Lux ac battery controller

philologus

Tomorrow's job:

Physically number each battery.

Connect the Battery View and note what each battery is doing.

SWITCH EVERYTHING OFF  (thanks for the reminder propnut.)

Disconnect everything.

Check each battery with the test meter and compare with Battery View results.

Check all connections and put it all together again.

If it doesn't work....  use a few expletives and call in the expert.!

cm4ever

philologus said:

My post of 31.1.23 said;

Just had this reply from Lux:-

There is battery open issue,

1. check whether battery power cable have loose connection. disconnect and connect again.

2. check whether any burn bark at battery input connector of inverter.

3. measure real voltage reading both of battery side and inverter side and check whether voltage reading same.

 I have checked all cables and they are OK. There are no burn marks on any of the cables or where they meet the inverter.

I'm not an electrician so don't want to invalidate the guarantee with the inverter so don't want to mess with the inverter. I have a multi-meter so how do i check point 3?

 I should point out here that I bought the system in May 2019 and paid for  a Pylontech 4.8 battery but they only installed a 2.4. (I was ignorant and thought that the battery that was installed was a 4.8.)

I decided to increase my battery backup to 9.6 and looked for another 4.8 to add. The company I was buying from asked me to send a pic of the battery I had and informed me that it was only a 2.4.

I phoned the installers only to be told that they had gone bust and the new company took over the assets, but not the liabilities of the old company.  I have found the liquidators and made a claim and this is ongoing.

In the meantime, I bought three new 2.4's but couldn't get anyone to install them so I did it myself (It was not difficult). This has worked well for two years - until the present problems started.

 I contacted the new company for advice and they sent an electrician a couple of days ago and he said that it was wired up OK and all the connections were tight, the inverter was working OK and so were the batteries. He said that I needed to contact Lux as it could only be a software problem and they could probably fix it remotely.

Lux said (today):

Hi,

If you think battery power cable firmly connected then check whether any burn mark at battery input connector of inverter.

measure real voltage reading from both of inverter and battery side and check whether same reading voltage as inverter reading.

firmware does not control input voltage reading.

Input voltage of battery going up and down,

There are no burn marks.

So, again, they want me to check voltages.

Any thoughts please?

I am considering asking an electrician with lots of solar experience to come and have a look and to write a report to stop this passing the buck routine if I can. I am not getting full use from my system and as the days get longer this will get worse.

When the sun shines the panels produce. The inverter sends it to the house needs first. Any excess is sent to the grid - which is not what I want.  Sometimes it sends  a small amount (less than 20v) to the batteries. When the sun went down today  and I had 62% SOC no power is being taken from the batteries to feed the house. It is all taken from the grid.

I bought the "Battery View" version B3.0.3 some time ago and it is telling me that Bat 1 is 18%, Bat 2 is 16% Bat 3 is 19% and bat 4 is at 29%.

When I watch the inverter panel it often flashes up " No A/C power flow", but otherwise all is well. Temps normal. Voltage state normal. Current state normal

What am I missing?

George.

Hi, sorry maybe a bit late to the party....

Just wanted to clarify, how have you got your battery stack wired up - I'm assuming you have all four battery units wired in parallel with each other.

How is this stack then connected up to the inverter?

Does for example the +ve and -ve leads going back to the inverter leave the battery stack from the same physical battery unit or are the +ve and -ve leads split i.e. +ve off the top battery in the stack and -ve off the bottom battery in the stack.

I know on the face of it my question appears basic in nature, but I think it's worth clarifying and gives a fuller picture of your setup.

propnut

philologus said:

Tomorrow's job:

Physically number each battery.

Connect the Battery View and note what each battery is doing.

SWITCH EVERYTHING OFF  (thanks for the reminder propnut.)

Disconnect everything.

Check each battery with the test meter and compare with Battery View results.

Check all connections and put it all together again.

If it doesn't work....  use a few expletives and call in the expert.!

I would also check the resistance of each of the cables whilst you have them off. They should be 0Ω-0.1Ω in other words a dead short. Remember to use the lowest resistance setting on your meter (e.g. 200Ω) and test the resistance of your test meter leads first by touching them together and then subtracting that from the reading of the cable.

philologus

cm4ever:

The four batteries are stacked and in parallel. The +ve lead to the inverter comes from the top (master) battery and the -ve lead comes from the bottom battery in the stack.

I didn't get started today so I'm hoping to get going tomorrow instead.

I went to see someone yesterday who has been in the Solar business for years and he has offered to come and see if he can help if I don't have any success.

He now also sells wind turbines, ground heat, etc, and has just opened a showroom in the town I live iin (Redcar )

I have been considering having a small turbine installed for some time now so I asked him for a quote.

A 5Kw system fully fitted to feed into my batteries, grid, etc (via a seperate inverter) can be done for less than £4k.

Sounds good.

propnut

philologus said:

cm4ever:

The four batteries are stacked and in parallel. The +ve lead to the inverter comes from the top (master) battery and the -ve lead comes from the bottom battery in the stack.

I didn't get started today so I'm hoping to get going tomorrow instead.

I went to see someone yesterday who has been in the Solar business for years and he has offered to come and see if he can help if I don't have any success.

He now also sells wind turbines, ground heat, etc, and has just opened a showroom in the town I live iin (Redcar )

I have been considering having a small turbine installed for some time now so I asked him for a quote.

A 5Kw system fully fitted to feed into my batteries, grid, etc (via a seperate inverter) can be done for less than £4k.

Sounds good.

Be aware that traditional prop style wind gennies make a lot of noise so if you have close neighbours you may want to consider that. I believe the upright cylindrical type are quieter though.

Heedtheadvice

Great support on here.

Just a quick note that lead resistance of heavy leads such as the battery connections is quite difficult to measure accurately with a DMM such as advised., even with the method suggested.

Problems being ensuring the connections with the meter are good enough both to find their low loop resistance to subtract and when measuring the battery leads.

Also cheaper meters are not very accurate at low resistance levels.

All this can add up to variability and thus incorrect conclusions even between the same measurement twice! So not necessarily reliable hence different methods are usually employed.

Possibly not possible but it would be a bit better if all the leads could be connected together in in series to measure the total though that might not help identifying any problem one.

But still give measurement a go!

chainreaction

philologus said:

cm4ever:

The four batteries are stacked and in parallel. The +ve lead to the inverter comes from the top (master) battery and the -ve lead comes from the bottom battery in the stack.

I didn't get started today so I'm hoping to get going tomorrow instead.

I went to see someone yesterday who has been in the Solar business for years and he has offered to come and see if he can help if I don't have any success.

He now also sells wind turbines, ground heat, etc, and has just opened a showroom in the town I live iin (Redcar )

I have been considering having a small turbine installed for some time now so I asked him for a quote.

A 5Kw system fully fitted to feed into my batteries, grid, etc (via a seperate inverter) can be done for less than £4k.

Sounds good.

Re wind turbine, if the installer has put up standalone tower wind turbine I'd be interested, I live on teesside. House mounted turbines are notoriously poor only producing 10% of rated output. Suggest asking the installer to show actual output from any of the turbines they have installed, good systems should have similar set up to lux inverter app. I was quoted £20k for a 9m tower 3kw turbine from Scottish company SD Energy, producing estimated 8500 kWh pa.

philologus

The wind gennie is a cylindrical one and is about 5 feet high.

The reason he has made me a good offer is that the showroom has only been open a month and he's doing OK with panels and batteries and there's a bit of interest in heat pumps but he needs someone to have a wind turbine installed so that he can give potential customers real-life figures.

Minimum height needed is 4metres.

I live in a house with a gable end that faces almost due north with nothing in the way and the Noth Sea only a mile and a half down the road.and the average yearly wind speed here is 22kpm at 10 metres height.

Jan average is 27kpm and June and July  average 17kpm.

If it produces at 20% of potential -20kwh a day on average- most of that will go to the grid. I''m on Octopus Agile so if I got an average of 15p per Kwh that would earn me £1k a year but it would also ensure that I never have to pay for my electricity.

I currently have 16 x 300w panels on an east-west facing roof with a 22 degree pitch and I have 9.6 battery backup.

Having the batteries almost constantly topped up should mean that they cycle less so should have a longer life.

I'm still pondering all this but it looks OK on paper.

The next step will be to look at the performance figures - wind speeds needed to produce 1kw and 2kw are the ones I'm most interested in. If I can hit 2kw on average it will produce enough to pay me £2,600 a year so could pay for itself in 18 months.

If anyone in the North East  area wants more info let me know and I'll talk to "The Man" and see what can be done.

martin2020

anyone had to deal with a pylontec warranty return before.  They collected a battery using a german courier ive never heard of and when i emailed them 2 weeks later they said that they had not received anything back from the courier yet and will chase,   its been 4 week now and nothing.   Im pretty disappointed in pylontecs service expected better

philologus

Well, that was fun!

I turned off and disconnected  all four batteries and took them out of the case  (I'd forgotten just how heavy they are - hernia job!) and took every lead off and checked them for continuity , resistance, wear, any evidence of shorting, and there were no problems that I could see.

I checked each battery individually and they were all OK.

I put it all back together and turned the inverter on. It asked which batteries were being used so I told it that they were Pylons and  waited five minutes before switching the batteries back on.

Nothing has changed from what things were before I started.

I tried a forced battery charge for half an hour but nothing happened.

I keep wondering if everything is working OK and it's my fault for not having the settings right.

Batteries are at 14%.

The company I bought the system from is the "sister" company of the one I'm using to look into wind power and their boss has promised me that they will sort it out for me. I'll be getting a visit tomorrow morning to get things started - apparently.

I'm not holding my breath!