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SMA Sunny Island 6048 CAN issues.

Astinus

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Joined
Jul 27, 2022
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11
I am setting up a SMA Sunny Island 6048us as a grid tied back up with Sunny boy, Data Manager M, EVE 105ah Lifepo4 16s test bank (EVE 280k x64 Main Bank), Midnite Solar Classic and Orion bms. I have the system up and I hit a few brick walls along the way and would like some help understanding what I did wrong.
Screenshot 2022-08-15 100915.png

Well assuming equipment from the same manufacturer would be able to send and receive data was asinine, so I will start from the top. I found the documents for the 6.0H can interface on google and SI wants the can to transmit on 11-bit identifiers: 0x351, 0x355, and 0x356 for battery data and 0x35A, 0x35B, 0x35E, and 0x35F for alarms, warnings, data on the bms-battery. I found that SI will run with data just on 0x355, it really just wants SOC and it will use its default settings for rest of the settings from my tests. I never kept the system up long with data just on 355 but it was nice for testing . Here is a snapshot of live data over the CAN network, I am only transmitting on 0x351, 0x355, and 0x356.

new.png





I used REC's bms guide to convert over the Orion defaults to what the SI wants i.e SOC from my Orion was sending over in 1 byte form and Orion wants 2 byte form so I have to divide by 2 or it wants 1v reading and Orion is sending .1 so X10 and so on. After getting all the conversions done I powered up the system and most things are communicating and the system seems stable. 12 hours later the first error Lobatmon 3, so what happened is my SI did not get SOC and it defaulted to 0% which shuts down the inverter then it turns on in 1 second. After looking into the issue I found that the soc randomly in not being received....
Screenshot 2022-08-15 101123.png
So the REC manual says "CAN messages are sent each measuring cycle with 100 ms interval between" The SI version of the REC bms says "CAN messages are send every 250ms" and the SI manual says "Values to Sunny Island must not be sent out faster than every 200msec (inhibit time)" Thanks for the clear answer guys........... Victron equipment uses the same CAN messages 0x351, 0x355, and 0x356 with a few changes in readings but sends every 100ms. So I started playing with times and the best I can do is starting at 250ms and spacing the three messages 250ms,350ms,and 450ms. The SI will still give me a error lobatmon 1 but would not shut down the inverter. Has anyone here gotten the SI to receive all custom can messages with no errors? Or how I would trigger lobatmon if its not the SOC reading. What I am guessing is the SI wants the messages in a certain order and randomly within the 60sec window of the SI monitoring 0x355 the SOC is being rejected but idk. I also got a Victron Smart Shunt because I knew if I failed with the Orion I could convert over SOC with the shunt to the SI using raspberry pi method and may still explore this rout for just SOC.

I hope someone here has played with the CAN on the SI and can help me out, till then just trial and error. I have only had a few days to play with the system and will post more.
 
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I haven’t played with the CAN on the SI, but i use an SI8.0H, and even though the REC is supposed to control all battery functions, i still needed to set the low battery SOC settings in the SI to zero, or it would override the REC.
 
I haven’t played with the CAN on the SI, but i use an SI8.0H, and even though the REC is supposed to control all battery functions, i still needed to set the low battery SOC settings in the SI to zero, or it would override the REC.
Thanks for the reply, from what I can tell the RS-485 communication is the exact same on both units. So I will try setting all three low battery modes to 0. I see the setting you are talking about on the H models.. Wish I had that on my unit.
 
I do not want to even tell you what I went through to try to figure that out myself...... Thank you so much, I still want the 14 hours back I spent on this issue but I am so happy I can move past this part of the project. Longest my system has run without system errors.
 

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Astunus, you said Victron equipment uses the same CAN messages 0x351, 0x355, and 0x356... Does this mean it's comm is compatible with SMA SI inverters? Could I use a victron controller and tell it I have a Victron Inverter but connect it to the SI?

So it sounds like you have a single bms and the inverter with a arduino in-between? I have a smartshunt and a raspberry pi working great but need to get the SOC and charge parameter to the SI.. I'd be interested if you go that route, but since you as the other guy on this forum use the midnight charger instead of the SI.. err. I use Sunny Boy PV inverters and the SI to charge so I'm not sure what else is required to get the SI working properly... if you know anyone that has this working can you point me there?
 
The structure of the CAN messages is exact but the data might be different as far as byte/bit order or reading 1% vs .01% let me play with the default Victron profile on my system and get back to you with any issues.
Astunus, you said Victron equipment uses the same CAN messages 0x351, 0x355, and 0x356... Does this mean it's comm is compatible with SMA SI inverters? Could I use a victron controller and tell it I have a Victron Inverter but connect it to the SI?

So it sounds like you have a single bms and the inverter with a arduino in-between? I have a smartshunt and a raspberry pi working great but need to get the SOC and charge parameter to the SI.. I'd be interested if you go that route, but since you as the other guy on this forum use the midnight charger instead of the SI.. err. I use Sunny Boy PV inverters and the SI to charge so I'm not sure what else is required to get the SI working properly... if you know anyone that has this working can you point me there?
 
Hi @Astinus , @etatdiysolar,

Any updates on your experiments? I'm working on a Sunny Island setup and thinking of assembling a DIY lithium battery bank or translating the SoC from an unsupported BMS. There are lots of batteries with BMS out there without closed loop comms with Sunny Island. Honestly, I'd prefer to use the Eg4-LL batteries from signature solar. But the Sunny Island comms are not there yet. They do support Victron now though, so I'm wondering if the Sunny Island actually uses the same signals as Victron.
 
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I do not want to even tell you what I went through to try to figure that out myself...... Thank you so much, I still want the 14 hours back I spent on this issue but I am so happy I can move past this part of the project. Longest my system has run without system errors.
Hello Astinus, i have been trying to resolve the LOWBATMOD1 alarm on Sunny Island to no avail, did you ever figure out how to resolve this? I have tried setting all 3 Battery Preservation Levels to 0 percent as suggested above to no avail. I still get the Low bat mod 1 alarm. Feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
 

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