Renogy Smart Battery BMS Fail

[Dicko]

My Renogy smart battery 100a/h has failed. Cannot get battery out of sleep mode and when power is connected to board and when pos and neg cables connected to board I cannot get any voltage reading. BMS not connected I get 13.3 volts. Renogy are slow to answer any issues (common complaint) and I was wondering if anyone had a similar battery that is defunct but has a working BMS? It is a pouch cell.. iI have included a photo of the BMS. bms and voltage readings. I am considering buying a JK 4S /8S (B2A8S0P) and adapting it to suit. However I have a couple of questions in relation to doing this.
In the photo you can see various voltages. I thought this is unusual. Would I be right in assuming CELL4 is the main inlet from the battery from a cell as it is fed by the only white wire on the plug in cable (1 white, 10 black). If I was to buy an after market BMS would I just connect cell 1 from the new BMS to cell 1 of the old board?(would have to cut and solder--no big deal).

Would love an original Renogy BMS but I,ll be riding unicorns before that happens. Thank you for any assistance.

 

[Tomthumb62]

My Renogy smart battery 100a/h has failed. Cannot get battery out of sleep mode and when power is connected to board and when pos and neg cables connected to board I cannot get any voltage reading. BMS not connected I get 13.3 volts. Renogy are slow to answer any issues (common complaint) and I was wondering if anyone had a similar battery that is defunct but has a working BMS? It is a pouch cell.. iI have included a photo of the BMS. bms and voltage readings. I am considering buying a JK 4S /8S (B2A8S0P) and adapting it to suit. However I have a couple of questions in relation to doing this.
In the photo you can see various voltages. I thought this is unusual. Would I be right in assuming CELL4 is the main inlet from the battery from a cell as it is fed by the only white wire on the plug in cable (1 white, 10 black). If I was to buy an after market BMS would I just connect cell 1 from the new BMS to cell 1 of the old board?(would have to cut and solder--no big deal).

Would love an original Renogy BMS but I,ll be riding unicorns before that happens. Thank you for any assistance.

Sorry to hear of your troubles but thank you for sharing your experience.

We started out with a lot of Renogy gear. After 5 failed AGM batteries from them (but good results with their 200W folding suitcase panels and 30A charge controller and mediocre results with their 2000W inverter), I decided to steer clear of their lithium batteries and went with Powerurus instead (first listed 12v lithium on Will's site now and his teardown was impressive and price was quite good). Will Prowse gave a good review on the Renogy lithium in his teardown video, but they seem overpriced for being from Renogy, especially with pouch cells.

Now to be fair, the failed AGM batteries are partially my fault. One of them was mailed to us and arrived leaking. Renogy warranty replaced two of them and they were so new I'm not sure if it was user error or just crappy batteries or likely a combo of the two. We didn't have enough solar to charge them and I later learned that our 20A shore power charger was underpowered for 200Ah of AGM as well. We needed more like 40A of charging power, at least once a week, to keep AGM happy. But this wasn't explained to me by the NOCO 20A charger manual, the Renogy AGM user manual or Renogy tech support. They were pretty responsive in warranty replacement once we took the batteries to a chain auto parts store where they have a fancy tester and the test came back saying the batteries were toast (no cost for the test other than our time and having to travel to such a store as we live rurally where no such thing exists).

 

[Dicko]

Sorry to hear of your troubles but thank you for sharing your experience.

We started out with a lot of Renogy gear. After 5 failed AGM batteries from them (but good results with their 200W folding suitcase panels and 30A charge controller and mediocre results with their 2000W inverter), I decided to steer clear of their lithium batteries and went with Powerurus instead (first listed 12v lithium on Will's site now and his teardown was impressive and price was quite good). Will Prowse gave a good review on the Renogy lithium in his teardown video, but they seem overpriced for being from Renogy, especially with pouch cells.

Now to be fair, the failed AGM batteries are partially my fault. One of them was mailed to us and arrived leaking. Renogy warranty replaced two of them and they were so new I'm not sure if it was user error or just crappy batteries or likely a combo of the two. We didn't have enough solar to charge them and I later learned that our 20A shore power charger was underpowered for 200Ah of AGM as well. We needed more like 40A of charging power, at least once a week, to keep AGM happy. But this wasn't explained to me by the NOCO 20A charger manual, the Renogy AGM user manual or Renogy tech support. They were pretty responsive in warranty replacement once we took the batteries to a chain auto parts store where they have a fancy tester and the test came back saying the batteries were toast (no cost for the test other than our time and having to travel to such a store as we live rurally where no such thing exists).

Pretty disgusting to not have any front of house shop , service centre or phone contact in the whole of Australia. Certainly wont be buying Renogy again.

 

[Tomthumb62]

Pretty disgusting to not have any front of house shop , service centre or phone contact in the whole of Australia. Certainly wont be buying Renogy again.

Oh yeah that sucks. I think the customer service center in the States is in California. Most of my interactions of support with them has been through email and it appears that English is not their strong suit but I give them credit for friendliness. However, once we got transferred to tier 2 tech support on the phone, we were talking to someone who not only knew their stuff but were either native English speakers or just very good at it. It's not to be racist but sometimes trying to communicate with someone who doesn't speak my language well (and I know NONE of theirs) eventually gets tiring and frustrating and then I wish I had only paid a few dollars more (well a lot dollars more with something like Victron) to not have to struggle with the language barrier.

My experience with Renogy support is sometimes they're really backed up. They have one helluva marketing campaign and I think sell a lot of gear and when they have sales they must get overwhelmed with support requests. But they have always eventually gotten back to me and wouldn't quit until my issue was resolved. Sometimes the resolution was none because my warranty had expired and they couldn't replace an item out of warranty. Slowly replacing most of our Renogy stuff with Victron... (but NOT Victron lithium batteries, those are stupid expensive and the external BMS is like an extra $700!!!)

Good luck!