no one seems to have a working password for the 12V BMS.

 

[robby]

I haven't had any issues with the BMS under high loads, I think it's simply programmed with too short of a time window on startup.
If the BMS could be adjusted, it would probably be an easy fix, but no one seems to have a working password for the 12V BMS.

It very well could be that simple but the problem still remains, so they really need to get that password and find a setting that fixes the problem.
My gut feeling is that if it was that simple they would have done it already.

 

[AKvalleyguy]

I like this. While some of us may came off as blasting it was not our intention.

Hey Mahendra, I'm not referring to you. Your comments, Hedges and others as well, are very fair and informative.

 

[Technologist]

I've been working with various kinds of mobile RV solar systems since about 2017. Started with some AGM batteries back in the day, quickly figured out I should move to lithium.

Built my first "real" system in 2018 with 200ah of LiFePO4 (DIY) and Outback components (inverter, solar charge controller). That gear served me really well. Expensive, but solid quality and to this day has never given me any trouble.

In this latest build, I took Will's favorite inverter (MPP LV 6548), paired it with what appeared (according to the specs) to be a battery that should run it fine, so long as we're not pushing high loads, and was looking to build a really simple system. I only picked up a single battery because I didn't need much storage capacity in this system, so there was no need for another (so I thought at the time).

What I learned in this whole debacle is that the LV 6548, being a giant high-frequency inverter, can put some crazy demands on a battery. Or, at least that's my vague understanding after learning the lesson the very, very hard way. A simple surge request from a little vacuum can send it off on a battery-guzzling rampage that will trip up a server-rack battery.

I seriously didn't anticipate this super-high surge demand from the LV 6548. I was accustomed to my low-frequency, extremely stable and reliable Outback 3600 inverter which has worked like a champ since day 1. I've run everything I can possibly think of (including this stupid vacuum) on it without any problems at all, ever. I use it to run fridges, a shallow well water pump, microwaves, anything and everything one comes across in life and it handles it like a champ.

I figured the LV 6548 plus a decent-sized battery would work fine given the specs of both units. Yes, the LV 6548 recommends something like 158ah of battery (or something like that), but I thought that was a recommendation based on reserve capacity, not the crazy inrush demands the inverter makes. The LV 6548 doesn't explicitly state why a single 100ah battery wouldn't work. Since I wasn't educated on the why (or perhaps I just missed it somewhere), this situation got all messed up.

You really did undersize the battery for the inverter used. 250Ah is the recommended battery size and the 153A is "Amps" not "Amp hours". 153 Amps the typical load with the inverter pushing its rated 6500 Watts. 48v x 153a= 7344 Watts. 6,500 Watts plus the 10% or so losses in efficiency. Those LV 6548's can draw 13,000-15,000 Watts for a split second on motor startups. One of the reasons they recommend 250Ah batteries.



The LV 6548 can easily draw >300 Amps on motor startup loads and it's oversized for your battery.


Your vacuum might only draw 822 Watts once it's fully up to speed but the motors used in most home vacuums are simple universal motors. Universal motors (like most car starter use) can draw massive amounts of current at startup. 20x operating current is common for the first rotations.

The EG4 BMS is rated for 100 Amps. It might allow "up to" 250 Amps "for up to 1 second" but anything above 250 Amps could trigger a short detect and most of the higher end BMS's (like the DALY) will trigger it's short detect in 200-500 Microseconds (200-500 millionths of a second) Fuses are slow and heat up. BMS's sample at very high rates and can react in microseconds and those quick reaction times are a necessary design for Lifepo4 Cells, protecting sensitive electronics and to prevent fires.

So when the vacuum sent the battery into surge protection mode, that's where my efforts were focused. Why would a single, 822-watt appliance, break this battery? It wasn't reasonable.

Was I expecting a full refund from SS? Yep! I was expecting them to find the battery was at fault. I still wish the battery was setup in such a way that it could handle peak loads a bit more gracefully, but that's getting into the nuance of the battery, and most people will be running this setup with at least 2 batteries, which could likely handle the load.

If, and this is looking with 20/20 retrospective, SS customer service had looked at the inverter I was running, and had any of the knowledge that I've since learned via this thread, they would have pointed out that my inverter was trying to such way too much power from the battery and that was the actual cause of the issue. Instead, we focused on the battery, because that's where I believed the problem was, since the battery was what was going into fault mode. If they had said, "hey, running that giant inverter, it creates inrush demands to the battery that are beyond its spec, go check this documentation (somewhere)", then it could have been a different story. But, that's all in 20/20 hindsight.

It cost me $700-something to learn that high-frequency inverters pretty much suck, as far as I'm concerned. It also cost signature solar a very negative thread on this forum before the actual answers of what happened and how each side handled the situation. It also kind of sucks that SS customer support is now better educated on why their batteries can go into short-circuit protection, and I'm paying for their education.

Personally, I will never buy from signature solar again. Today's consumers do expect more, whether or not it's good for the company's bottom line. Was it worth it for them to save a couple hundred bucks on my order? If they had refunded me the original purchase price of $1499, I wouldn't have posted here. I would have chalked it up to a bad battery and moved on. Instead, they got this thread, and probably influenced at some other potential customers, so who knows what kind of sales were lost there.

 

[Shimmy]

As this is a DIY forum, I really feel sorry for people that are ordering equipment based on limited information. I can understand why people might not expect there to be a minimum battery size for an inverter-- I remember a client many years ago insisting that a 2-minute (VRLA) battery was all they needed for a UPS, as their generator would start in less than 10 seconds. There are at least four good reasons why that doesn't work (especially with a low frequency inverter).

The same is true for this case. There are many factors beyond 24-hour energy use that go into properly sizing a battery.

 

[Will Prowse]

You really did undersize the battery for the inverter used. 250Ah is the recommended battery size and the 153A is "Amps" not "Amp hours". 153 Amps the typical load with the inverter pushing its rated 6500 Watts. 48v x 153a= 7344 Watts. 6,500 Watts plus the 10% or so losses in efficiency. Those LV 6548's can draw 13,000-15,000 Watts for a split second on motor startups. One of the reasons they recommend 250Ah batteries.

View attachment 98024

The LV 6548 can easily draw >300 Amps on motor startup loads and it's oversized for your battery.
View attachment 98026View attachment 98023

Your vacuum might only draw 822 Watts once it's fully up to speed but the motors used in most home vacuums are simple universal motors. Universal motors (like most car starter use) can draw massive amounts of current at startup. 20x operating current is common for the first rotations.

The EG4 BMS is rated for 100 Amps. It might allow "up to" 250 Amps "for up to 1 second" but anything above 250 Amps could trigger a short detect and most of the higher end BMS's (like the DALY) will trigger it's short detect in 200-500 Microseconds (200-500 millionths of a second) Fuses are slow and heat up. BMS's sample at very high rates and can react in microseconds and those quick reaction times are a necessary design for Lifepo4 Cells, protecting sensitive electronics and to prevent fires.

Yes that is what I thought from reading this thread. I just tried to power a golf cart with a server rack battery (has the same exact BMS as the eg4) and it tripped the over current protection. It did not surprise me at all because that's what happens when the battery current supply is undersized. So I added a second battery and it works.

That's induction loads for you. Just make the battery bigger and problem solved. Not that mysterious of a problem.