21 hours ago, Leon Wouters said:

Installed Dye with Volta Stage 1 battery, no panels. It initially charged to 100%. Then it kept charging at about 0.03 Kw and battery kept showing 100%. 2 days later the battery went dead at 51.9 Volts = 30% with grid power on. So obviously wasn’t charging. Firstly why did it show 100% and then went dead and secondly how can I wake the battery up again and recharge. Help would be much appreciated. 

 

1 hour ago, Leon Wouters said:

 

Bingo, inverter not talking to battery. Who installed this for you? They need to check the comms cable between the inverter and battery. 

Edited December 25, 20232 yr by NoNoodles

23 hours ago, NoNoodles said:

You will need to put your inverter config here to see if there is an obvious issue

Deye has the activate battery function you can use to try recover a completely flat battery.

I’d check if your BMS is communicating correctly with the inverter. If you tap on the battery on the Home Screen, then bottom right for LiBmS. You should see the battery values there otherwise it’s a coms issue and you need to check your installation

 

 

 

All four indicators on the Volta battery were on. They didn’t reduce as they would when the battery is draining. After 2 days they all went out at the same time and the battery was empty! So problem must be with the battery or BMS. Can’t check comms or BMS with an empty battery. Anyone have any ideas?

3 hours ago, Leon Wouters said:

All four indicators on the Volta battery were on. They didn’t reduce as they would when the battery is draining. After 2 days they all went out at the same time and the battery was empty! So problem must be with the battery or BMS. Can’t check comms or BMS with an empty battery. Anyone have any ideas?

Volta BMS is supposed to cut off discharge at 44.8 V. That’s below 10%. 

This is going to be a long winded so apologies in advance.

I bought a 5kW Deye and Volta Stage 1 back in July 2023 and set it up as a UPS system. Followed all the manuals I could find on both items when commissioning. Battery comms to inverter all worked.

I set mine up using Sytem Work Mode to charge from the grid late at night (21:00 to 01:00) and only to 80% at the time because "I did not want to stress the battery". Few loadshedding cycles(4 or 5) later inverter shuts down with Low Battery Voltage error 5 minutes into loadshedding. Battery still reported more than 70% capacity on the LiBMS screen so I was puzzled to say the least. Voltage measured at the battery terminals was around 44V(can't recall exact value). After loadshedding I got the battery to charge again. It reported 100% pretty quick but the voltage was not in the correct range and it kept on charging for a while (>2hours) with it reporting 100%. I think my mistake was not charging the battery to "full voltage" the first time I started using it. Let me explain......

I started to dig online as to what the issue could have been and this is my theory. Some BMS modules from China sets the State of Charge (SOC) to 100% when 1 of the cells in the battery pack reaches "full voltage" ie 3.6 - 3.65V for most LiFePO4 modules. It then counts the amps (Ah) leaving the battery pack and adjusts the SOC accordingly. Now if for some reason you never recharge your battery to "full voltage" ie 3.65 x 16(number of cells in a pack) the error in the current measurement of the BMS (yes, there is always an error margin/ tolerance) adds up over time. Example: the BMS might think it only let out 10Ah but actually it was 10.5Ah and then reports a 10Ah equivalent drop in SOC. When it charges up the battery again it only puts back the SOC amount of charge ie 10Ah because that it what the BMS tells the inveter. Over time this error gets bigger until that day where it thinks it is at 90% but actual charge is less than for example 20% and shuts down. In my opinion to avoid this issue one needs to charge the battery to "full voltage" at least once a week/month to get it to reset the SOC counter. This is very tedious and erroneous values in the charging algorithm can lead to very expensive and dangerous mistakes so do not attempt unless you know what you don't know.....

Long story short I set the charge on my system to 100% in the System Work Mode to top up the battery daily. It has been behaving so far. I have only recently come across the issue of "SOC drift" on the Volta batteries in the forums so better solutions might already be out there.

On 2023/12/26 at 2:03 PM, Leon Wouters said:

All four indicators on the Volta battery were on. They didn’t reduce as they would when the battery is draining. After 2 days they all went out at the same time and the battery was empty! So problem must be with the battery or BMS. Can’t check comms or BMS with an empty battery. Anyone have any ideas?

I just realized my previous post might not be of much help to your situation.

Any possibility of the supplier providing assistance?

It sounds like it could be dead cell or loose connection in the battery pack that forced the BMS to shut down (51.9V to dead is very dramatic)

Opening the battery case and measuring each cell to see if one has died indeed is my backyard solution but is very dangerous if you do not have the experience or equipment to do so safely. Also no more warranty......

6 hours ago, TenMilSocket said:

This is going to be a long winded so apologies in advance.

I bought a 5kW Deye and Volta Stage 1 back in July 2023 and set it up as a UPS system. Followed all the manuals I could find on both items when commissioning. Battery comms to inverter all worked.

I set mine up using Sytem Work Mode to charge from the grid late at night (21:00 to 01:00) and only to 80% at the time because "I did not want to stress the battery". Few loadshedding cycles(4 or 5) later inverter shuts down with Low Battery Voltage error 5 minutes into loadshedding. Battery still reported more than 70% capacity on the LiBMS screen so I was puzzled to say the least. Voltage measured at the battery terminals was around 44V(can't recall exact value). After loadshedding I got the battery to charge again. It reported 100% pretty quick but the voltage was not in the correct range and it kept on charging for a while (>2hours) with it reporting 100%. I think my mistake was not charging the battery to "full voltage" the first time I started using it. Let me explain......

I started to dig online as to what the issue could have been and this is my theory. Some BMS modules from China sets the State of Charge (SOC) to 100% when 1 of the cells in the battery pack reaches "full voltage" ie 3.6 - 3.65V for most LiFePO4 modules. It then counts the amps (Ah) leaving the battery pack and adjusts the SOC accordingly. Now if for some reason you never recharge your battery to "full voltage" ie 3.65 x 16(number of cells in a pack) the error in the current measurement of the BMS (yes, there is always an error margin/ tolerance) adds up over time. Example: the BMS might think it only let out 10Ah but actually it was 10.5Ah and then reports a 10Ah equivalent drop in SOC. When it charges up the battery again it only puts back the SOC amount of charge ie 10Ah because that it what the BMS tells the inveter. Over time this error gets bigger until that day where it thinks it is at 90% but actual charge is less than for example 20% and shuts down. In my opinion to avoid this issue one needs to charge the battery to "full voltage" at least once a week/month to get it to reset the SOC counter. This is very tedious and erroneous values in the charging algorithm can lead to very expensive and dangerous mistakes so do not attempt unless you know what you don't know.....

Long story short I set the charge on my system to 100% in the System Work Mode to top up the battery daily. It has been behaving so far. I have only recently come across the issue of "SOC drift" on the Volta batteries in the forums so better solutions might already be out there.

You’re describing cell balancing - and indeed you’re probably right, as many batteries need to be periodically charged to 100% to maintain cell balance,

My LFP-based Hubble AM-5’s documentation states that charging to 100% is required at least once a week for cell balancing to be triggered or the unlimited-cycle 10-year warranty is void; so this cell balancing procedure isn’t specific to Volta batteries… :)

17 hours ago, JayMardern said:

You’re describing cell balancing - and indeed you’re probably right, as many batteries need to be periodically charged to 100% to maintain cell balance,

My LFP-based Hubble AM-5’s documentation states that charging to 100% is required at least once a week for cell balancing to be triggered or the unlimited-cycle 10-year warranty is void; so this cell balancing procedure isn’t specific to Volta batteries… 

Yes, balancing works on a similar principle and 100% SOC is safe way to ensure it does get balanced hence their warranty statement which make it much simpler to understand for the layman. (If only more things where written this way, the world.....)

Unfortunately not all BMS modules are equal🙃 and some start balancing based on a trigger voltage per cell which in many cases is a completely arbitrary. Some start at close to 100% SOC per cell (3.55 - 3.6V) where others start much earlier (3.20 - 3.30V) which could be anywhere from 30% to 70% SOC. (Heaven forbid they try to balance all the time😟) If you look at the Voltage vs SOC curve for a LiFePO4 cell it is very much flat through most of the cell charge and discharge phase which makes it impossible to estimate SOC based on cell voltage hence the implementation of counting the AmpHours instead. The problem with Ah counting is if the reference point shifted the SOC is wrong until the pack is recharged to 100% in order to reset it. But I digress.

I think that my Volta BMS was sleeping for the time it was in shipping/sitting at a warehouse until I bought it. The parasitic drain of the BMS could have discharged the cells a bit while the BMS was not keeping track in sleep mode. So when I started it up it remembered it was at for example 60% SOC when it went to sleep but now the cells were lower. Hence you should charge to "Full Voltage" to ensure the SOC is reset But it is a far fetched idea...

(I need to learn to not write essays)

I have managed to set up communication with the BMS to some PC software a little while back. I can try to do some testing when time permits to see when balancing happens, when SOC resets, etc. (See Volta Stage one BMS Software topic on this forum for more info)

Edited January 4, 20242 yr by TenMilSocket
Added more Info

Good evening, I have the same problem with my latest installation. 8kW Deye, 3 Volta Stage 1 and 12*550W panels. When I select AGM battery under battery settings the system works fine, the moment I change it to Lithium it picks up the BMS info and run for a few hours then the battery charge/discharge current reverts to 0 and it wont charge or discharge. How do we fix this

We have a 5kw Deye inverter with volta pro S1 battery 

For some reason battery doesn't charge 

Installer was here no luck