bony999

Hi Scorp007 I will see if I can get hold of the chap I got it from, you never know he may be switched on enough to remember the log in detils. Do you ean contact the manufacturer of the dongle or the people who run Dess Monitor? I had a look on the inverter forum and saw a number of things people have done but non of them seemed to be what I need. Maybe I will have to bite the bullet and get a new one so that I can get back on with monitoring things again. It has been a few months now and I really like to see what is going on witht he system. Thanks for the reply and I will see how it goes. Regards Bony999

Hello All I have recently purchased a used wi fi module from a chap on Ebay to replace the built in module that has failed on my Conversol VM4. I have tried to register the new plug in module to Dess monitor and it says it was registered by someone else ( presumably the previous owner or installer). Does anyone know how I can remove this unit from the monitoring software and re register it in my name as it currently cant be added to my inverter. I have tried to contact Dess monitor with no reply so I wondered if anyone on the forum has had a similar expereience and if theey were able to solve it. Many thanks in advance Bony999

Hello All I was wondering of anyone know if Dess monitor is offline or not. I thought it might be my wifi dongle so I have fitted a seperate one to the com port on my conversol vm4 5kw off grid inverter. I am having a devil of a job to dd the new dongle and was wondering if it is not remoting into the system because the system is down? Any help would be great, thanks Bony999

Hi all I was trying to find out if the new 1C version of the us5000 pylontech battery is compatibel with the irst version of the same battery. I am looking to add a new 4.8 KWh battery to the two I currently have just for a bit more capacity. Many thanks Regards Bony999

Hi Scorp007 Following on from my previous, I had an email from Plylontec that said setting the bulk and the float to 52.5v was satisfactory so I have now got them both at the same value. I guess this will restore some of the capacity of the pair. Currently still showing 100% when at 52.5 V and am currently working through an email and PDF sent from Pylontec with instuctions on setting up comms with pc so I can update the software and bug check as well as check the cells and their condition. Thanks again regards Bony999

Hello Scorp007 Thanks for the reply. After looking at a number of battery related topics in this forum and following your comments I have now changed some of the settings. I have the re charge at 48V, the bulk down to 52.5V, the float is now 49.8V and the re discharge is 52.0V. I read that the pylontec batteries do not like being floated at full voltage and that lowering this as well as the bulk will be better for the batteries overal performance over time. I must say, I could probably spend all day on line and still find many more things that may or may not be better or worse for the batteries but I am happy to take any advice people have, if it will do the batteries good over time. The cost of replacing them is the biggest issue these days and given the rise in the sales of them, you would have thought the prices would have come down a little by now. Thanks again Regards Bony999

Hi Scorp007 Regarding the value stated above, I am somewhat confused as regards my original post you said the battery would not reach the re discharge if my bulk was 53v and the re discharge was 54v. How would setting the re discharge to 50-51.5V not make this worse? It may be I don't understand the precise term or re discharge but I thought this was the value to set the inverter to stop the battery being charged and to start using the battery again. Is it then the value that the battery starts discharging along side using the inverter together? I am quite new to this stuff and perhaps I have got the wrong idea as to the exact meaning of the term re discharge. Regards Bony999

Hi Scorp007 Thanks for the reply, from your comments, do you suggest setting the back to re discharge to the same as the bulk charge voltage? I understand your comment regarding the pylontec and over charging the battery voltage and it has always struck me that the settings for any of the inverters should not allow this to happen if they provide a specific setting for the battery type. I will have a look into how to get a cell voltage from a battery as I have no idea how to do that. Thanks again Regards Bony999

Hello All I have a system with a conversol vm4 5 Kw inverter, 7x 420 watt panels and 2 US 5000 pylontech batteries. I am not grid tied so I only use the power in the batteries for my off grid sockets etc. I have been using them quite happily for a couple of years now and I use watch power and smart ESS to keep an eye on the system. Whilst checking the power going into the system yesterday I noticed I have had a couple of weak battery warnings in the past few weeks and I was wondering what could cause this? I Have bulk charge at 53.00V, Float at 52.5V, Re charge set at 49.00V and the Re discharge at 54.00V. The sytem is set to USER for the battery as the PYL setting puts a much larger charge into the batteries than I have been advised is good for them. The BMS has not shown any issues with the batteries over the time it has been working and when I check the batteries they are both charged to the same level and over the day they both ccharge to 100% and sit there happily on standby with the single light flashing to say it is full. I was wondering if the free software is looking at these batteries as lead acid and therefore showing this error when a large load is drawn or the solar goes down as the day ends and a load is pulled causing the voltage to drop in the event. The weird issue is that this seems to happen at no set time in the day and sometimes the warning is un handled over a short time or a long time with no obvious reason why. I am going to check each battery with a multimeter later but in the meantime I thought I would ask if anyone has any ideas as to what may cause such a warning to occur. The system is working fine and the batteries stay charged fully with the sun and drain down to no less than 50% on any normal day sometimes even higher. Any advice or suggestions would be welcomed please. Regards Bony 999

Hello Powerforum Store Many thank for the message, I may well be interested in getting a qoute for an MPPT based turbine controller. Once I have a firm decision on installing a turbine I will get back in touch. Regards Bony 999

Ok thanks for the original reply Tinbum

Hi Tinbum Thanks for the reply. Following on from an item I read on this forum regarding battery charging of marine batteries I decided to opt for the settings they recommended for Li-Ion batteries. I have now set my bulk charging voltage to 52.5v which is 3.5v per cell and the float to 49.8v which is 3.32 v per cell. I think this is recommended for a longer life of the batteries and I assume is due to not over charging/exciting the cells. The thing I find difficult to understand is how some of the terms relate to the process of charging. For instance the back to battery voltage, I have this currently set to 53v which is 3.53v per cell and below the figure you quoted in your reply. I set it at 53v so that it was above the bulk voltage in the expectation it would keep charging until the battery got to 53v then it would stop charging and the battery would then settle back to the float volttage. Is this how the charging works or is setting the back to battery voltage needed to be higher or lower than it is presently? I assumed if I set it to 52v then it would only charge the battery to this voltage and stop so it would not attain the bulk voltage setting of 52.5v I am going to leave the settings for bulk and float as they are above but if you can shed more light on the methodolgy of the charging and the relevance of the voltage settings I would be very happy to hear from you. Regards Bony999

Hello All I have spent some time reading up on the various opinions on settings for the pylontech batteries and have changed my setting so many times according to the latest pinion or view. I have a pair of us5000 on a conversol VM7 which I believe is also made as an axpert max. I have recently started to use the off peak overnight cheap (cheapish) power to recharge the batteries and I am trying to get a set of voltage values that will both enable long term stability of the batteries as well as ensure I am not loosing out on the capacity of the pair. At present I have my battery cut off set to 43v. the float set to 52.0v the bulk charge voltage at 53.4v and back to battery at 53.0 v. Now I have read that even pylontech recommend the float voltage to be 51.75 so as to keep each cell at 3.45 v as this stops the cells becoming overcharged but I believe in their own documentation they also recommend 52.5v- 53.5v as a range for charging them. Does anyone have experience of these batteries and can you give me a bit of guidance as to the best and worst ways of charging them please? At present I am able to get the batteries charged on utility power but they only seem to charge up to 5 of the 6 leds on the front. It may be to do with my charging regime or something else but it would help if someone has had experience of the best way to charge them. Many thanks in advance Regards Bony999

Hi dpriftis I too purchased the inverter from Voltacon, mine was a 5.5 Kw Axpert MKS4 , it was only a short time after I started it that it too went into an F12 fault. After a lot of contact with a lot of very helpful people on this site I decided to purchase a new mppt board and to fit it myself. I also have a conversol V7 that I have in situ as a meaure to resolve the axpert problem. The fist thing I will say is that asking the supplier is a waste of time. The first response I got from them was that it was my fault and if I wanted it resolved I had to send it back at my cost and then pay them to inspect it, on top of this if (they decided it was something I had done) they would then charge me for repairing the inverter. Bearing in mind mine was installed in a cabinet by them with only three connections to be made by me and was part of a complete kit designed by them. At this point in time I have not re fitted the old axpert but I will be soon. If you can wait a bit I will let you know if the MPPT board change did the job or not. If it resolves the problem then I will send you a link to the comapny I got the MPPT boards from. There are a lot of very helpful people on thsi forum and a lot of them know a considerable ammount more than me so I woudl suggest you post the issue as a seperate topic and see if anyone else has a solution. I am sorry I cannot be of more help but I will reply to this posting when I have the old inverter fitted. Regards Bony999

Hello Powerforum store I am very grateful for your full and comprehensive reply, it certainly gives me a lot to think about. Looking at what may be number of issues with my current inverter I may look into getting something that is designed to work with a turbine and perhaps a seperate battery to charge with it. Then I could have a seperate system to produce 230V power that I could then try to integrate with my current solar setups consumer unit. I have read so much on the forums about the issues of wind power and I did not really think it would be so straight forward as to just add it to my current setup. If the turbines are designed for non Li-Ion batteries I guess I will be stuck with gel type leisure batteries as my store and a turbine,charge controller, inverter, shunt and safety devices. I do not have the room to add more solar panels so I was considering wind as an option to add more 230V power to my existing off grid setup. I am very grateful for the level of detail you have provided and it has certainly made me realise there is a bit more to this wind power than adding it to a solar setup. Regards Bony999

Hi macafrican thanks for getting back to me, I will look into your suggestion. I am in the dark with wind and combining it to a solar setup so that looks like a good place to start. Many thanks and Regards Bony999

Hello All I am sure that with the wealth of advice and guidance on here, someone will be able to give me a definitive answer to the above topic. At present I have an inverter and solar setup running nicley on a conversol V4 with 2 pylontec us 5000 batteries and it is powering my home on a seperate consumer unit that supplies the power to the whole house. The only thing currently on the mains supply is the lighting.(working on that too). My question is this. If I get a wind turbine set up in my garden and run the output from it into my solar power cupboard, how can I best use the wind turbine output to add to my existing solar setup. I have another Axpert MKS4 inverter that I have repaired this has two solar inputs and initially I was thinking of changing the inverters over and then connecting the wind outut in, to the second pv input as an additional source of power. )The solar produces 230v total so I have enough for another 220v to reach may 450V input). I suspect that this may be an issue if the supply from the turbine fluctuates when there are two inputs as this will effect the mppt tracking but I am not 100% sure of why. In any even I suspect it will not work well if there is no solar and the wind power is not producing enough to start the inverter. I would consider adding the second inverter (the axpert) to my cupboard and then supplying this with wind power as its only input and possibly using a small pylontec battery to enable the inverter to stay on when the wind power is too low to power it but I am not sure if I could then add the 230V output in to my consumer unit along with the 230V from my solar setup. Would I need to add a diode to the supply from both so that they do not feed back to each other or is it simply a case that when the supply comes out of each inverter they have internal protection to stop this happening anyway? I realise the wind turbine setup needs a shunt etc and have accounted for this in the setup but I am at a bit of a loss as to the best way to connect the output the wind turbine produces. My initial idea is for something along the lines of a 1 to 2 Kw turbine as an added small source to the system, a bit like a trickle charge to the system. I know the turbines don't produce what they state on them but I figure that any input is still a bonus for the days when the sun is not shining. As ever I would welcome any assistance or for that matter a pointer to someone who has already done this and can tell me the pitfalls of doing this. I know it is not going to produce tons of power but any is better than none. Regards Bony999

Hello All Having now fitted a new mppt to the above machine I am looking to upgrade the firmaware for the main from 00052.00 to what as far as I can see is the 74.04 version. I have never re flashed an inverter and would welcome some advice on the method to use and if the version stated 74.04 is the latest or the most appropriate to use. Above all I am interested to know if the later software as many bug fixes and changes to that which was originally loaded . The inverter is dated 08/22 so it is not the latest firmware but I want to ensure if I upgrade it that it will iron out any inherent issues. Previously I got an F12 warning and this then went to an error and the machine shut down. I was led to believe this was due to the mppt so I have accordingly changed the old one in the hope that this was in fact the case. If anyone has any suggestions or they can point me in the direction of a set of reasonable simple instructions to do this I would be very appreciative. As ever many thanks in advance Bony999

Hi again both I have the new board in nd the original capacitor too. All I have to do now is to re fit it and then look at how to reflash the firmware from what it came with. I will look at the conversatio I had previously with you Coulomb and see if I understand the process correctly. If it is OK with you I may have to come back to you for definitive advice on the process if I dont understand it all fully. Thanks again both Regards Bony999

Hi Coulomb Thanks for the info. I don't seem to be able to read the capacitance with my cheap meter but as I had no interference on the display prior to this I am thinking I will re fit the original and see what happens. Am I right in assuming the capacitor is only to stop the interference and does not effect the mppt in any way? Many thanks as ever Regards Boy999

Hi BritishRacingGreen Many thanks for the reply. I wondered what it was for. Given the markings on the two of them and the grey one is possibly 335K and the yellow one is 105K is there any distinct advantage to fitting the old one or the new one or will they difference between them not matter that much? I have changed the mppt as it was indicated by the original provider that they thought this was the problem. I am happy to keep the original capacitor in, if it will work correctly and given I did not have any issue with the display with it fitted. I will be happy to take any advice on the difference between the two capacitors and their suitability before I fit the board and get it up and running. As ever many thanks for taking the time to respond, I am very grateful. Regards Bony999

Subsequent to my question above. On further inspection of my inverter I have found a similar item but a bit bigger and this has labeled on its base <>mkp21 335k630 p42748 It was fitted onto the same terminal as the mppt but below the frame so I had a job seeing it. I have attached a picture and am now wondering if this is what the additional item is and now need to know if this needs to be swapped or do I leav the original grey one in place. Picture attached below and thanks for any information you can provide. Regards Bony999

Hello All I recently purchased an MPPT board from a comapny in South Africa and it has now arrived. Many thanks to BritishRacingGreen for the link. When the board arrived it had a seperate component in an anti static bag that I do not appear to have in my UK version of the inverter. I will attach the picture at the end of the question. The board is identical to my old one and short of having it sent off and tested I am quite happy to just fit the new mppt board. I am however not too sure what and where the additional item is to be installed. Asyou can see from the picture it has a live and neutral wire with fittings that I am currently assuming go on to the two cable fittings for the boards power supply. I am not fitting it yet as I am unsure what the item is for it is for clarity labelled WDC 105K 630MP. Does this in fact fit on to the power terminals that supply the mppt board and is it an additional device to protect the board from something like interference or power surges? I would be grateful if someone who has experience of fitting these boards could drop me a line to tell me definitively what it is and where exactly it goes. As ever I am truley grateful for the help Regards Bony 999

Hello BritishRacingGreen Just a line to say thanks for the link. I now have a new MPPT board for my Axpert. I will be attempting to instal it in the coming weeks. All in it was quite a good price. the postage was slightly more than the board cost but they sent it quickly and it was well packaged. I wait to see if it will do the trick. Thanks again Regards Bony999

Hi Coulomb Many thanks for the link to the instructions, I will study it before I even take the cover off. Hopefully a new board will sort these issues out I will wait and see. Thanks again Regards Bony999