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Hey @skipperster, have a look at this post, you can possibly use the Smart BESS app to connect to your batteries over wifi: It's probably a good idea to have a read through that whole topic, there's quite a bit of info on the CFE batteries.

That depends where you are based I guess. Perhaps @Steve87, @Leshen or @TaliaB could assist you.

Unfortunately I've got no personal experience with the Luxpower or the CFE (and I don't recognize the BMS either), but I think you need to be absolutely sure the comms to the inverter are working correctly to see if it is indeed reporting an accurate SOC from the BMS or if it is guessing it from the voltage. The easiest way would be to see at various stages if the SOC on the inverter matches up with the SOC lights on the battery, but I see you have no SOC lights on that BMS, so my next step would be to try and get some PC software working with the BMS so you can see what the batteries are actually reporting... I see on the image further above that it has a wifi aerial, maybe you can access the battery data via that with an app of sorts. Maybe someone else with a luxpower can help out with an easier way of assessing if the comms are working with a lithium battery other than looking at the Ah.

Now that you mention it, it looks like the inverter might be guessing soc from voltage... those spikes down to 0 could be due to the voltage sagging down near the cutoff voltage setting under load and then the 'leak' would be the battery voltage settling from bulk down to float after fully charging.

Some BMSs have what is called an intermittent charging function which will stop charging at 100% and only allow discharge until a certain percentage before charging again, so the battery doesn't sit at 100% all the time. The 'leak' is probably inverter self consumption and any spikes the battery absorbs while the mppt adjusts to an increase in load.

I can't take credit for that. I think @Scorp007or someone suggested it on another topic a while back and I was like... 🤦‍♂️ that's such a clever idea 😄

It seems that the battery cycles vs temperature graph has a flat spot between 15C-45C, I would say your temps are ok.

Those panels are fine to mix, their specs are very close. If the 9 panels are wired up in 3S3P, would it not be the easiest solution to just rewire them at the combiner box and change them from parallel to series? With 9 panels in series that would be around 450Voc.

I agree that their service is horrible. I have a MC solar pump controller which has worked fine for a year now, but couldn't get any answers form their technical department on some questions I had via email when I had issues. Sales did send me on to one of the techies, but he never answered my emails after that and I just gave up. I must say their products don't look very 'fancy', but they do seem quite robust. The wifi app is very simple and the range is not great, but does give the necessary info. I think I will shop somewhere else in future though.

Do you have existing equipment already installed, like pump, motor cabling etc. or are you setting up from scratch?

The main issue for me were the quotes and they are working again. Thanks!

Sorry was afk... it's not only the buttons on that screen, it's also when you click 'Quote' to quote someone, it doesn't add the text to the quote box showing the username and date of the quoted text. It does still seem to trigger alerts. It is still doing this now after you disabled dark mode. Just click quote under this post and you will see the info missing.

Bump... @Energy-Jason could you have a look into this, things seem to be acting strange since activating dark mode or around the same time.

For pylontech you need Batteryview... try this:

I don't hink you need to buy BMS software, it is usually free, you just need to know the exact BMS. For Shoto a lot of them use the seplos BMS which you can find software for here: https://www.seplos.com/download.html?group_id=6318 For the others you may be able to use PBMSTools.

If you are going by the battery 'graph' on the display it is not necessarily correct because it is merely based on your settings and doesn't know if the battery is really fully charged or not. You need to make sure the batteries are reaching the bulk charge voltage and staying there while the amps drop off and then only switch to float voltage. Here is what I would suggest, @Coulomb can correct me when he gets a chance: 02; 80A 05: USE 11: 20A 12: 49V 13: 54V 26: 58V 27: 54.4V 29: 48V The back to grid and back to battery settings shouldn't affect you as you are off grid, but they do affect the premature float bug afaik. Write down your current settings before changing anything and make sure the settings are the same on both inverters, although I'm pretty sure the master should be setting the slave's settings, but it doesn't hurt to make sure. You can check this on the display, press up or down until you see the values for U1 and U2. If you can also provide an image of the sticker on the side of the inverter I'm sure it'll make things easier for @Coulomb

It's difficult to know without knowing what that guy did, but maybe he changed the cutoff voltage for your batteries... what is it set to? Also, how old are the batteries? Are they getting fully charged every day (I suspect from panels)?

Quite possibly, I thought power factor and efficiency were basically the same thing... not sure if I'm mixing things up, but the power factor of my motor is definitely 0.68 (I know that's not great): and I have the following formula in my VSD manual to calculate the actual required power using the power factor: Just for reference here's a excerpt from my spec sheet which shows the rating (P2) and actual power (P1) of different submersible motors. it doesn't show the pf (0.68) of the motor, but it shows an efficiency of 65%. Submersible motors are clearly not as efficient as regular motors:

@Scorp007is correct here, the 0.75kW motor rating is the power it produces and is used to choose the correct pump with the same rating, but the amount of power the motor actually pulls will depend on the power factor. I have a 1.1kW 3ph Dab motor with a power factor of 0.68 and it draws about 1.8kW to run at 100%.

I'm off grid, so never had to deal with these, but I guess something like this: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255800862939463.html or this: https://lifetide.co.za/product/lifetide-60-amp-automatic-voltage-protector/ should do what you need.

Check out this video, you might need to change the protocol on the BMS with PBMSTools if it is not set to Pylon485. The inverter should work on the PYL battery setting with dip setting 1000, if not then it is probably a wiring issue with your BMS cable.

Perhaps @BritishRacingGreen can help you out, he's the only one I know of who has worked on these BMS.

Bummer it turned into such a mess, I'm out of ideas. I guess these are the correct dip settings and they match the manual. The manual also suggests that the dips are only used for addressing, nothing else like baud rate etc. There certainly seems to be something wrong with the protocol implementation somewhere. Solar Assistant might be the only way forward if they support your battery. Possibly something gone wrong with all the dip changes and testing, maybe it'll come right after shutting everything off for 5 mins and restarting.

To be honest that is not surprising. My BMS was also sold as being compatible with voltronic inverters over RS485, but it never was. It also has a bunch of different protocols for CAN and RS485, but the RS485 never worked due to hardware issues, they only got that working on later versions of the BMS. You are correct, the dip switches are used for unique addressing of the batteries on the rs485 network and are necessary to see the packs properly, but there have also been a lot of issues with them. What I have seen is that the dips are also used to indicate that there are multiple batteries. I know it goes against the manual, but I would try the master dip on 1000 and slave on 0100. One would expect the comms to work with the BMS protocol set to pylontech and inverter set to PYL, using the RS485 battery port. If that doesn't work then there is likely an issue with the protocol implementation on the BMS.

Very likely if you have reduced output since they were added, but we would need to know how they are wired and set up. Are they all wired in series or some in parallel? Are they all facing the same direction and angle or were the new panels added in a different direction. If panels are in series and facing a different angle they will only provide what the lowest performing panel can. The new panels are also lower wattage so if in series they will be pulling down the other 16 to their spec. If the panels are in series you will have added 2x405W (810W), but reduced the rest by 16x140W (2240W), therefore reducing the total by 1430W... this is a very rough calculation, but would explain the overall loss in production, it could be more accurate with the Vmp and Imp of the panels. The rest could be due to other factors like orientation of panels, lower sun in autumn etc.