Axpert King - can't stop it charging from utility

[artful_dodger]

Has anyone with a King managed to stop it from charging the battery from Utility? 

I have the relevant settings right, ie 16 set to Slb Udc. And in ICC that is reflected as Charger Source Priority = Solar only.

But once the battery has hit 50% SOC in trickles 2A from Utility to recharge it (I set the max utility charge current to 2A as that's the lowest setting).

Has anyone managed to overcome this?

[Ant]

I have exactly this same problem after installing a new SOL-I-AX-5K on the weekend, firmware 71.50, when solar is available during the day and it reaches the lower battery threshold it does charge from solar, else at night if this happens it charges from utility.

I suspect its either setting 01sbu  ,  or setting 16 which I have tried as sbl ucb , but changed with no luck. I dont find the SOLAR only option.

I did not have the opportunity to reboot the system after the changes, I read somewhere that this might be required for some settings ?

Also I read that firmware 71.50 might not be the greatest.  Manual link here: Axpert King 5KVA

If someone can shed some light that would be greatly appreciated !

[Jaco Venter]

Hi @Ant and @miles the KIng will always charge the batteries with Utility while Utility is available. The best to do is to set the charge rate at 2A and live with it.

Therefore set Setting # 11 to 2A.

[artful_dodger]

Just a note for people's reference that I upgraded to firmware version 71.80 and this issue still exists.

[weber]

I note that the latest manual has a note:

"NOTE: In case of battery keep discharging to cause battery damaged, inverter will charge battery at 1~2A in line mode."

http://www.mppsolar.com/manual/PIP-MK (PF1.0)/PIP-MK manual-20190429.pdf

That could be a case of: If you can't change the behaviour, change the manual.

Miles, What type of battery do you have and what are your absorb, float and cutoff voltage settings? And your settings 12 and 13?

Does the problem still occur if you set parameter 10 to "ECO" (and leave parameter 23 on its default of "BYE")?

Edited June 20, 2019 by weber

[artful_dodger]

3 hours ago, weber said:

I note that the latest manual has a note:

"NOTE: In case of battery keep discharging to cause battery damaged, inverter will charge battery at 1~2A in line mode."

http://www.mppsolar.com/manual/PIP-MK (PF1.0)/PIP-MK manual-20190429.pdf

That could be a case of: If you can't change the behaviour, change the manual.

Miles, What type of battery do you have and what are your absorb, float and cutoff voltage settings? And your settings 12 and 13?

Does the problem still occur if you set parameter 10 to "ECO" (and leave parameter 23 on its default of "BYE")?

That's interesting!

I have a Narada lithium. 53V, 52.5V and 44V respectively.

Setting 12 is 44V and 13 is 52V but I have ICC controlling it more specifically with SOC (30% back to grid and 55% back to solar) and I'm yet to figure out exactly what settings 12 and 13 should be as to not get in the way of ICC.

I have 10 set to Online since the firmware upgrade. On 71.70 I had it set to both Online and ECO with no difference to the utility charging problem.

Edited June 20, 2019 by miles

[Coulomb]

There are many factors to this. Weber and I had a go at finding this bug today, but didn't come up with anything definitive.

Some reports say that the switch happens at 50.0 V battery voltage, others at 50% SOC, others that utility charging happens all the time. When attempting to not charge the battery, since the battery current isn't measured (at least not in the models I'm familiar with), so it estimates the battery current using other measurements and estimates of efficiency, so it can never get the calculation perfect. So it may be that an amp or two of utility charging will result from that.

Is the unwanted utility charging reported by the inverter itself, or a BMV?

I did find a comparison to 50.0 V battery voltage in a function that is present only in Kings, but that seemed to be to do with current sharing of paralleled machines.

[RichieRich]

I’m still running 71.50.When my inverter is in ECO mode (setting 10) and disallow utility charging (setting 16) I don’t get any charging from utility. My batteries drain at a constant -44w during this time.

 

 

 

Edited June 22, 2019 by RichieRich

[artful_dodger]

So perhaps Coulomb is into something there. My behaviour is that when the inverter switches to utility mode it always charges from utility. That switching comes at a fairly low SOC reported by the Narada BMS to ICC. Accordingly it's likely a very low voltage as per the King itself. 

 

I'll try have it switch above 50V to Utility mode and see if grid is still used to charge. 

[Ant]

16 hours ago, RichieRich said:

 disallow utility charging (setting 16) I don’t get any charging from utility. My batteries drain at a constant -44w during this time. 

--

The problem with this is, when the battery is drained flat due to  no solar, Axpert King will cutout with error 32 and need assistance to powerup with a good battery. This happened to me running  pylontech US3000. I had to boot the battery BMS again,  and then power the inverter up and quickly change modes to allow utility charging, albeit a little charge. This is why I think the utility charge purpose ,  is a "keep alive" function. (seemingly deleted previous post, I mentioned this)

 

Edited June 23, 2019 by Ant

[weber]

If Coulomb and I are to have any chance of finding this problem in the firmware, you need to answer Coulombs question, which I will generalise below.

When you are telling us the magnitude (in amps or watts) of the unwanted utility charging (or in some cases unwanted discharging) of the battery, can you pleeeeeease tell us if that number is coming from the inverter or from some other device?

[RichieRich]

2 hours ago, weber said:

If Coulomb and I are to have any chance of finding this problem in the firmware, you need to answer Coulombs question, which I will generalise below.

When you are telling us the magnitude (in amps or watts) of the unwanted utility charging (or in some cases unwanted discharging) of the battery, can you pleeeeeease tell us if that number is coming from the inverter or from some other device?

I get my readings using ICC from my Pylontech batteries. However if my inverter is in Utility mode you can see a 2A's charging on the inverter display(if set to disallow utility charging) .

 

[artful_dodger]

Same, I get readings from ICC plugged in to my Narada battery. Can also see it on the inverter in Utility mode. Utility mode is the only time I see 2A charge from either data source.

 

50V reading from the King doesn't seem to be relevant to it charging the battery, though. It seems as though if I'm in utility mode it will charge the batteries, regardless of voltage reading.

[Youda]

On 2019/06/22 at 10:21 PM, RichieRich said:

I’m still running 71.50.When my inverter is in ECO mode (setting 10) and disallow utility charging (setting 16) I don’t get any charging from utility. My batteries drain at a constant -44w during this time.

 

 

 

I've been told the same information - when PIP5048MK is being set to:

• ECO mode
• SUB
• bypass enabled
• utilitity charging disabled

then it stops charging the batteries from the Grid.

[weber]

So @miles, I suggested most of that combination of settings about 10 posts back, but you said it still charged the battery from the grid.

I suggested setting 10 to ECO, 23 to BYE, and you already had 16 set to SLb UdC. But I didn't suggest setting 01 to SUb because I didn't think that setting would matter.

Does setting 01 to SUb make the difference for you?

[artful_dodger]

3 hours ago, weber said:

So @miles, I suggested most of that combination of settings about 10 posts back, but you said it still charged the battery from the grid.

I suggested setting 10 to ECO, 23 to BYE, and you already had 16 set to SLb UdC. But I didn't suggest setting 01 to SUb because I didn't think that setting would matter.

Does setting 01 to SUb make the difference for you?

I'll try that and see what happens. Will report back.

[Jaco Venter]

 

Hi all

My current settings are:

10) Aut

16) SbL/UdC

23) bYd

I went to change these settings to the settings as proposed by Weber and immediately the inverter went into Bypass mode. (I'm currently drawing from the batteries as it is night and my batteries are still on 74%SOC.)

I'm happy with the way my inverter is operating (Except for PV current dips and Freezes) as I'm in any case not totally off grid at the moment.

My batteries are fully charged in the afternoons and then as the PV falls away the batteries supplement the load until the PV drops of completely. I then run on batteries up to about 02:00 the next morning when it changes back to grid with the SOC trigger of 50%.

While running on the grid, my batteries are charged by the 2A from grid and as the PV picks up during start of day, all the PV power is also bumped into the batteries until the batteries reach 70%SOC. At this time (+- 11:00) the Solar/Batteries take over from the grid and all additional power not used by the load are dumped into the batteries. Most of the time the batteries will reach 100%SOC before the end of the day.

My current settings are:

01) Sbu

02) 80A

05) USE

06) Ltd

07) ttE

09) 50

10) AUt

11) 2A

12) 45V

13) 52V

16) Sbl/UdC

18) bOF

19) ESP

20) LON

22) AOF

23) bYd

25) Fd5

26) 52.4V

27) 50.6V

28) SIG

29) 44V

32) AUt

33) Ed5

34 to 39) default (Not in use due to 33 disabled)

40) Nrt

93) Nrt

If you see anything strange with the settings that might be an issue please feel free to comment on it.

Hopefully it will help someone struggling with some other issues.

 

 

[artful_dodger]

On 2019/06/24 at 1:07 PM, weber said:

So @miles, I suggested most of that combination of settings about 10 posts back, but you said it still charged the battery from the grid.

I suggested setting 10 to ECO, 23 to BYE, and you already had 16 set to SLb UdC. But I didn't suggest setting 01 to SUb because I didn't think that setting would matter.

Does setting 01 to SUb make the difference for you?

Hi @weber Sorry for the long delay on this, been on holiday for a while. So if I manually change the inverter mode in ICC to SUB then it does not charge the battery using Utility (in other words it honours the charge source setting of solar only). However if ICC automatically changes modes from SOC or time control from anything to SUB it will charge from Utility. I did notify the ICC guys of this and they are aware, so when they manage to figure that out I'm sure they'll fix it.

[vit]

Hello, Im Vit, Czech Republic, Europe, I have same issues, have a look to your start of night utility charging. I checked that when time in inverter getting from 23:59 to 0:00 automatically change mode from battery to grid ( utility) and starts charging batteries. I found out that it in one hour in my case of charging. Could Webe, Miles, Jaco have a look at and please could you check if your axpert or PIP is similar behaviour?  

my settings

01 = SbU
02 = 60 A
05 = USE
06 = LTE
07 = TTE
09 = 50
10 = AUT
11 = UTI = 10 A
12 = 46 V
13 = 54 V
16 = SBL
UdC
18 = bON
19 = TEP
20 = LON
22 = AUN
23 = BYE
25 = FEN
26 = 56,4 V
27 = 54,0 V
28 = SIG
29 = 45,0 V
32 = AUT
33 = EdS
34 = 58,4 V
35 = 60
36 = 120
37 = 30d
39 = ADS
40 = NTT
93= NTT

Thank you and greetings for everyone... 

BR Vit

[vit]

On 2019/07/08 at 10:59 AM, miles said:

Hi @weber Sorry for the long delay on this, been on holiday for a while. So if I manually change the inverter mode in ICC to SUB then it does not charge the battery using Utility (in other words it honours the charge source setting of solar only). However if ICC automatically changes modes from SOC or time control from anything to SUB it will charge from Utility. I did notify the ICC guys of this and they are aware, so when they manage to figure that out I'm sure they'll fix it.

Hello, Im Vit could somebody check if this behaviour is same as in my case? when changing from 23 59 to 0 00 next day, automatically start utility charging for one hour, could you test it? check if same behaviour and have to say it is a sw bug? 

Thank you so much... looking forward 

BR Vit

[Coulomb]

12 hours ago, vit said:

from 23:59 to 0:00 automatically change mode from battery to grid ( utility) and starts charging batteries.

What battery do you have? You have setting 05 = USE, but settings 26 and 27 are defaults for lead acid.

It sounds like you have a different output source priority for hour 0 than for hour 23, as could be shown by the QOPPT command. But we haven't discovered a way to actually set those priorities, either with the LC Display and buttons, or any command. However, the ordinary POP command, which I expect ICC uses, should set the priority to the same value for all 24 hours.

I'll see if I can examine this in more detail.

There is an extremely brief mention of this here.

[vit]

Hi I have lead 48V 635 Ah, 510 in real C5 measurement. Si I asked my supplier of inverter and I was told is an sw issue. they know about it,  manufacturer also, we will se if they will look for preparation of new firmware for driver. Please this info is only orientative character, what I really heard

BR Vit

[Coulomb]

10 hours ago, vit said:

lead 48V 635 Ah

So you could increase setting 02 (Maximum total charge current) to 80 or even 90 A. It will make little difference unless your total PV is well over 3000 W, however.

[Coulomb]

On 2019/07/26 at 7:51 PM, Coulomb said:

It sounds like you have a different output source priority for hour 0 than for hour 23, as could be shown by the QOPPT command. But we haven't discovered a way to actually set those priorities, either with the LC Display and buttons, or any command. However, the ordinary POP command, which I expect ICC uses, should set the priority to the same value for all 24 hours.

I'll see if I can examine this in more detail.

Well. I've had a look at the firmware for the "by the hour" output source priority and charge mode priority. It's crazy complex. There are at least two arrays involved, and a heap of new variables, none of which I know much if anything about as yet. It looks like they're getting ready to support "by the hour" priorities, but didn't finish the code, and have left it partly implemented. Unfortunately, in this state, there seems to be a bug introduced.

I'll continue to plug away at it as time allows, but it won't be a quick process.

[Dex_]

2 hours ago, Coulomb said:

Well. I've had a look at the firmware for the "by the hour" output source priority and charge mode priority. It's crazy complex. There are at least two arrays involved, and a heap of new variables, none of which I know much if anything about as yet. It looks like they're getting ready to support "by the hour" priorities, but didn't finish the code, and have left it partly implemented. Unfortunately, in this state, there seems to be a bug introduced.

I'll continue to plug away at it as time allows, but it won't be a quick process.

sorry i havent really looked but is the source for the axperts firmware openly available?