Signature solar EG4 battery bank use with SMA Sunny Island Invertors
- Thread starter Justenuf
- Start date
villagepowerdesign
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2020
- Messages
- 9
I still have not received the batteries so I do not have any further information.....probably off shore in San Diego!
villagepowerdesign
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2020
- Messages
- 9
In researching and installing other systems open-loop communication works just fine as long as the charge settings are set correctly. In a year or so that won't be up to code in most grid-tie installations (UL 9540 coming that requires inverter-battery integration on charging) but for off-grid or DIY it's fine for now and will work fine. For instance Fortress battery publishes LFP open loop settings for SMA Sunny Boy, Schnieider, etc. (link below) The fortress battery I believe uses the same type pouch cells as the EG4 so using those settings should work just fine. I have 3 Fortress EVaults on open-loop with 2 Sol-Arks (bought before they did their closed loop integration) and they've been working fine for a year. Most important thing is to have no charge setting over like 13.8 Volts (55.2 for 48V) and disable equalize settings or make them match normal max charge settings if you can't disable. Then also if the charge algorithm of an inverter has a sleep mode so it's not constantly floating - that is advantageous for sure - but if it doesn't and you are forced to float as your final charge stage then just make sure that float setting is really low - like at 13.4 (53.6) or even lower (13.2 an older version of the integration guide said). Hope that helps! Here's the link to that integration guide: https://www.solar-electric.com/lib/wind-sun/Fortress-Battery-Integration-Guide-SMA-Sunny-Island.pdf
I am using my own lithium battery bank with my sunny islands ... my "BMS" is here:
solardirector/agents/si at main · sshoecraft/solardirector
Contribute to sshoecraft/solardirector development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
I use a raspberry PI with a CAN/RS485 hat ... and I bought the RS485 card for my SI
The SI agent has the ability to set/get parameters from the SI, but I usually use siutil day-to-day:
solardirector/utils/siutil at main · sshoecraft/solardirector
Contribute to sshoecraft/solardirector development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
It's great for real time monitoring the SI (from can bus) and batch setting params via the -f option
etatdiysolar
New Member
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2021
- Messages
- 26
I have several EG4s, they even have a CAN connector but no docs to connect to SIs, so I'm forced to do open loop.
I'd be very interested if anyone finds a way to run them closed loop, maybe I'll get around to doing it but if open loop works well probably not going to happen.. madsci1016 got a RPi to read the SOC from a smartshunt and tell the SIs so he can run in lithium mode. But it does not charge the batteries thus needs more work.
Seems like the lower the SOC of your battery system the less the SI matches the real SOC. So running a lower SOC may require closed loop.
I'm still commisioning the system...
I'd be very interested if anyone finds a way to run them closed loop, maybe I'll get around to doing it but if open loop works well probably not going to happen.. madsci1016 got a RPi to read the SOC from a smartshunt and tell the SIs so he can run in lithium mode. But it does not charge the batteries thus needs more work.
Seems like the lower the SOC of your battery system the less the SI matches the real SOC. So running a lower SOC may require closed loop.
I'm still commisioning the system...
ChrisFullPower
Inverter Snob
I checked out the GitHub for the Solar Director project and documentation was a little lacking. Is there another site where I can find out more info?I am using my own lithium battery bank with my sunny islands ... my "BMS" is here:
solardirector/agents/si at main · sshoecraft/solardirector
Contribute to sshoecraft/solardirector development by creating an account on GitHub.
I use a raspberry PI with a CAN/RS485 hat ... and I bought the RS485 card for my SI
The SI agent has the ability to set/get parameters from the SI, but I usually use siutil day-to-day:
solardirector/utils/siutil at main · sshoecraft/solardirector
Contribute to sshoecraft/solardirector development by creating an account on GitHub.
It's great for real time monitoring the SI (from can bus) and batch setting params via the -f option
Chris, I'll write up docs for it this w/e ... I don't have any all atm so I'll try to get something going as a base
ChrisFullPower
Inverter Snob
Oh I didn't realize you were the dev. Very cool. I have 2 SI's and I'm planning on using yasdi2mqtt unless your software offers something extra.
From what I've read there are two options for lithium batteries with SMA Sunny Island. One for lead-acid (configurable voltages) that doesn't require BMS communication and Lithium one that requires BMS communication.
If your battery BMS and the Sunny Boy can communicate, then you can use the Lithium battery mode. From what I've read on this the BMS sends some voltage data to the Sunny Boy, but I'm not sure what is the exact role of these voltages for the Sunny Boy.
In the case where the BMS can't communicate with the Sunny Boy, you go with lead-acid mode. Once the voltages for charging/discharging are configured properly the setup works just fine with LiFePo4 batteries.
There was a topic in the forum where the author has attempted to use (IIRC) DIY LiFePo4 battery with a BMS that is supposed to be supported. He ran in issues and switched to the lead-acid battery mode and everything worked fine.
I'm also going for the SMA Sunny Island in the future. There was a lot of reading and validating stuff against official SMA documentation until I was certain that the SMA Sunny Island can work with DIY LiFePo4 batteries. This was a blocker for me to go with the SMA products for my setup.
If your battery BMS and the Sunny Boy can communicate, then you can use the Lithium battery mode. From what I've read on this the BMS sends some voltage data to the Sunny Boy, but I'm not sure what is the exact role of these voltages for the Sunny Boy.
In the case where the BMS can't communicate with the Sunny Boy, you go with lead-acid mode. Once the voltages for charging/discharging are configured properly the setup works just fine with LiFePo4 batteries.
There was a topic in the forum where the author has attempted to use (IIRC) DIY LiFePo4 battery with a BMS that is supposed to be supported. He ran in issues and switched to the lead-acid battery mode and everything worked fine.
I'm also going for the SMA Sunny Island in the future. There was a lot of reading and validating stuff against official SMA documentation until I was certain that the SMA Sunny Island can work with DIY LiFePo4 batteries. This was a blocker for me to go with the SMA products for my setup.
The SI agent (agents/si) acts as a "BMS" to the Sunny Island. I have an actual hardware BMS (JBD) on my battery packs. I then have a Raspberry PI with a CAN/RS485 card which is connected to the Sunny Island. The si agent talks to the Sunny Island via the CAN bus and acts as the external BMS agent. The RS485 component allows me to get/set parameters via the command line/through scripts. I'll try to detail the entire setup. It's been working for almost a year now and I'm very happy with it.
I've seen the yasdi2mqtt and it seems like a pretty good product. I think daklein runs it - you might ask him what he thinks.
My software was created just for the DIY lithium batts and grew from there. Nowadays I have JavaScript scripts and I can write directly to influxdb so no need for nodered or any external software. I just added "dynamic feed" which allows me to turn on feed to the grid yet charge the batteries at the same time and it will adjust the charge amps to the batts so it will never "use" the grid only send to it. Once the charge changes to CV mode, it will reduce the charge amps to the batts as they get full and more power will go to the grid. Without it, I had to set a fixed charge amps and if clouds came over or someone turned on a high-use item it would pull power from the grid to charge the batts.
can you help me with set up ? joe 443-392-2007
