The mysterious case of error 61

[Ben Harper]

Error 61 on Kodak/voltronic inverter means the inverter is failing to talk to the battery. No mystery there.

The problem I'm facing is that I get error 61 only when plugging in my alarm system, and only when using the earth from the house DB board.

Details:

Kodak 6.2kw inverter

2x pylontech up5000, talking to inverter over standard rs485 cable

The inverter and batteries are in the garage, which is about 5m away from the DB board of the house. I've run a pair of live/neutral 6mm cables from the inverter back to the house DB board, for future insertion in there. I was hoping that I didn't need to also run an earth cable with that pair, because the earth of the house should be bonded to the earth of the garage.

This is where it gets beyond me. If I run an extension cord from the inverter to the house, and plug the alarm system in, then no error. But if I use my 6mm live/neutral pair, and use the earth from the house DB, then I get error 61 when plugging in the alarm system. So far no other appliances cause the error.

Using a cheap multimeter, I measure zero voltage difference between the extension cord earth and the house DB earth. But I do measure 1 ohm of resistance between them, which seems normal enough.

The earth wires of the battery are directly connected to the earth on the inverter.

One more thing: the earth line of the garage goes into a cable that runs underground towards the house. I'm not sure if it eventually connects to the house via a copper cable, or if there's an independent earth spike there. But as I said, I can't measure any voltage between these two (tried AC and DC)

Can anybody explain what's going on here? I would think that since inverter and battery are directly earthed together, whatever happens downstream shouldn't affect the RS 485, but somehow it is.

Thanks for reading!

[Scorp007]

3 hours ago, Ben Harper said:

Error 61 on Kodak/voltronic inverter means the inverter is failing to talk to the battery. No mystery there.

The problem I'm facing is that I get error 61 only when plugging in my alarm system, and only when using the earth from the house DB board.

Details:

Kodak 6.2kw inverter

2x pylontech up5000, talking to inverter over standard rs485 cable

The inverter and batteries are in the garage, which is about 5m away from the DB board of the house. I've run a pair of live/neutral 6mm cables from the inverter back to the house DB board, for future insertion in there. I was hoping that I didn't need to also run an earth cable with that pair, because the earth of the house should be bonded to the earth of the garage.

This is where it gets beyond me. If I run an extension cord from the inverter to the house, and plug the alarm system in, then no error. But if I use my 6mm live/neutral pair, and use the earth from the house DB, then I get error 61 when plugging in the alarm system. So far no other appliances cause the error.

Using a cheap multimeter, I measure zero voltage difference between the extension cord earth and the house DB earth. But I do measure 1 ohm of resistance between them, which seems normal enough.

The earth wires of the battery are directly connected to the earth on the inverter.

One more thing: the earth line of the garage goes into a cable that runs underground towards the house. I'm not sure if it eventually connects to the house via a copper cable, or if there's an independent earth spike there. But as I said, I can't measure any voltage between these two (tried AC and DC)

Can anybody explain what's going on here? I would think that since inverter and battery are directly earthed together, whatever happens downstream shouldn't affect the RS 485, but somehow it is.

Thanks for reading!

The 2 wires you pulled in do they go through your normal sockets circuit and also through your earth leakage? 

Use the voltmeter to test between E N L at the DB on the 2 wires you pulled in. Also test between the LNE wires of the 3 wires of the extension. 

Post your readings here. 

[Ben Harper]

These measurements hold for all pairs of ENL, no matter where I measure them:

E-N: 0

E-L: 230

N-L: 230

I have a cheap multimeter, and it actually reads 198 instead of 230, but the numbers are consistent.

I also discovered one other thing of interest this morning:
The earth line in the garage is not connected by a copper wire to the house earth. Instead, the garage has its own earth spike, which goes into the ground about 5 meters away from the outside Eskom connection point of the main house. However, as I mentioned in my original post, I cannot measure any voltage between the house and garage earths. The only "signal" I can get between them is 1 ohm resistance.

Edited March 10 by Ben Harper
Add some more clarity

[Scorp007]

27 minutes ago, Ben Harper said:

These measurements hold for all pairs of ENL, no matter where I measure them:

E-N: 0

E-L: 230

N-L: 230

I have a cheap multimeter, and it actually reads 198 instead of 230, but the numbers are consistent.

I also discovered one other thing of interest this morning:
The earth line in the garage is not connected by a copper wire to the house earth. Instead, the garage has its own earth spike, which goes into the ground about 5 meters away from the outside Eskom connection point of the main house. However, as I mentioned in my original post, I cannot measure any voltage between the house and garage earths. The only "signal" I can get between them is 1 ohm resistance.

Strange. 1 ohm is fine and should not cause the problem you have. 

In the manual I have for the Kodak OG Plus 6.2 they only show an 60 warning but no 61.

I would tend to think another circuit in your DB has a N connected at the wrong point. 

I hate multiple earth's when one does not know where they are if your supply point has a good earth. 

[Ben Harper]

I finally figured it out!

There are two ground/earth terminals on my inverter:

1. The AC input ground
2. The inverter output ground

I assumed that these two are bonded together. They are not.

I connected these two, and now everything is happy.

A few days ago my RS232/USB adaptor that I use for comms with the inverter stopped working, and now I'm wondering if this is what killed it.

Also, in case anybody else finds this post in future -- the PCB of the inverter seems to be connected to the Output Ground. So if you're connecting the ground terminal of your batteries, and you have a different input and output ground, then connect the battery ground to the inverter's output ground (not the AC input ground).