Hi all, I have been having issues with my solar system as per the topic discussion here: System struck by Lightning - Solar Power - Power Forum - Renewable Energy Discussion. (Copied to not have to rewrite everything). I need advice please, since the system is giving me hassles, and the insurance replaced basically everything except the battery itself. I don’t know if the battery is also faulty, but it refuses to discharge less than 29.5%.
Hoping someone can assist with advice on this. Thanks.
Hi Hennie
I’m by no means an expert, but I’d recommend putting a summary of your issue in your post and hope that Izak or Jaco comes across this thread. 
To me it sounds like your battery’s voltage is getting too low and the BMS then disconnecting it. If this was my system, I’ll do the following checks:
I don’t know the working voltages of your battery pack, but you should be able to gather this from documentation. From this you’d be able to assess if (1) and (2) are correct. (3) would tell you if the battery’s SoH has deteriorated.
Not getting the SoC down to 0% as you mention you have done before the incident isn’t necessarily an indication that the battery is dead. SoC is just an estimate produced by counting current drawn from the battery. Though, it should be fairly accurate at the lower and upper range of your battery’s voltage curve (I understand that 100% and 0% should probably be defined as per battery voltage, and any accounting up to that point should be recalibrated). So everything is obviously not fine, but I wouldn’t immediately suspect the battery to be damaged.
Lastly, what the guys from Revov told you regarding the SoC and ESS sounds like the biggest load of rubbish I’ve heard this year, and I’ve been hearing my fair share of rubbish.
From this chart:
Edit: If you haven’t been charging them to more than about 54V for a long time, then you should probably increase the charge voltage very slowly (Maybe 0.1V per day or so) to allow the cells to balance.
Morning Hennie
I have just checked your system, although your “Insurance Installer” replaced the BMV the system was not configured to use the BMV as the battery monitor, It was still using the Inverters voltage measurement to “Guess” a SOC. The SOC was standing on 38% before I selected the BMV and the moment I did, the SOC dropped to 25%.
Further more your system is configured for a minimum SOC of 40% so it wont go below 40.
I know your “Insurance Installer” and he is not familiar with all the trick af the trade when it comes to Victron and I hope that the new BMV was configured correctly.
Morning Jaco, thanks for the reply, after they installed the units yesterday, they didn’t do any configuration. I saw the guy make changes on the bmv, if they correct, that i cannot say.
I am just tied up in CPT till just before Christmas, but I would like to make a turn and just check the settings at some time.
With the changes I just made, the system will use the grid to charge the batteries from 25% to 40% setpoint. If you dont want that, Please drop minimum SOC to 25%, let the Panels charge it up to over 40 and then change the setting back to 40%.
Noted thanks Jaco for your help thus far. Will definitely chat to you to setup something for you to come through.
Nice to see that this forum allow the other forum details get posted because the other day I wanted to post something from this forum to “that” forum and my post got block on the spot. Not nice of “that” forum 
Please dont try that more than once, I can say with certainty, you will get banned for that. They have flagged EnergyTalk even in their PM’s, and mentioning energy talk even privately on their forum will land you in trouble. I got threatened with the law for pulling members over to this forum… (and then they banned me)
To be honest, any reference to me or this forum over on that side will be deleted immediately.
Amazing! How to win friends and influence sales…
Welcome Hennie!
Full marks for insuring your system. I’m convinced not everyone has done so.
I use to scan Powerforum for any questions around Victron and Victron issues, I would then contact the person in PM and asked them to come place the question here as I am not allowed to answer on Power forum, while doing that, I was banned and the Forum owner contacted me threatening me with the law for “Solicitation” . I believe somewhere in the TOS it was written that Solicitation is not allowed. In my mind solicitation always had something to do with prostitution, and imo it was not relevant to me as I dont even own a dress…
EDIT: To be fair towards them and my own forum, I will delete this soon, i just got a bit upset about what @gman said above and felt like blowing off some steam. I dont want post like this here, so I will rather remove it
It’s actually sad to see that it turn out like that. There was a guy named Sarel with a massive system and some really good knowledge, he’s gone to.
No problem if you need to delete it in the next few min Jaco. I know what you mean. Just putting it out there.
Mod note: Edited a teensy bit for readability.
If you willing to take the risk, contact him and ask him to join us. I like people with good knowledge. Guard against using the word Energytalk in the pm.
He disappeared totally of from the forum so I can’t get hold of him. I Scan VRM portal and Victron forum to see if I can pick him up but now luck. I know he stays in Ptr side.
On this off-topic, I saw Morne duped his Victron / Sunsynk question over there and man… the quality of the responses are lightyears apart.
I’ve actually posted something a couple of days ago on a different topic and the response (only from a single person though) left a bad taste in my mouth. I missed all the drama y’all are referring to, but I’m really glad I found you guys again 
His address is in that thread… You should just find someone willing to drive over there and knock on the door.
Send me the address, I’ll go
I’ll send you a pm with his contact details…
Thanks
