Sol-Ark 12k with 6 EG4 Lifepower4 48v batteries

[wrarnol]

I have been using a sol-ark 12k with a kilovault 2100 PLC battery bank for a while and it has worked well. I just tried to switch the battery bank to a rack of 6 EG4 lifepower4 48v batteries. The minute I fire up the system the batteries throw the alarm light and cut voltage to zero and the Sol-Ark 12k shows the battery voltage at something way less than 48 volts. The sol-ark also has the following alarms go of: f13 Grid_mode_changed, F47 AC_OverFreq_Fault, F56 DC_VoltLow_Fault and F18 HW_AC_OverCurr_Fault.

I noticed that several posters on this forum have a sol-ark running with EG4 batteries. I set all the setting that I thought were apropriate before I switched battery banks. Can anyone help recommended list of settings for the sol-ark?

Thanks

 

[bertiojones]

You might need to separately charge the batteries.

 

[houseofancients]

I have been using a sol-ark 12k with a kilovault 2100 PLC battery bank for a while and it has worked well. I just tried to switch the battery bank to a rack of 6 EG4 lifepower4 48v batteries. The minute I fire up the system the batteries throw the alarm light and cut voltage to zero and the Sol-Ark 12k shows the battery voltage at something way less than 48 volts. The sol-ark also has the following alarms go of: f13 Grid_mode_changed, F47 AC_OverFreq_Fault, F56 DC_VoltLow_Fault and F18 HW_AC_OverCurr_Fault.

I noticed that several posters on this forum have a sol-ark running with EG4 batteries. I set all the setting that I thought were apropriate before I switched battery banks. Can anyone help recommended list of settings for the sol-ark?

Thanks

did you disable batt coms in the settings ?

 

[wrarnol]

did you disable batt coms in the settings ?

Yes I did. I emailed Sol-Ark and they seem to have changed some settings and now everything is working. Thanks.

 

[wrarnol]

You might need to separately charge the batteries.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[AleksK]

One weird thing I noticed with the Lifepower4s is if you turn a whole bunch of them on really quickly the solark goes into fault mode, turning them on one by one doesn't cause any problems.

 

[wrarnol]

I turn all my batteries on and wait about 1 minute then I turn the solark on and everything works great.

 

[AleksK]

I turn all my batteries on and wait about 1 minute then I turn the solark on and everything works great.

Hopefully your solark battery breaker is on when you do this, otherwise you are skipping any precharge functions you may have in your battery and then sending the full power to the capacitors. Although I'm not really sure how the solark reacts to this kind of thing, it may have some safety in there of its own.

 

[tamingilman]

I have been using a sol-ark 12k with a kilovault 2100 PLC battery bank for a while and it has worked well. I just tried to switch the battery bank to a rack of 6 EG4 lifepower4 48v batteries. The minute I fire up the system the batteries throw the alarm light and cut voltage to zero and the Sol-Ark 12k shows the battery voltage at something way less than 48 volts. The sol-ark also has the following alarms go of: f13 Grid_mode_changed, F47 AC_OverFreq_Fault, F56 DC_VoltLow_Fault and F18 HW_AC_OverCurr_Fault.

I noticed that several posters on this forum have a sol-ark running with EG4 batteries. I set all the setting that I thought were apropriate before I switched battery banks. Can anyone help recommended list of settings for the sol-ark?

Thanks

I just setup a 15K Sol-Ark and an 6 battery EG4 bank. I have not connected comms yet as I am unsure about the settings. Are you using the comms with EG4? What did you have to change? Thanks

 

[wrarnol]

I did not connect the batteries to my sol-ark 12k as sol-ark does not support the EG4 lifepower4 batteries. I did call sol-ark and they told me they don't support the EG4 batteries.
I'm not using any special settings on the sol-ark and the sol-ark has not done a good job keeping up with the batteries state of charge. It is frequently off by 8 to 10%.

 

[scollar]

This would fix the issue.

 

[scollar]

I am now sure if the EG4LL V1 code update will communicate with Sol-Ark

 

[Bkord]

I have a sol ark 12k with 2 eg4 batteries these are the setting sol ark gave me.
Low = 51.4V (roughly 25% SOC)
Empty = 49V (roughly 10%)
Restart = 51.8V (roughly 35%
Shutdown =50V (roughly 13%)
Batt Capacity: 200Ah this may change with the number of batteries

Max A Charge: 185A
Max A Discharge: 185A
TEMPCO: -0
Use Batt % Charged
Activate Battery
Float V: 55
Absorption V: 55.5
Equalization V: 55.5
30 Days, 0 Hours
Shutdown: 20%
Low Batt: 30%
Restart: 40%
Batt Empty V: 47
Batt Resistance: 8mOhms
Batt Charge Efficiency: 99%

Maybe someone could come up with a list of every battery setting for every battery for the sol ark. If comms don’t work for whatever reason, we still need all the settings so we can use the batteries.

 

[matsonburger]

I have a sol ark 12k with 2 eg4 batteries these are the setting sol ark gave me.
Low = 51.4V (roughly 25% SOC)
Empty = 49V (roughly 10%)
Restart = 51.8V (roughly 35%
Shutdown =50V (roughly 13%)
Batt Capacity: 200Ah this may change with the number of batteries

Max A Charge: 185A
Max A Discharge: 185A
TEMPCO: -0
Use Batt % Charged
Activate Battery
Float V: 55
Absorption V: 55.5
Equalization V: 55.5
30 Days, 0 Hours
Shutdown: 20%
Low Batt: 30%
Restart: 40%
Batt Empty V: 47
Batt Resistance: 8mOhms
Batt Charge Efficiency: 99%

Maybe someone could come up with a list of every battery setting for every battery for the sol ark. If comms don’t work for whatever reason, we still need all the settings so we can use the batteries.

I also have a similar setup. I have a 12k with 5 48 volt gyll batteries (an earlier version of the eg4). I originally purchased 3 batteries without the lcd screen. I added two more that did have the lcd screen. Something I noticed was that state of charge on the solark is, for instance, 79% while the batteries indicate 87%. Reading the actual voltage: the solark is 53.6 v and the batteries are 53.8 (very close). I am not sure what is causing the discrepancy. Any ideas%

 

[Bkord]

What are all your settings?

 

[matsonburger]

What are all your settings?

What are all your settings?

Poor record keeper that I am, I did have different values (which I did not write down!) than the ones you stated. There are also the values that come with the battery manual. I cannot really remember how I decided what my original setting should be, as the battery manual categories do not always have one to one correspondence with the Solark categories.
That said, I did have slightly different values.
max charge and discharge were 150A respectively, I moved that up today to 160 and 180.
Float was 56.5 (I think), moved it today to 57.2
Absorb was 56.5 (I think), moved it today to 56.9
Equalization was 56.4, kept that today
30 day, 1.0 hour
Shutdown 20% (46v)
Low 30% (47.5v)
Restart 40% (51v)
Empty 47v
Battery resistance 25mOhm
Battery efficiency 99%

After making those changes the SOC differential dropped from 8 points to 3 points.
I did notice the Solark manual mentioning that Battery resistance and efficiency is used in SOC calculations. 25mOhms is clearly different from your 8mOhms. I cannot recall how I measured my Battery resistance other than with a meter when I received them. That was about 18 months ago.....further research on this forum, since no resistance value is given in any manual I have looked at, is 100mOhms, that is for a single battery. With my five batteries I suspect I should instead have a value of perhaps 20mOhm.
That is my story,
thank you for writing with your specs and for responding to my inquiry.

 

[Bkord]

Poor record keeper that I am, I did have different values (which I did not write down!) than the ones you stated. There are also the values that come with the battery manual. I cannot really remember how I decided what my original setting should be, as the battery manual categories do not always have one to one correspondence with the Solark categories.
That said, I did have slightly different values.
max charge and discharge were 150A respectively, I moved that up today to 160 and 180.
Float was 56.5 (I think), moved it today to 57.2
Absorb was 56.5 (I think), moved it today to 56.9
Equalization was 56.4, kept that today
30 day, 1.0 hour
Shutdown 20% (46v)
Low 30% (47.5v)
Restart 40% (51v)
Empty 47v
Battery resistance 25mOhm
Battery efficiency 99%

After making those changes the SOC differential dropped from 8 points to 3 points.
I did notice the Solark manual mentioning that Battery resistance and efficiency is used in SOC calculations. 25mOhms is clearly different from your 8mOhms. I cannot recall how I measured my Battery resistance other than with a meter when I received them. That was about 18 months ago.....further research on this forum, since no resistance value is given in any manual I have looked at, is 100mOhms, that is for a single battery. With my five batteries I suspect I should instead have a value of perhaps 20mOhm.
That is my story,
thank you for writing with your specs and for responding to my inquiry.

I contacted solark and that’s the setting they recommended for my batteries. Did you contact them?