USB Configuration File for EG4 6500 EX-48

[SkillZUNV]

Does anyone have a configuration file for the EG4 6500 EX-48? It doesn't seem to be available. I have attempted to use solar assistant to change the settings, but they do not seem to persist. Specifically I have 6x EG4 6500 EX-48 running split phase, all AOK under normal conditions, but I am trying to quickly recover when The Following situation occurs:

1. no solar input
2. Battery reaches 10% SOC
3. Grid Input goes down
4. some form of power comes back, doesn't seem to matter if it is grid, or solar or Battery power climbing from the Victron Charge controllers

The Symptoms I see when this happens is all of the inverters come back online as though it is their first day of existence, Almost all settings return to default INCLUDING their setting #28 which is which phase of 120 they are going to be outputting, it defaults to SIG... Which of course is very bad news, immediately there is massive phase mismatch and everything shuts down, I then need to manually power everything off, disconnect everything via Breaker, and bring each inverter back online and reconfigure its output, charge currents, etc etc.

I contacted signature solar and they informed me this is expected behavior and I need to make sure that the Master Inverter is always the first one one, and the last one off. Which is super helpful since I have 0 control of when grid power goes down...

So I contemplated adding a UPS system inline on the master inverter, but this actually creates a different problem. I am likely going to just do what I knew I should have to begin with and just run a complete Victron Solution, since I am very familiar with their systems from building numerous systems for RV's and Fifth wheel campers with generators etc.

But in the mean time, does anyone have any ideas for me? Or does anyone have the USB configuration file? It would be pretty simple to recover if I had that file and just set config from USB on the front panel. (one file for the 3X 2P1 and one for 3X 2P2 180 inverters). I attempted to contact both EG4 and Signature solar to no avail. I know I am not the biggest customer in the world, but jeeze. It takes 5 seconds to answer the email with "hey Man, sorry we don't have access to that file, and we have recommended that be removed from the manual so nobody gets their hopes up in the future for that feature."

 

[JCSchwarb]

Does anyone have a configuration file for the EG4 6500 EX-48? It doesn't seem to be available. I have attempted to use solar assistant to change the settings, but they do not seem to persist. Specifically I have 6x EG4 6500 EX-48 running split phase, all AOK under normal conditions, but I am trying to quickly recover when The Following situation occurs:

1. no solar input
2. Battery reaches 10% SOC
3. Grid Input goes down
4. some form of power comes back, doesn't seem to matter if it is grid, or solar or Battery power climbing from the Victron Charge controllers

The Symptoms I see when this happens is all of the inverters come back online as though it is their first day of existence, Almost all settings return to default INCLUDING their setting #28 which is which phase of 120 they are going to be outputting, it defaults to SIG... Which of course is very bad news, immediately there is massive phase mismatch and everything shuts down, I then need to manually power everything off, disconnect everything via Breaker, and bring each inverter back online and reconfigure its output, charge currents, etc etc.

I contacted signature solar and they informed me this is expected behavior and I need to make sure that the Master Inverter is always the first one one, and the last one off. Which is super helpful since I have 0 control of when grid power goes down...

So I contemplated adding a UPS system inline on the master inverter, but this actually creates a different problem. I am likely going to just do what I knew I should have to begin with and just run a complete Victron Solution, since I am very familiar with their systems from building numerous systems for RV's and Fifth wheel campers with generators etc.

But in the mean time, does anyone have any ideas for me? Or does anyone have the USB configuration file? It would be pretty simple to recover if I had that file and just set config from USB on the front panel. (one file for the 3X 2P1 and one for 3X 2P2 180 inverters). I attempted to contact both EG4 and Signature solar to no avail. I know I am not the biggest customer in the world, but jeeze. It takes 5 seconds to answer the email with "hey Man, sorry we don't have access to that file, and we have recommended that be removed from the manual so nobody gets their hopes up in the future for that feature."

Nice looking installation! Sorry to hear about your issues. I have the same setup with 6 split phase. I remember when getting mine setup, I configured two at a time, then added four and finally six. This was after having a failure on startup due to the load sharing cables not being hooked up. I noticed that when the VGA cables were not plugged in, the settings would not stick to the 2P1, 2P2180 configuration. Thus, please consider checking your connections, I wrote out my own diagram and checked it 4 times, since the diagram they show has all three legs together where mine are installed in phased pairs. I did the same for current cables.

Regarding your failure mode use case, there is a lot more going on than I have had to deal with. It looks like your entire battery is run out and then you are losing grid power when in bypass mode. If my grid were that flaky, I would find a voltage set point for grid to charge the batteries before they go out or otherwise figure out a timing that works around grid instability. The last thing I would want to do is build in a recovery mode if you can avoid it so that it is very infrequent.

SS service is totally nonexistent.

Cheers,

Jay

 

[SkillZUNV]

Nice looking installation! Sorry to hear about your issues. I have the same setup with 6 split phase. I remember when getting mine setup, I configured two at a time, then added four and finally six. This was after having a failure on startup due to the load sharing cables not being hooked up. I noticed that when the VGA cables were not plugged in, the settings would not stick to the 2P1, 2P2180 configuration. Thus, please consider checking your connections, I wrote out my own diagram and checked it 4 times, since the diagram they show has all three legs together where mine are installed in phased pairs. I did the same for current cables.

Regarding your failure mode use case, there is a lot more going on than I have had to deal with. It looks like your entire battery is run out and then you are losing grid power when in bypass mode. If my grid were that flaky, I would find a voltage set point for grid to charge the batteries before they go out or otherwise figure out a timing that works around grid instability. The last thing I would want to do is build in a recovery mode if you can avoid it so that it is very infrequent.

SS service is totally nonexistent.

Cheers,

Jay

Thanks for the reply! I checked and double checked all of the VGA connections. (and Once more after your suggestion) I did update all of the inverters to the newest firmware this evening. I had another interesting thing happen today (prior to the firmware update), while the Inverters were in Bypass (we have had just 4 hours of Sun in the past 2 weeks) I got a Fault 80 which is comms, and power dropped out, and I needed to reset all of the inverters again. It literally all points to comms and I am not going to be surprised if I find one of the $3.00 cables included with these inverters was not correctly made...

On another note, when you have all 6 of your inverters working do your charge controllers max out at 50A each inverter? I cannot set the setting any higher when all six are powered up. When there is just 2 powered up I can set them to anything I like, but once all 6 are online, the max setting seems to be 50A. Everything else seems to Fail and revert to 50A.

Thanks!

 

[PreppenWolf]

I wonder if the inverters are set to limit current whennstacked because there is a limit to how much load sharing they can do (i.e. how much imbalance is allowed)?

There may be some limit to either response time to load demand or a general design constraint that 300A being pumped to a common busbar has implications if a unit fails and somehow backfeeds?

 

[JCSchwarb]

Thanks for the reply! I checked and double checked all of the VGA connections. (and Once more after your suggestion) I did update all of the inverters to the newest firmware this evening. I had another interesting thing happen today (prior to the firmware update), while the Inverters were in Bypass (we have had just 4 hours of Sun in the past 2 weeks) I got a Fault 80 which is comms, and power dropped out, and I needed to reset all of the inverters again. It literally all points to comms and I am not going to be surprised if I find one of the $3.00 cables included with these inverters was not correctly made...

On another note, when you have all 6 of your inverters working do your charge controllers max out at 50A each inverter? I cannot set the setting any higher when all six are powered up. When there is just 2 powered up I can set them to anything I like, but once all 6 are online, the max setting seems to be 50A. Everything else seems to Fail and revert to 50A.

Thanks!

You may want to do a continuity test on them. They are VGA 15 pin cables, pin 8(?) is not used as my longer cables I purchased that pin was a scent and are working fine.

Regarding max charging, that is interesting as I have bumped my charging amps higher and discovered it is reset, not always to 50 but to 40 or even 20. I set setting 02 to 100 and 11 to 30. I will try again today (full sun expected) and see how it behaves.

 

[Quattrohead]

They should not dump their settings when they shut down, that is crazy bad.
Why is your system not shutting down gracefully, settings are suspect.
Try USE instead of comms with batteries, the comms seem to cause more problems than it solves.
I am interested to see more details of your system, amount of panels and how are they split over the inverters, how much is your daily load etc.

 

[SkillZUNV]

I wonder if the inverters are set to limit current whennstacked because there is a limit to how much load sharing they can do (i.e. how much imbalance is allowed)?

There may be some limit to either response time to load demand or a general design constraint that 300A being pumped to a common busbar has implications if a unit fails and somehow backfeeds?

My best guess is: The EG4 engineers are afraid someone is going to have 6 inverters connected to a single battery, so they designed a safety system that limits the system for everyone else in the world. I have other charge controllers on the same Bus Bar there is sometimes 800AMPs flowing to the Batteries. The current on the Bus should not be a concern for the inverters.

 

[PreppenWolf]

I agree, but it is a lower budget inverter. Some limitations are to be expected, would just be nice to know them up front.

This could just be a software bug. I'm hypothesizing here since we don't know. You'd probably need to reach out to the manufacturer.

 

[BenFromSignatureSolar]

What firmware is on the unit? There was an update to target this exact issue

 

[SkillZUNV]

What firmware is on the unit? There was an update to target this exact issue

Inverter:
79.60
Screen:
61.06

Is Fault 80 caused by an issue with the VGA cables, EG4 Battery BMS connections, or the Parallel (red Black) wire between the same phases? I don't see in the manual where it explains which connection that fault is related to.

 

[BenFromSignatureSolar]

80 is typically going to be a paralleling cable issue. I'm going to loop in the tech manager and resolution specialist to get you taken care of here.

DM me your info and we'll get rolling

 

[SkillZUNV]

80 is typically going to be a paralleling cable issue. I'm going to loop in the tech manager and resolution specialist to get you taken care of here.

DM me your info and we'll get rolling

So we finally have some sun today again! yay. This new version of inverter firmware really seems to be artificially limiting the output at 50 amps to battery per inverter, have you seen this? Do I maybe have the incorrect version of watchpower? I have tried, Disk Version of watchpower, modifying the setting on the panel itself and modifying it VIA Solar Assistant. And so far 50A is max when 6 units are paralled, can you provide any insight to this? It seems like I am just missing something simple here.

 

[galstaf]

I got a Fault 80 which is comms, and power dropped out, and I needed to reset all of the inverters again. It literally all points to comms and I am not going to be surprised if I find one of the $3.00 cables included with these inverters was not correctly made...

Nice looking setup @SkillZUNV !

I have the same units and batteries but just a pair set up for 2P2. I have grid power but it is only 120V (nominal).. in reality it is more like 105 to 108V at the end of a very long power line.
I wanted my system to basically turn this into 240VAC of clean power that can handle a decent load like a big motor or a welder.

I bumped into my setup yesterday and got the fault 80 too which make both units beep incessantly and then shut themselves off. It persisted until I pulled all the communications cables out and reset them and put them back. Did you pin that down to a bad cable? How did you resolve it?

 

[galstaf]

What firmware is on the unit? There was an update to target this exact issue

Hey @BenFromSignatureSolar , what is the current recommended firmware versions and how do we check?

 

[galstaf]

80 is typically going to be a paralleling cable issue. I'm going to loop in the tech manager and resolution specialist to get you taken care of here.

DM me your info and we'll get rolling

Also @BenFromSignatureSolar @SignatureSolarJames , given the hold times when I have called for tech support, and the fact the guy I talked to knew less than I did, I am sure you guys are getting killed with support calls for the 6500ex in split phase mode.
For example, when it's dark and with no grid power, you cannot set up the 2p1 and 2p2 settings in battery only mode. You have to press the power button, then you have 15 seconds or so to put in the setting before the whole thing powers off. I figured a workaround which was to get to the setting 28 with everything powered on, then hit the power button to set it then the go back to menu button which you can do in the few seconds before it shuts off.
It took me a couple of hours of frustration to figure that one out and I held up a support line with sig solar for an hour or so talking to the guy who was very nice, but frankly hopeless technically.

Please do us all a solid as the manual is either completely unhelpful, or just plain incorrect.

How about a comprehensive, **well made and edited** video series showing all the little weird things you have to do to get this system working and talking to the software that is included. Don't skip anything. We all have to start somewhere.

From unboxing and explaining where the bits of the 6500 offgrid kit are supposed to go, to how to configure and have it keep the settings, which settings are locked out and why it won't save some changes (setting 02 and 11 for example).
All the way to getting the wireless monitoring and getting the laptop monitoring working.


The current videos you have are disjointed, out of order, some of them hopelessly out of date.
Some of them are shot in first person in portrait mode with zero context.. . The camera just swings around wildly and the guy tries to figure out what he is doing. Zero quality control. Zero editing.

The current situation with a slightly rewritten MPP manual is frustrating as hell and a terrible customer experience. Hence all the whining on the forums.

You have customers that actually make pretty decent videos. Perhaps pay one of them to put together a good unboxing to finished system video with your best support engineer to help explain things as they put it together.
Be honest with the install too! If the included cables are crappy, TELL US. We will buy better ones. If the monitoring software doesn't work, TELL US to buy something else and show us how to get it working.

It has to be cheaper than paying for "support" people that do not know what they are doing and just cost SS money and frustrate their customers.
Do a fantastic detailed, technically accurate video series one time and your support costs will go down and customer satisfaction will go up. Please note this feedback is to help SigSolar succeed. If you guys fail, we all lose here so we want you to be the best.

OK done ranting now. Can you tell I had some frustration to get off my chest?! ;-)

 

[galstaf]

So we finally have some sun today again! yay. This new version of inverter firmware really seems to be artificially limiting the output at 50 amps to battery per inverter, have you seen this? Do I maybe have the incorrect version of watchpower? I have tried, Disk Version of watchpower, modifying the setting on the panel itself and modifying it VIA Solar Assistant. And so far 50A is max when 6 units are paralled, can you provide any insight to this? It seems like I am just missing something simple here.

Hey @SkillZUNV did you get watchpower to actually work? I can't get my laptop to actually get any data from the inverters at all. The laptop sees the com port, but nothing is coming thru. Any tips?

Did you get a solution for the 50A maximum cutoff?

 

[SkillZUNV]

Hey @SkillZUNV did you get watchpower to actually work? I can't get my laptop to actually get any data from the inverters at all. The laptop sees the com port, but nothing is coming thru. Any tips?

Did you get a solution for the 50A maximum cutoff?

Update:

I was never able to get the 50A maximum cutoff to anything larger when 6 were in Parallel, I was able to set it to 70 When I had 4 in parallel, and anything when just 2 were in parallel. So without confirmation, I believe it is a limitation to prevent people from sending too much current to a single battery. There was nothing special that I did to connect, I just used the included serial cable from EG4, and a Startech USB to Serial adapter that I typically use for configuring Cisco switches.

Further Updates on the entire scenario:

I believe some or all of my instability was caused by a single failing EG4 6500, It went down in spectacular fashion and took out a 200Amp Class T fuse, and is currently about to go for warranty replacement. So I took this opportunity to spend more cash... I just added 3 Victron 450/200's and 6 Victron Quattro 48/5000 120v and everything is peachy. The Victrons are just so much more refined when it comes to grid outages (we just got a foot-ish of snow, and lost grid numerous times, we didn't have a single machine reboot, or light flicker)

My plan is to move the EG4's to another site that doesn't have people working and doesn't rely on stable power, if some automated equipment goes down here and there, it's no biggie. I really do like them, and for the price they are quite nice, but I doubt I can ever trust them to run my home or any site that requires 99.9% uptime.

VE.bus configuration is simple, fast, and reliable. RJ45 connections (of which I have made thousands in my past as an IT guy) between each inverter and the Cerbo GX is as simple as it gets, no crazy VGA Extension cable, and no random twisted Wires between the inverters.

To be honest that was probably the most frustrating thing, when you shift from 6 to 4 EG4 6500's you have to change all of the parallel data connections. and since I had mine run discreetly, they were annoying to re-run all over the place.

The VRM is also significantly more refined than watchpower, I also had Solar Assistant, and it was OK, but it is nice to keep everything under one wheelhouse, and all of your data in one place available at a quick glance.

Your Mileage May Vary

 

[robby]

Update:

I was never able to get the 50A maximum cutoff to anything larger when 6 were in Parallel, I was able to set it to 70 When I had 4 in parallel, and anything when just 2 were in parallel. So without confirmation, I believe it is a limitation to prevent people from sending too much current to a single battery. There was nothing special that I did to connect, I just used the included serial cable from EG4, and a Startech USB to Serial adapter that I typically use for configuring Cisco switches.

Further Updates on the entire scenario:

I believe some or all of my instability was caused by a single failing EG4 6500, It went down in spectacular fashion and took out a 200Amp Class T fuse, and is currently about to go for warranty replacement. So I took this opportunity to spend more cash... I just added 3 Victron 450/200's and 6 Victron Quattro 48/5000 120v and everything is peachy. The Victrons are just so much more refined when it comes to grid outages (we just got a foot-ish of snow, and lost grid numerous times, we didn't have a single machine reboot, or light flicker)

My plan is to move the EG4's to another site that doesn't have people working and doesn't rely on stable power, if some automated equipment goes down here and there, it's no biggie. I really do like them, and for the price they are quite nice, but I doubt I can ever trust them to run my home or any site that requires 99.9% uptime.

VE.bus configuration is simple, fast, and reliable. RJ45 connections (of which I have made thousands in my past as an IT guy) between each inverter and the Cerbo GX is as simple as it gets, no crazy VGA Extension cable, and no random twisted Wires between the inverters.

To be honest that was probably the most frustrating thing, when you shift from 6 to 4 EG4 6500's you have to change all of the parallel data connections. and since I had mine run discreetly, they were annoying to re-run all over the place.

The VRM is also significantly more refined than watchpower, I also had Solar Assistant, and it was OK, but it is nice to keep everything under one wheelhouse, and all of your data in one place available at a quick glance.

Your Mileage May Vary

View attachment 131740

Who did you get the Victron gear from. Was it Current Connected?

 

[SkillZUNV]

Who did you get the Victron gear from. Was it Current Connected?

Signature Solar had all of it in stock and ready to ship the Next day, and it was a fair price. I don't anticipate needing service, so if I can save $$ vs get amazing service, I am going to save some money.

 

[galstaf]

What is really annoying is that the EG4 hardware is seemingly capable, but the software is so flaky and hard to configure.
If they could just invest in some decent code and get these things genuinely plug and play with reliable MODERN (no serial cables!!) RJ45 style connections into a laptop or tablet for display, they could sell the crap out of them.
All they are doing right now is killing their up and coming company with unnecessary complaints that could be addressed with some software and realistic, truthful and well made setup videos.