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I have a Sofar 6000ES with 4x Sentry / Vision 200AH Gel batteries. According to the manufacturer of the batteries, the charge voltage and full charge voltage needs to be 58.8v (or 14.7v per battery) and the overvoltage protection needs to be set to 59.2V - My batteries start charging each morning but around midday the inverter goes into a continuous "trip" where I get an error ID12 bit3, battery over current protection. I have gone through all possibilities, we have replaced cables with thicker ones, installed an DC arrestor with more than enough amperage, had it double checked, cables are perfect, and the Sofar support technician has no further "help". 

When the inverter "trips", power remains on, it just suspends charging with a fault, waits 60 seconds and attempts to charge again. Charging starts, amps slowly increases from 0 - 10amps but the voltage increases from 54 and you can steadily see it increase to 59.2V within seconds before the inverter "trips". It does this until about 6pm when we start working from battery power, and tomorrow morning it will start charging perfect, with volts hovering around 58.4v and amps around 5amps until a certain percentage, when it starts this loop again. 

I suspect that the batteries are fully charged but the SOC is misread and this causes the trip. The batteries can charge at 60amps so there is no way it's the amps that are overloaded. My experience with the Sofar inverter has been terrible, as it seems to want a perfect environment, but I also respect the safety mechanisms and thus want to find a temp solution until we go ahead and purchase lithium which my understanding has better control options for the inverter as appose to the inverter having to do all of the measurements etc.

My theory is that because the battery manufacturer says 58.8v is both the charge and "full charge" voltage, once the full charge voltage increase an overload is detected (as overload protection is set to 59.2v or 14.8v per battery) and this trips the inverter until some charge has been released by the battery and it is then able to charge again. I can also confirm that the inverter seems to misread SOC sometimes jumping up or down drastically if you look at a chart.

So after that lengthy introduction:

  1. When a battery is charged, which component determines the voltage of the charge, the battery or the charger / inverter charger? Is the value displayed the voltage provided by the inverter charger, or is it a reading of the current voltage of the battery, which in return determines the current state of charge
  2. How does an charger know when the battery is full? How is state of charge measured and how accurate is this measurement?
  3. An option for me is to change the chart voltage lower, to say 58.4v and leave fully charged to 58.8v with over protection to 59.2v - The problem with this is that although it charges the battery, it charges extremely slow, at only about 1-2amps, so the SOC does not increase even hours of charging. This becomes more evident when setting charge to 58.0, with the inverter almost immediately saying the SOC is 100% - with 58.4v it charges but not fast, and 58.8v it seems to be optimized, but then trips after some charge time.
  4. IF the batteries are optimally charged at 58.8v, then surely the full charge must be something else, like 59.2? What would happen if I set the full charge to 59.2 and overvoltage to 59.6v? but leave 58.8v as the charge /full charge?

I'm hoping someone can advice and fill in the missing gaps I clearly have as I don't want to damage the batteries, but at this given I'm not sure how much damage is done with the "trips" so any advice would be appreciated.

Posted

Your battery settings are out of range for the inverter, 58v DC max. I will never charge Gel batteries to 14.7v. keep them at max 14.4v. Bulk set to 57.6 and float to 55.2V

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