Bain Viljoen

On 2021/07/19 at 9:17 PM, sunset1 said:

Just a bit of FYI

Bought a BMS from lithiumbatterySA.co.za where the BMS suddenly stopped working after about a month.

I chatted to the tech department who basically said there is nothing they can do and said it was just from wear and tear. (Ive had it a month). This was pretty amusing as a few days prior the same tech guy said it was probably a loose/bad weld on the board.

I stated that i thought it came with a 1 year warranty but they said there was nothign they can do. Thought this was an interesting warranty

Anyhow It took a bit threating consumer act thing and going online for the tech guy (Ben was his name I think) to wake up. His boss I believed phoned back not in the best tone. He said I can send it and they will asses it. From his tone and the experience thus far I presumes this was a lost cause. 

Got the BMS checked out myself and it turns out the issue was the male molex connector that connects the thin wires to the BMS. The internal metal connectors became loose. Replace this and you are good to go. Dont bother with the lithium guys

 

 

 

 

Hi Andrew

It is unfortunate that you had such a bad experience with us. 
The standard procedure is to return the BMS, we inspect it and replace if needed.

We test every BMS that goes out and make sure the connector on the PCB is not loose.
From my understanding the connector was loose, how this could have happened, I don't know... 
This is then clearly physical damage.
We did ask you multiple times to send in the BMS but you never did.
It would have most likely ended up in front of me for validation and I would have just soldered the connector back.

Please do in the future handle the products a little more carefully and if there is an issue send it in and we can asses it.
I believe we are reasonable otherwise we would have had allot of customer complaints all over the forums and allot of bad reviews.

Kind regards,
Bain Viljoen

10 minutes ago, hoohloc said:

I don't think that this is about being educated or not, the OP says the inverters trip the AC breaker when he connects bms. Automatically one would isolate the issue to bms, as the breakers only trip when connecting that. It might be bms issue, might be settings, hence the best way is to get support from Amos to ensure that there is nothing wrong with his inverters. If there is a problem with the inverter, he will send inverter board if the inverters are under warranty. It took a month to get my new inverter board from him

The BMS can only control power in and out of it the cells, would be impossible for it to trip the input breaker of the inverter, Batteries give power, if the inverter is not handling that power correctly then its the inverters that is the problem.

3 minutes ago, Bain Viljoen said:

I cant remember what those setting are lol, assuming it is bulk and float and low voltage cutoff.
Bulk + float to 56.4 as I have seen the inverters stop Charing before the battery is satisfied and reads a full charge.
 

I'm assuming the BMS cuts the Charge off as there is to much power as both inverters are trying to charge full power.

O and set low voltage cutoff to 46v.
Back to AC voltage to 48v maybe.
48v is 3v per cell, almost completely drained.

7 minutes ago, hoohloc said:

Hi, try sending your query to Amos, he is very helpful and have always assisted me when I had issues with my Growatt inverters. But from your explanation of the problem, the issue seems to be your BMS and not the inverters, I might be wrong but it really sounds like a bms issue.  [email protected]

Maybe I am not educated enough with the inverters, how is a BMS disconnect tripping the AC input breaker?

1 hour ago, Antonio de Sa said:

Bain Thanks for the info.

And very sorry to bother you again, I'm a layman what it comes to this sort of thing.

I'm going back to US2, as with BMS I just had a trip, maybe my settings were not correct and the fact that the main breaker supply to the inverters is off.

Man, now I'm stuck as the inverters only charge up to 65% SOC  and stopd charging.

Can you recommend what values should settings  for 12, 13 and 21 be set at for optimum performance.

 

I cant remember what those setting are lol, assuming it is bulk and float and low voltage cutoff.
Bulk + float to 56.4 as I have seen the inverters stop Charing before the battery is satisfied and reads a full charge.
 

I'm assuming the BMS cuts the Charge off as there is to much power as both inverters are trying to charge full power.

1 hour ago, phidz said:

Hi Bain,

I have your battery and it's working well with my Sunsynk, i however "only" discharge it to 25% SOC. Is the above your general suggestion for the battery with coms?

This is perfect if you want to leave some reserve for incase there is load shedding.
Otherwise take it down to 10% or even 5%, hell go down to 0 if you want hahaha, not advised though as you want to avoid a disconnect between the battery and inverter.

16 minutes ago, Antonio de Sa said:

Hi Bain, 

retarded inverters don't give a damn....LOL.

My AC breaker is  63 amp. so theoretically should be able to handle 10 KW.  I will connect the BMS using Can protocol 52 and see the results.

At present I have setting 2 at 20 Amps, don't want to overcurrent the battery, setting 5 US2, settings  19 and 20 at 55 V battery manual says 56.

I'm trying to save the battery ( most expensive item ) in my system.

However every day I see it goes up by two cycles the odd day by 3, this worries me as I believe I'm shortening the life span of the battery.

Don't worry about the cycles, as soon the battery hits 80% it counts a cycle, charge a little bit and drop again to 80%, another cycle.
That's why we don't base our warranty on cycles but years.

The cells rating is 7000 cycles full discharge and charge at 0.5c so don't stress to much, utilize the battery or else your not saving on your power bill.
Also another thing that will make the cycles stupid is working of voltage as it keep discharging that bit and charging a bit.

The 56v is a conservative value, only 3.5v per cell.

If you use 4kwh per day from the battery over the life of the battery you will be saving well over 100k on power if calculated at 3.5 bucks per Kwh and the battery won't even be at end of life.

So USE the battery and save on your bill, that's why you got the system in the first place I believe?

So set your bulk and float to 56 if not running with CAN coms 

My suggestion, do coms, set back to AC at 15%, low SOC cutoff to 5% and back to battery at 30%.

Hi @Antonio de Sa, Mine is also set to SBU and OSO, retarded inverters don't give a damn....
Also, 30a breakers is only 6.9kw of AC, so easy to overload with 2 inverters and a battery charging. 
If you have sufficient power you will be able to charge the battery to 100% (will only briefly stay there as a few mA will take it down to 99%)
Try using the coms cable, will give you a better experience and setting cutoffs with % is better than working of voltage.
Use Program 52 under lithium protocol.

@Antonio de Sa also to note that you have 2 inverters connected to 1 battery, Max power draw from the inverters is > 10kw and 1 battery cant handle that.
Another point to raise is that The inverters are "Dumb" The battery says it needs a certain charge current, the inverters each try to charge at that current effectively over currenting the battery.
Now according to your panel power available this is fine, but as soon as you try to charge of the AC and the growatt will as your 1 battery will most likely not last thought the evening.
My 2 inverters trip all breakers leading to them in a random order if it goes into bypass and also starts charging the batteries.
The 20 seconds that you mentioned supports this analogy as this is about the ramp up time of the AC charger.

2 hours ago, JoeyhZA said:

Perhaps @Bain Viljoen can advise. I believe he's the battery/BMS supplier (?)

 

Hi @JoeyhZA and @Antonio de Sa

Unfortunately I cannot help, I imported a few SACOLAR inverter (basically the growatt ES)
The aftersales service I received was atrocious to say the least, been begging them for months for inverter boards and eventually I had to pay for new inverter board even though they are warranty claims.

Even after I paid I had to keep begging them, telling them that my customers are pissed at me and inadvertently my service.
They just keep saying they don't have stock, basically it is more important to them to sell more units instead of aftersales support.
Eventually it just came to a point where I offered all the customers a refund if their inverters popped.

I would never in my life recommend a growatt/sacolar inverter to anyone ever again.

Unfortunately the fact that the AC breaker input trips is not a battery problem, HOWEVER, try turning the AC output breaker off. this is what happens with my system at home.
The growatts ignore the commands not to charge the batteries from AC, they start charging from AC at max power and power your house in bypass mode and the result is an overcurrent on the AC input breaker.

At my house the AC input breakers are always turned off, if my batteries get flat i switch over to Eskom manually and then the next day when the batteries have charged and I get home from work I flip back to the inverters.

Hope this resolves your issue.

If you have the bucks for it, get a LuxPower inverter/Same price range as the Growatt, recently tested one, man o man, what an improving of an inverter over Growatt.
I actually listens to you if you tell it it can only charge of AC at 1a for example, also has allot better monitoring and the settings of the inverter over the web are actually allot better.

With the newest firmware update of my battery you can get the AH of all batteries connected in parallel also displayed on the inverter.

15 hours ago, Vaal said:

Am I the only one who think this personal attack was uncalled for and in bad taste? And that from the supplier? For me it will be a point to remember.

Hi @Vaal, That was actually a response to another user that was extremely rude, so rude that the moderators deleted his comment, that should say plenty about the quality of the other users comment?
I was simply asking why the battery was being sold and then I get a sarcastic and rude comment from a user that has nothing constructive to add.

1 hour ago, RexxV said:

Hi ALL, Absoluteley nothing wrong with it. I just got a Trade in deal on 2 x Hubble AM-2 Units so no longer need this. Battery peforms very well @Bain Viljoen

Great, thanks for the positive feedback!

21 minutes ago, EnTAnGleD said:

Bain, will the 6kw pack work in parallel with a 5.1kw pack?

Yeah, if your inverter has CANbus then even batter, it will ensure all 3 get charged fully.

1 hour ago, EnTAnGleD said:

48v 100Ah(105Ah) 5.1kWh (tested 5.2kWh usable @ 40A) LiFePO4 Lithium Iron Phosphate Wall Mount Solar UPS Battery | Lithium Batteries South Africa (lithiumbatteriessa.co.za)

I bought two of these in March and both are working awesome. There is nothing to say they are 2nd life cells.

You say low cycles. How many to be exact? The display can tell one the cycles.

Thanks for the positive feedback.
These are new cells yes, I state on the 2nd life units that they are 2nd life.
Transparency with clients are important, this way the customer knows what he is getting!

2 hours ago, FixAMess said:

Second life cells, not compatible with other brands, looks ugly, not mainstream...He's having a bad hair day, he's lost trust in the product...Who knows, is it our business to interrogate him???

My business is that I manufacture these batteries so I take any problems with my batteries very seriously, I do my best to keep my customers satisfied with my products.
If they are unhappy I would like to know why so that it can be addressed and in the end have a happy customer.
Satisfied? 

If that is the case why was something else bought in addition to LBSA instead of more LBSA?

So you just buy things blindly?
I thought all people on this forum were intelligent and constructive, guess there's an exception..

@RexxVWhy are you selling it?

13 minutes ago, GreenMan said:

Apparently (but I have not tested it) LBSA can communicate with Victron. 

 

As @GreenMan suggests, LBSA batteries do communicate with Victron Beautifully. 

11 hours ago, GreenMan said:

I got this BMS and it has a CAN/RS485 port...

LBSA DALY 100a 15S/16S 48V LiFePO4 Smart BMS with Optional Display or Bluetooth | Lithium Batteries South Africa (lithiumbatteriessa.co.za)

This is  pinout of the CAN/RS485 connector - DL-R16A-F16S100ATJ-MM00_Product_Specification_Confirmation_1.pdf (shopify.com)

Hi

As @GreenMan suggests our DALYs with Custom firmware has CABbus communication with Sunsynk inverters. 

2 minutes ago, Anish said:

It changes everyday. 
 

storage + date in yyyymmdd format. - so today will be storage20201011

Thanks for the info, unfortunately it did not work

Hi,

I would like to know if anyone can help with what the default password is for the sinephone app to change my inverter settings with the app.

Please see attached images.

@Lindsay At the moment the smart battery has coms to Victron inverter and possible SMA.

Growatt, Goodwe and Sunsync support are coming in about a month or 2.

They can Parallel upto 16 units together.

I have sent the guys at @ICC information with my protocol for integration and await their response.

Voltronics/Axpert are not willing to play ball and answer any of my emails. So unfortunately no integration with them any time soon.

Thanks for all the good words guys @Krokkedil and @Gerlach

@Lindsay The 6kwh unit 24V is also available.

3 minutes ago, JustinSchoeman said:

Well, more positivvy than black...

I suppose you did not get any feedback on the cell orientation yet?

Sent you the answer on WhatsApp.