15 posts were split to a new topic: Municipal back up water install
So one year ago I switched off my Eskom supply and was purely on Solar since then, it still took a few months to make sure everything worked and then the meter to be removed to be officially off grid. Its been a saving of about R50k maybe a bit more.
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So I thought this might help someone with generator problems.
So my old briggs & Stratton gen that we have been using at work decided to die, but it had really been abused. So decided to bring it home and get rid of the Mac Afric gen I had and try fix the Briggs to use at home. So after giving the gen a well deserved service the motor was running sweet but I was only getting 10v out the plug.
So after fiddling and bypassing the little 10A overload it was still dead so then saw a big capacitor hiding under the cover and I had the exact same spec in my tool box from a lawnmower I had attempted to fix years ago.
Replaced the cap and voilà it’s runs better than the big gen I had and gives out a much better voltage and frequency.
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So I had another weird malfunction but managed to get it sorted. This time it involved the battery.
So Thursday last week at about 3:30pm I get a Victron message on my phone that there is a cell imbalance alarm. The battery was full and at the time hardly anything was running. See pics below
So when I went to check on the batteries on the ones display it was flashing orange but when I checked its voltage it was the same as the other two batteries (while disconnected from busbar) and the cells were all displaying as normal and balanced however the BMS had limited its output and it was hardly supplying any current but was giving a low SOC alarm. It was showing the SOC as 5% but the other two batteries where basically full. So I switched off the battery and left it off over night.
Next day when I switched it on it was showing that it was discharging slowly to the other batteries as they where now a bit low and the voltage was still good so I let it charge slowly during the day together with the other two batteries connected and had to put on generator because of weather but eventually the voltage of all three got to the max and suddenly the battery when from 10% to 100% and has been working perfectly ever since.
My theory is that a cell went bonkers and set of the BMS and it blocked the battery and somehow it thought it was flat when it really wasn’t and reset once it got to full voltage. Any other ideas?
Now my one concern is that in this case it was a cell that set off the BMS and then it possibly logs incorrect information and this could affect your warranty as it will show that it went below their recommended level.
forgot to add that my batteries where installed roughly the same time but their cycles shown on the display all vary which I found interesting.
What I’ve seen on a battery, up North (far north), is that somehow two of the cells managed to get over 3.6V, while the rest of the cells were all between 3.48 and 3.55V. The Pylontech BMS does not like a cell over 3.6V.
That’s why these batteries absolutely must be cycled and not just kept at full charge voltage.
From what I can see, if you can discharge the battery, and slowly recharge it, sometimes it recovers. And it sounds like that is what happened for you.
Here I am, in the workshop…
https://youtube.com/shorts/XK3oud9CX9A
Edit: You will notice we have the negative side disconnected from the protection board. That’s how we discharged the cells… the battery would not allow us to charge OR discharge.
yeah I agree and my batteries are constantly cycling and probably sit at full voltage for only a couple hours a day. What I find strange is that it didn’t spike up but rather down.
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