Hi everyone , I’m new to having a solar inverter 

a quick question , does anyone know why I’m having this spikes in my SOC chart

seems to be going 10% up then back down then a while later the same thing 

my usage during those times isnt really high , anyone know if this is something to worry about ? Or how to correct this ? 

Edited May 22, 20242 yr by TheCoal.isWet

7 minutes ago, TheCoal.isWet said:

Hi everyone , I’m new to having a solar inverter 

a quick question , does anyone know why I’m having this spikes in my SOC chart

seems to be going 10% up then back down then a while later the same thing 

my usage during those times isnt really high , anyone know if this is something to worry about ? Or how to correct this ? 

So the SOC is calculated using an algorithm. There are many things that can effect it such as current, voltage, temperature, age of cells, chemistry, internal battery resistance, etc. The spikes are probably happening when your battery transitions from charging vs supplying load, that makes the voltage fluctuate and in turn affects the SOC. A good BMS takes the all the factors into account, but a lot of them do not, so you will see this spiky SOC.

Edited May 22, 20242 yr by HendrikBigChief

Funny I just posted about similarly-problematic SOC reporting on my batteries getting fixed via Firmware in another thread a little earlier today,

Are you running multiple Hubble AM-5's in parallel by any chance?

If so, the master battery reports the lowest battery's SOC in the bank when charging and the highest battery's SOC in the bank when discharging. It looks like that's what's happening here; this happened to me for a few months as well.

So whilst there's nothing major wrong, the latest firmware does fix this (it now reports an average of all the SOC's instead, thus eliminating these jumps).

Contact Hubble (or ask your installer) and they'll resolve this for you; you'll need a USB to RS232 cable for them to be able to update it for you.

 

@JayMardern thanks so much , and yes I have 5 AM-5 Hubble batteries , I’ll ask my installer to update it 

4 hours ago, TheCoal.isWet said:

Hi everyone , I’m new to having a solar inverter 

a quick question , does anyone know why I’m having this spikes in my SOC chart

seems to be going 10% up then back down then a while later the same thing 

my usage during those times isnt really high , anyone know if this is something to worry about ? Or how to correct this ? 

It would be super helpful if you could supply battery voltage and battery current charts at the same time frame. 

42 minutes ago, TaliaB said:

It would be super helpful if you could supply battery voltage and battery current charts at the same time frame. 

Maybe OP can provide same but here's an example of when it was happening to me (prior to the firmware upgrade),

In this example I'm running two AM-5's (same model as the OP) in parallel, with the master battery having an SOC of 45% and the slave having an SOC of 36%.

Take a look at what happens when the sun rises:

 

We can see the first jump (45% down to 36%) happened at 7:25. It happens every time the bank swaps between charge/discharge modes; we can see it happen a few times thereafter as well (when Load rises/falls beyond Production). We can see this same behavior in OP's graphs.

 

Then Voltage at this same time stays constant despite the SOC jumping:

 

 

So essentially as the Current swaps from negative to positive (i.e., battery bank goes from discharge to charge modes), the SOC jumps (without any changes to Voltage - and with only a tiny change to current).

What's happening is a software bug: the master simply starts reporting the SOC of the lower battery (whereas during discharge, it reports the SOC of the higher battery). As a result we get these jumps all over the show without Voltage changing.

AM-5 firmware version V15.55 and later solve this by simply reporting the average SOC of all batteries.

 

 

 

Edited May 22, 20242 yr by JayMardern

My system for the cottage are up and running slight change on my previous thinking of mixing the new3 x SVolt 24v 106ah with the 100ah Revov i rather bought a 4th SVolt 24v 106ah and paralleled them by using Victron busbars to the battery disconnect. So far i am pleasantly surprised by the complete system performance. I had a good opportunity to test the system while having contractor engineers staying over for a week or two. So now the systems consist of 3kw RCT VMIII inverter 10kwh lfp battery capacity and 1.84kwp solar array. So far the solar is charging the batteries which is drained down to 40~50% soc. I had a look on SA graphs to compare the spikes seen on the AM-5 but where pleasingly surprised the Soc graph is fairy consistent. So far i am quite happy with the SVolt performance but early day's.

 

14 hours ago, JayMardern said:

What's happening is a software bug: the master simply starts reporting the SOC of the lower battery (whereas during discharge, it reports the SOC of the higher battery). As a result we get these jumps all over the show without Voltage changing.

I would not say that it is a bug in the software, merely different ways of interpreting the data. If you are charging multiple batteries, you want to take the battery with the lowest SOC and when discharging the one with the highest, they should be fairly close, so overall not too bad. When charging, surely the battery with the lowest SOC is the most important to fully charge.

1 hour ago, HendrikBigChief said:

I would not say that it is a bug in the software, merely different ways of interpreting the data. If you are charging multiple batteries, you want to take the battery with the lowest SOC and when discharging the one with the highest, they should be fairly close, so overall not too bad. When charging, surely the battery with the lowest SOC is the most important to fully charge.

I agree - that was presumably their thought process. But it's pretty flawed in practice (which I imagine is why they changed it) - for a few reasons; but the most pressing issue was that it made it impossible to 'hold' a specific SOC.

 

Take a look at what used to happen when I instructed my inverter to maintain a 30% SOC early in the morning (pre-sunrise):

Here, one battery is at 30% and the other is at 25%. The reported value is initially 30% (the higher battery).

The battery reports 30% for a little while but the 'trickle' to maintain that 30% puts the battery into charge mode, which now drops the SOC reported down to 25% - because that's what the lower battery is at.

Now, the inverter needs to get it back to 30% - so it charges until it hits 30%. And then when it stops charging, the batteries go back into discharge mode - but now it's reporting 35%; because we've now overcharged the other battery (and we're seeing 35% from that battery now)! So it starts discharging again!

So we end up with an endlessly repeated discharge/charge cycle loop (you can see in my graph it happens 3 times in the space of 2 hours). This is terrible for the longevity of the batteries (they're being repeatedly micro-cycled for no reason) and also causes the system to often hit the grid (with the full charging current) for no reason.

 

It doesn't scale either, because this was just 2 batteries (with a small-ish SOC difference between them); but in a bank of 4 (like the OP's case), depending on age, etc, those SOC differences could be bigger - which is why OP sees jumps double the size of mine.

 

Changing this to return an average may have other disadvantages, but nothing major that I've run into yet. And when one of the batteries in the bank depletes, the new firmware also correctly instructs the inverter about the revised discharge limit: so in a 2-battery setup, if one battery is at 10% and the other at 0%, it will give a 5% SOC to the inverter (which is perfect), but also a Max Discharge Limit of 100A (i.e., the limit of single battery), whilst keeping the Charge Limit at 200A (the limit for both combined); so that there's some visibility/control to account for the fact that we're running on one battery instead of 2.

 

This is this morning (with the latest firmware) - it's perfect - we're now able to maintain 50% indefinitely until 2AM with no unwanted cycling (which is an average of the two batteries - each is at 47% and 53% respectively); and likewise there's no more jumping when swapping between discharge and charge mode after the sun comes up:

 

 

In short: I was ready to throw my expensive batteries out the window after adding a second one - but now after updating their firmware, I couldn't be happier. I cycle down to < 20% daily now; the batteries will thus pay for themselves well before their 10-year cell-warranty expires.

 

 

Edited May 23, 20242 yr by JayMardern
Added example of performance post-firmware-update

19 hours ago, JayMardern said:

I agree - that was presumably their thought process. But it's pretty flawed in practice (which I imagine is why they changed it) - for a few reasons; but the most pressing issue was that it made it impossible to 'hold' a specific SOC.

 

Take a look at what used to happen when I instructed my inverter to maintain a 30% SOC early in the morning (pre-sunrise):

Here, one battery is at 30% and the other is at 25%. The reported value is initially 30% (the higher battery).

The battery reports 30% for a little while but the 'trickle' to maintain that 30% puts the battery into charge mode, which now drops the SOC reported down to 25% - because that's what the lower battery is at.

Now, the inverter needs to get it back to 30% - so it charges until it hits 30%. And then when it stops charging, the batteries go back into discharge mode - but now it's reporting 35%; because we've now overcharged the other battery (and we're seeing 35% from that battery now)! So it starts discharging again!

So we end up with an endlessly repeated discharge/charge cycle loop (you can see in my graph it happens 3 times in the space of 2 hours). This is terrible for the longevity of the batteries (they're being repeatedly micro-cycled for no reason) and also causes the system to often hit the grid (with the full charging current) for no reason.

 

It doesn't scale either, because this was just 2 batteries (with a small-ish SOC difference between them); but in a bank of 4 (like the OP's case), depending on age, etc, those SOC differences could be bigger - which is why OP sees jumps double the size of mine.

 

Changing this to return an average may have other disadvantages, but nothing major that I've run into yet. And when one of the batteries in the bank depletes, the new firmware also correctly instructs the inverter about the revised discharge limit: so in a 2-battery setup, if one battery is at 10% and the other at 0%, it will give a 5% SOC to the inverter (which is perfect), but also a Max Discharge Limit of 100A (i.e., the limit of single battery), whilst keeping the Charge Limit at 200A (the limit for both combined); so that there's some visibility/control to account for the fact that we're running on one battery instead of 2.

 

This is this morning (with the latest firmware) - it's perfect - we're now able to maintain 50% indefinitely until 2AM with no unwanted cycling (which is an average of the two batteries - each is at 47% and 53% respectively); and likewise there's no more jumping when swapping between discharge and charge mode after the sun comes up:

 

 

In short: I was ready to throw my expensive batteries out the window after adding a second one - but now after updating their firmware, I couldn't be happier. I cycle down to < 20% daily now; the batteries will thus pay for themselves well before their 10-year cell-warranty expires.

 

 

I am with you, I also have multiple Hubble AM-5 batteries and seeing the same SOC jumping in the early mornings. Seems like quite a bit of effort to get the firmware updated. But seeing how much better your system works now I think it might be worth it to update the firmware.

Edited May 24, 20242 yr by HendrikBigChief

How do you go about updating the firmware? I have this exact same issue and what started off as a once in a while issue is now a daily occurrence.

I have only the one 10KWH BSL Battery connected to an 8Kw Sunsynk Inverter.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Regan said:

How do you go about updating the firmware? I have this exact same issue and what started off as a once in a while issue is now a daily occurrence.

I have only the one 10KWH BSL Battery connected to an 8Kw Sunsynk Inverter.

 

 

 

Just email them here:  [email protected] 
Just email them here