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Pylontech/Kodak system dead


Tursiops

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Good day

I am not sure if this is a battery or inverter problem.  I thought it was the inverter, but the chaps from Solar Advice who sold me the system tell me I should start by checking my batteries.

Batteries - 2 x Pylon Tech US2000B Plus 2.4 kWh
Inverter - KODAK Solar Off-Grid Inverter King with UPS 5kW 48V

Yesterday afternoon/early evening we discovered that there was no power supply to our house from our solar power system. 

When I went out to check the system, I discovered that the inverter was completely dead.  I tried switching everything off and on again, but it did not power up.  The screen is dead, the fan is not running and the batteries did also not seem to have charged.  The only lights on the batteries are the LEDS showing that the battery is turned on, but all the others are dead.  Up to this point as far as I know the system was 100% fine aside from some initial minor teething problems in February when it was installed.

According to the Solar Advice people, the inverter will not power up if there is no supply to it from the batteries.  The components are still supposed to be covered by the warranties, but as I first step do I need to check my batteries?  If yes, how/where?  I do not have access to a battery charger of my own that I can use.  (I am on the East Rand if anyone this side of the world can help me or direct me to someone who can assist).

Any useful advice will be greatly appreciated.

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I would put a multimeter on the battery terminals, first with the inverter off. If a reasonable voltage is present (48.5 V or more) then watch the voltage when you turn the inverter on. It is possible though unlikely that the battery is so low in charge that it switches off when there is the slight load of the inverter starting up.

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4 hours ago, Tursiops said:

The only lights on the batteries are the LEDS showing that the battery is turned on, but all the others are dead. 

I do not know much about pylontechs but since you are probably desperate I will suggest to hopefully get others to help you quicker include info like colour of LED and is it flashing etc., did you remove all loads etc from the inverter? PV connected/disconnected etc?

the 0V, if measured correctly, would suggest the BMS has disconnected 

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Hi

If the PT's are OK and can be switched on then hopefully the Kodak MPPT will charge them when the sun rises (even if its off) Thats how the Axpert used to work.  

Try and get them (PT's) started ie into standby mode.

I assume they are now below the cutoff voltage of the Kodak and so the inverter doesn't start.  The next thing is to try and get the inverter to start on Grid only... I don't know if this is possible with the Kodak but if it's similar to the Axpert Hybrid it should be possible if its not damaged.

Hope this works...

Regards

Mark

 

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11 hours ago, Tursiops said:

The voltage on the battery terminals is 0. 

OK, next step is to find out if it's because the inverter is shorted. Use the resistance (ohms) range on your multimeter to measure its resistance; red multimeter lead to the positive battery terminal. It should read many kilo-ohms after at least 10 seconds for the capacitors to charge up. If it steadily reads less than one ohm, then the inverter is  shorting the battery and needs repair.

If the inverter isn't shorted, then it seems to me that there has to be a problem with something between the battery and the inverter: fuses, cables, lugs. But there might be an odd problem where the battery disconnects until it sees a charge voltage, and the inverter-charger won't charge the battery because it can't see the battery. If this is the case, Pylontech owners (I'm not one) will have to help with how to get out of that situation.

Lastly, there is a chance it could be the battery itself or its BMS. The almost total lack of lights suggests this, but again I don't know the Pylontechs enough to know.

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23 hours ago, Tursiops said:

The only lights on the batteries are the LEDS showing that the battery is turned on, but all the others are dead. 

If the Pylon is not being either bulk charged or discharged it goes into standby mode and the SOC LEDs will be off. Only the green RUN LED will flash intermittently.

Detailed LED status from Pylon manual here (am somehow struggling to upload pictures)

spacer.pngHave you disconnected the Pylons and measured the voltage across each battery's terminal individually? Do you still get 0V?

I had a similar problem a while back. In my case, it turned out that my installer had not properly tightened the connection at the top of the fuse between the Pylons and the inverter - and this caused the disconnect. After frantically chasing around with a multimeter for a while, all it took to fix was a few turns with the screwdriver to tighten the connection 

 

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  • 7 months later...

To be honest I do not know what corrected my issue.  I powered everything off at the time and turned it on again as I did when the installation was new.  Nothing.  I spoke to two installation "experts" that the company I purchased from referred me to (my sytem was installed by a "solar non-expert" electrician, and I didn't even bother trying to get assistance from him), but they did not help other than confirming that there seemed to be a problem on the inverter.  I then returned the Kodak inverter to the supplier.  It was sent off to the agent - Segen.  After 3 weeks at Segen, the inverter was returned to me with the report that they found nothing wrong.  I reinstalled it myself and voila it worked.  So you tell me?  

 

I have to be honest, if I wrote the firmware on my inverter seems to be buggy.  Offhand I cannot remember, but I think I cannot get the system to work properly in SLB UDC mode (option 16 I think on the settings).  Also, the system keeps resetting the maximum solar current to a very low value without me changing anything.  No doubt there is other nonsense in the firmware that is also buggy if I had the inclination to go through all the settings.  Also, if I had to write the firmware, there are other very useful settings I would include that are just not available.

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  • 4 months later...

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