I believe that early removable display firmware versions treated 69 either as a fault, or as a warning that required the beeper turned on. Later versions treat it as a silent warning. So you may be able to update to a later removable display version, but the question is what display version is compatible with the main DSP firmware that you have. All I know is that 41.14 typically comes with 02.40. So if your removable display firmware version is older than 02.40, you could safely update to removable display firmware version 02.40.

On 2020/09/05 at 6:23 AM, Nelson Freitas said:

In program 01 - Output Source Priority: change the setting from SUb to SbU, this will silence the repetitive alarms and give you a peacefull nights sleep.   

Not an option, that setting means Solar, utility, battery

By changing that to Solar, batter, utility you will be draining your battery after sunset and then switch to utility. 

On 2020/09/06 at 4:16 PM, Coulomb said:

removable display firmware version 02.40.

Hi @Coulomb, sorry for the threat hi-jack.

Newbie to this & here on the forum, I have a axpert king (Kodak) that I flashed 02.49 to from the file section on this forum last night. I had error 69 that basically disconnects/bypasses both the PV & utility from charging the battery (Pylon us2000 x1) when it is full & one then will lose out on the solar input feed during the day every few seconds and draw from the Utility instead. Last nights tests reveals that after flashing 02.49, with the input feed coming from the utility the 69 still comes up but no bypass click sound is heard. So there is improvement here! (appears to only warn now & stop charging, this can be confirmed on the battery charge current = 0)

Now this morning (after the 02.49 flash) 69 warning of course is still present and as soon as the battery reaches 99/100% the PV input feed are still cut/bypassed, I can see the disconnect occur on the inverter screen & my raspberry input monitor to HA displaying the drops in PV feed every few seconds (below screenshot from HA)

I now disconnect my subdb utility input to the inverter during the day due to this as the reason for my install will be to save on utility costs.
Below screenshot one can see where I drained the battery a little (93% +-) and it recharged with the solar & 69ing occurs soon after.

Any other recommendation by yourself / any other members on not having these PV bypass/disconnect from occurring when 69 comes up? 

Maybe flashing other firmware? 

 

 

Edited October 23, 20205 yr by Proxicon

On 2020/10/23 at 7:20 PM, Proxicon said:

Maybe flashing other firmware

Yes. I suspect that you need the VM III equivalent of King firmware version 71.94.

Edit: and it's difficult to compare the two, because they have such different ways of talking to the Solar Charge Controller (it's internal to the VM IIIs, connected to a separate processor for the Kings).

Edited October 24, 20205 yr by Coulomb

@Proxicon have a look here. 

On 2020/10/23 at 11:20 AM, Proxicon said:

I have a axpert king (Kodak) that I flashed 02.49

It sounds like the normal problem with the King and the Pylon: the battery voltage requested by the pylon is 53.2V which causes the King to overshoot, pushing the battery voltage too high which then causes the battery to tell the King to stop charging, which is warning 69.

Things to try:

• Upgrade to 71.94 main firmware if you are not there already.
• Try putting setting 5 into USE mode,  Bulk charge to 52.5V and Float charge to 50.5V.  Downside - no SOC information, and the premature float bug will occasionally bite you.
• Use some external software to manage the inverter and battery.  There are several free options as well as ICC.  The reason they all exist is that you really cannot operate a King with a Pylon battery without something.

 

7 hours ago, Calvin said:

Things to try

Thank you! Makes sense the way you explain it, was unaware of that. Would like to try the firmware first, maybe I get lucky & it was fixed in that revision (thanks for sending it across ill be flashing it shortly) will try this before user overwrite (don't want to get it wrong and fry the pylon) or external software management (ICC I understand is good but a little pricey off the bat as an unplanned expense for a diy user).. 

Ill go through the process of elimination as one would do with all things. Maybe I'll do free bms from the already attached raspberry if the firmware don't work, and if that is not perfect settle for ICC. Who knows 

Thank you for your advice & the firmware.

On 2020/10/24 at 12:20 PM, Calvin said:

Upgrade to 71.94 main firmware if you are not there already.

Thanks @Calvin - glad to report that this firmware sorted the PV 69 issue 🙂

71.93 sorted the AC 69 bug & visible on the below stats from Friday 23-10-2020 there is a notable drop in PV watts to 0, PV array not mounted on roof yet with the below chart but the bypass/loss of PV is clearly visible.

 

After loading 71.94 the 69 still flash up as a warning now but no PV bypass/loss occurs (yesss!!!1 🙂), below stat from today 25-20-2020 & the PV array is now mounted on the roof. It was a cloudy day & there were some 0`s but no PV bypass/loss like on 71.93

 

Glad to report the improvement on firmware revision 71.94 with the King/Pylon combo.

7 hours ago, Proxicon said:

71.93 sorted the AC 69 bug

Does 71.94 also sort out the AC bug? My reading is that 71.94 does not have the modifications that 71.93 made (compared to 71.92). But maybe they fixed the AC bug some other way, in another part of the firmware that I haven't noticed. For technical reasons, 71.94 is tedious to compare with either 71.93 or 71.92.

12 hours ago, Proxicon said:

Glad to report the improvement on firmware revision 71.94 with the King/Pylon combo.

Sounds almost too good to be true!  Will be interested if this stays like this consistently - please keep us updated.

BTW, what is the software that you are running on your Raspberry Pi?

7 hours ago, Coulomb said:

Does 71.94 also sort out the AC bug? My reading is that 71.94 does not have the modifications that 71.93 made (compared to 71.92). But maybe they fixed the AC bug some other way, in another part of the firmware that I haven't noticed. For technical reasons, 71.94 is tedious to compare with either 71.93 or 71.92.

Hi @Coulomb, correct both the AC & PV battery 100% full disconnect had gone away with 71.94
My king unit came with 71.90 & my sequence of flashing was 0.2.49 found on the forum here followed by 71.93 on 21/10 the observation were:

1. Charging the pylon from AC still threw the 69 when it reached 100% but the bypass / disconnect did not occur
2. Charging the pylon from PV still threw the 69 & disconnected the PV feed in & inverter load was then sourced from AC

Flashed 71.94 on Sat 24/20 sourced from @Calvin (thx again 🙂) & the observations were:

1. Charging the pylon from AC still threw the 69 when it reached 100% but the bypass / disconnect did not occur
2. Charging the pylon from AC still threw the 69 when it reached 100% but the bypass / disconnect did not occur

 

2 hours ago, Calvin said:

Will be interested if this stays like this consistently - please keep us updated.

I hope so! Today is a little clearer her in CPT with more PV stat to try and understand (what 71.94 appears to be doing)

Observed the below from this morning, a steady rise in PV input as the sun rises.
Note that im setting my inverter output source to SBU at 2 am in the morning & then back to SUB by 6am or when by battery reaches 60% (I only have 1x 2.4 Pylon at the minute)

So then with the sunrise this morning one can see where the battery reached 100%, im still trying to understand what the inverter does there but the PV input feed is not cut like on firmware revision 71.90 -> 71.93 but instead appears to be "lowered" for the lack of a better word, not sure if that is what happens but appears like that from the sampled data.

My data sampling rate is rather low at the moment at 60 to 120 seconds & ill be looking into tightening it up a little to perhaps to 10`s sample intervals.



Im using ned-kelly/docker-voltronic-homeassistant on the raspberry with this c++ code that this Mario guy wrote.

Working towards getting this same dataset into influxdb for display in Grafana/Chronograf soon to possibly assist with calculating ROI on my system.
 

15 minutes ago, Proxicon said:

im still trying to understand what the inverter does there

That all looks as expected - once the battery is full the SCC limits the PV input to supply only the actual loads, as the battery can no longer absorb the additional energy.

Not sure if your 60% switch over to SUB is chosen to leave some in reserve in case of load shedding - remember that Pylons are happy to go down to 20% SOC.

22 minutes ago, Calvin said:

Not sure if your 60% switch over to SUB is chosen to leave some in reserve in case of load shedding

Just a test really to see how long the one pylon could carry my night time load, that last stat was the second automated run & using that 4 hour window as a baseline I might extent that window a little but I think I need a second battery to last the entire night. Need two pylons anyways to closer match what the inverter can provide.

Would the 20% SOC not shorten the overall expected lifespan of the battery ? 

2 minutes ago, Proxicon said:

Would the 20% SOC not shorten the overall expected lifespan of the battery ?

The manufacturer claims 6000 cycles at 80% DOD, which would take almost 20 years to achieve assuming a full 80% discharge every day.  We don't really know how these batteries will age, but I would be (pleasantly) surprised if they will last anything close to 20 years.

There's some good info on Lithium battery degradation available at https://batterytestcentre.com.au.  Here's their Pylontech US2000 testing over the past 3 years:

18 hours ago, Proxicon said:

• Charging the pylon from AC still threw the 69 when it reached 100% but the bypass / disconnect did not occur
• Charging the pylon from AC still threw the 69 when it reached 100% but the bypass / disconnect did not occur

I assume that one of those was supposed to say "from PV".

The problem supposedly fixed in 71.93 was "no AC force charger"; I can't quickly find it but I think it was something about not being able to prevent AC charging under some conditions. I'm still concerned that we've lost something in 71.94 that was gained in 71.93.

3 hours ago, Coulomb said:

I assume that one of those was supposed to say "from PV".

Apologies, copy & paste fail on my behalf & not updating it (updated now  cant edit the old post 🙂 )
Correct, the second condition comparing observed differences with 71.94 should read "from PV". Which is an improvement.

Edited October 27, 20205 yr by Proxicon
unable to edit old post

2 hours ago, Coulomb said:

I'm still concerned that we've lost something in 71.94 that was gained in 71.93

Hi @Coulomb,

I can confirm that that the fix for unwanted AC charging is still present in 71.94 🙂

The behaviour is somewhat inconsistent (not new to 71.94):

• If the inverter is powered up whilst setting 16 is UdC, it takes no grid power at all.  Display shows Grid and Battery symbols, no lines.  Makes sense.
• If powered up in UCb and then changed to UdC it stops charging but uses grid power for self consumption. (and the display stays in "Charging by utility" mode...)

The important thing is that it (still) does actually stop AC charging when set to UdC.

(test setup: no PV, output(inverter) switched off)

 

Hi Guys

I've been monitoring this topic over the last 2 months. Had the same issue with a 2021 purchased King inverter from Rubicon in Cape Town with a 3.55kwh Synapse branded Pylontech battery.

The inverter also came with firmware version 71.90 which obviously had the constant Error 69, beeping and disconnecting of mains + PV connections. I was forced the run the battery in Usr mode while Rubicon tried assisting me with a fix.

We upgraded to 71.93 which caused a number other issues as the posted by Proxicon. To fully understand what was and wasn't working, we ran on this firmware for 4 days which made it clear that it broke more features than it fixed.

On 2020/10/26 at 11:07 AM, Proxicon said:

Hi @Coulomb, correct both the AC & PV battery 100% full disconnect had gone away with 71.94
My king unit came with 71.90 & my sequence of flashing was 0.2.49 found on the forum here followed by 71.93 on 21/10 the observation were:

1. Charging the pylon from AC still threw the 69 when it reached 100% but the bypass / disconnect did not occur
2. Charging the pylon from PV still threw the 69 & disconnected the PV feed in & inverter load was then sourced from AC

Flashed 71.94 on Sat 24/20 sourced from @Calvin (thx again 🙂) & the observations were:

1. Charging the pylon from AC still threw the 69 when it reached 100% but the bypass / disconnect did not occur
2. Charging the pylon from AC still threw the 69 when it reached 100% but the bypass / disconnect did not occur

 

An upgrade the 71.94 fixed some of the issues, but still displayed the Error 69 just without the alarm sounding. We once again ran with this firmware for a couple of days. At some point, Rubicon got hold of an edited/experimental firmware version. We labeled it 71.94(Broken). 71.94(Broken) corrupted the inverter a couple of times while being loaded as well as corrupting display. This version was completely messed up but did give us new list of what worked and what didn't. We forced to reload 71.94(Stable) again after a day or two.

On the 7th of April, Rubicon got hold a new firmware version 71.97 which we loaded and have been testing until now. The update seems to have fixed the error 69 which is not being displayed anymore. Switching between SUB, SBU & UBS works 100%. Battery BMS seems to be controlling the Max Charge Current setting as well as the Bulk charge and float charge voltages. Battery cut-off and back to grid setting can still be set manually. The inverter seems to be stable in charging from Solar source as well as utility without switching or disconnecting for no apparent reason. I'm very happy with the new update and can new leave the battery setting on PYL. I believe Rubicon has flashed all their stock King Inverters with the new firmware. This firmware seems to be a permanent fix to this issue.

 

Hallo Sarel

I am glad that I read the post. Someone ask me to help with the same problem. First it was the communication cable, which we replaced  and the warning 69, with the panels cut off when the warning appears. Is it possible to send me the firmware 71.97?

Regards

Stephanus Kok

Gansbaai

19 hours ago, Tonka said:

Hallo Sarel

I am glad that I read the post. Someone ask me to help with the same problem. First it was the communication cable, which we replaced  and the warning 69, with the panels cut off when the warning appears. Is it possible to send me the firmware 71.97?

Regards

Stephanus Kok

Gansbaai

Hi Stephanus

Please message me privately for the firmware updates.

There is one small bug that we became aware of but this update does fix the error 69 100%

On 2021/04/23 at 4:13 PM, Sarel Seekat said:

There is one small bug that we became aware of but this update does fix the error 69 100%

I've been doing some more firmware reading. The "warning 69 fix" is actually a "feature" of removable display version 02.66, which has modified the warning display function so that it's no longer capable of reporting warning 69. That means you no longer get a notification that the BMS no longer allows charging. To me, that's a backward step; removing the symptom rather than the actual cause. I'd rather know that the BMS is disabling charging. I'd be even happier if they somehow fixed the overshoots so the warning didn't appear nearly as often, but that doesn't seem to be on offer.

I found only a few changes between removable display firmwares version 02.63 and 02.66; I don't have any in between versions. My guess is that the only difference between 02.65 and 02.66 is the removal of the display of warning 69.

Perhaps in the patched display firmware, we'll put back the ability to display warning 69, or indicate that the BMS disallows charging via some other icon, since the warning seems to bother and/or alarm people so much. That way, we'll get whatever improvements were presumably made with 02.64 and 02.65, but retain the visibility of the BMS disabling charging.

2 hours ago, Coulomb said:

I found only a few changes between removable display firmware version 02.63 and 02.66; I don't have any in between versions. My guess is that the only difference between 02.65 and 02.66 is the removal of the display of warning 69.

From my understanding - and I might be wrong - the warning initially on firmware 71.90 would accompany the complete disconnection of solar and utility supplies at about 10sec intervals which was a massive system issue. After that (apart from the overshooting) the warning was more of an irritation than anything else. I'm sure that the BMS, regardless of the charge condition will ultimately remain in control of Over charging and Over discharging. The big question is, does the inverter still try to charge the batteries after the BMS tells the inverter that it's SOC is at 100%?

Two things I noticed that makes me less concerned -

1. It seems the Inverter reacts to the SOC percentage of the BMS and then control/adjusts the Charge current. After the update, it is not possible to change the charge current anymore. Instead, the inverter charges at 30A when the SOC is under 90% and 10A from 90%-100%. I'm not sure if the inverter does it's own SOC calculation or if it receives SOC data from the BMS.

2. The moment the SOC reading on the Inverter show 100%, the charge current reading drops to 0A and the voltage stays at the recommended charge voltage of 52.5V. This makes me think that there isn't any over charging happening and. I only recently connected a monitoring device to my King Inverter so I'm not sure what the readings were on the old firmware.

If I was running my inverter in User Setting on Battery type, an Error 69 would have been very helpful. When there is a setting on my Inverter for the battery I have, I expect there to be seamless integration between the two devices. Any errors or warnings would indicate that my Inverter can read or react to info from the BMS.

I hope that there will be a Major Update at some point. Monitoring software shows much more component data that isn't displayed on the inverter removable display.

On 2020/02/25 at 6:27 PM, 0 |>\/\/3|<|<3Я said:

Hi Bruce. I'm now faced with the same problem after adding 1x Pylontech US3000 to my 2x Pylontech US2000 stack. Did not receive this error with only the 2x US2000 batteries.

Have you managed to resolve this?

I currently have 1 x Kodak OG Plus 5.48 with 2 x Kodak FL5.2 batteries

my issue started in March 2022, when I bought 4 c ESS 2500 bat's
the OG will NOT communicate when more that two batteries are connected
it will only charge & discharge the 1st two batteries
( just displays the 69 error)

Segen, the supplier, then suggested I use 2 x FRL5.2 batteries - that solved the problem
well, didint solve it, they just side stepped the issue

now I want to connect two more FL5.2 batteries - same issue, only sees the 1st two
this after I received an email from Segen at the time, confirming the OG5.48 will handle up to 12 Fl5.2 batteries in parallel
 

I run the same firmware version as a mate of mine, using his Mecer ( essentially the same Axpert King engine)

so it looks like the flaw is with the Kodak and Segen couldn't care less