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I am still fairly new on the forum, tried to answer a few questions as I asked some, and have been talking about my plans and purchases. I figure this is the right place to talk about what I am doing and where it is going. My existing system is a very typical Enphase setup. I have 2 arrays of 8...

I am running a Schneider inverter and a DIY battery bank. There is no communication between the BMS and the inverter, and it all works just fine. The inverter and charging source should be programmed to not exceed the safe limits of the battery bank. It will stop charging at your full setting...

I have been very happy with Enphase. My system will be 3 years old soon, and no component has failed yet. During one power outage, the first one since my hybrid went in, 11 of my 16 iQ7 microinverters locked up and would not charge my battery bank. I am NOT using Enphase batteries. I have it...

This is very common and normal. Any tiny difference in the internal cell voltages, state of charge, cell resistance, BMS resistance, and even the voltage drop of the mosfets will cause the two separate battery strings to carry a different amount of current. But in the real world, it also...

Just something to keep in mind here, solar storage is rarely ever going to be even close to 1.0C rate. I have now been running my house essentially off grid for a few weeks. My system charges when the sun shines, and discharges all night. I do have a 6,800 watt inverter, but my average power to...

And maybe I will beat Hedges to this one. You can also have panels at different angles to make maximum power for more time of the day without exceeding the peak power limits. If you parallel a string that is facing 30 degrees east with another string facing 30 degrees west, they will only peak...

The easy explanation is the BMS can act like a diode when it turns off only one direction. If the cells are too hig, it will only allow current to flow out. If the cells are too low, it will only allow current to flow in. There is one small issue though. If you have a fairly high charge current...

If I was installing DC solar as well, the Sol-Ark does look very good. But for the only solar being my existing Enphase micro inverters, I ran into a bit of a dead end. I could not find any decent instructions or setup examples for a system with only AC coupled inverters. The only mention in the...

Your large voltage difference between the BMS and the Smart Shunt now is because the BMS has turned off the charge current. That is allowing the BMS to have a large voltage drop across it. It is doing this to keep cell 10 from going any higher. Once it comes into range and the BMS turns Charge...

We all know electricity can kill. AC and DC do act a bit different, but once you exceed 60 milliamp in your body, thing can go very bad. AC with ground fault protection is actually quite safe now. Modern ground fault breakers can shut off a line before you even feel the shock. Without ground...

I have a pretty good guess as to what caused it to come off. The top piece appears to have the threaded hole go completely through. So I will bet, the screw turned and pushed out the bottom against the cell terminal and tore the factory laser weld. If you have cells like this, you need to be...

This is a bad idea. The BMS is a safety device incase something goes wrong. In a perfect world, the inverter and charger should keep the cells in a safe range. But this is certainly not a perfect world. Crap happens. If you end up with a cell that is running away high, a balancer may not be able...

Invite over a friend with an EV that needs to be charged?

No one on here will ever recommend connecting any equipment that could push power to a dead grid. We have had a few people ask questions about systems with manual transfer switching and that must be done properly and to code to be safe. Properly installed interlocked breakers can be made safe...

Here are a pics of the solar panel arrays Not the best shots as it was pretty windy trying to keep the drone stable. You can see me with the remote in the back yard. You can also see the shadow of the drone on the roof. The large area next to the lower array is due to keeping it out of the...

Swap the cells around, if the same cell dips, it is a bad cell, if the cell on the same BMS channel dips, it is a bad BMS.

A lot of the lead acid vs lithium is different expectations. I think it is a crime that they advertise a lead acid batteries at 100 AH and you are told to never use more than 50%. With Lithium batteries, they rate them from a full charge to a safe discharge level. You can use from a full 3.65...

I see one serious mistake in the second picture. It shows the black output wire of the 48-12 volt converter going to the load + OUCH! It looks like you had the fried black wire was also connected to the yellow wire. The two black wires are internally connected together, I have one of those...

Copper can be "Sticky" and grab the bit, especially right as it starts to pop out the far side. You need to use a good sharp bit, use some oil or even grease on the surface you are drilling, and go a bit slower. Using a hand held drill is not idea, but with care it will go through. If you can...

Over the last few weeks, I have been seeing a power draw of 500 watts that would come on for just under a minute. But it was happening every 5 minutes. The end result was soaking up about 2 KWH a day. At first I thought it might be the dishwasher but I made sure it was fully powered down and it...

Do you still have the BMS? Looking at the screen shot, I bet I know the problem. This happened to mine. Mine lost cells 3 and 4, your looks like it lost cells 13 and 14. When you see two next to each other go dead like that, it is a balance lead issue. I had the exact same error message show up...

I agree this all looks like a balance issue. The BMS is doing it's job to protect the cells by going open circuit when a cell goes over voltage. That will then allow the external terminals of the battery to go very high, but the cells inside are each at or below 3.65 volts. You have 2 separate...

Just got my SCE Bill for Feb. to Mar. The taxes and "Non Bypassable Charges" came up to about $10, but we also got a $71 CA Climate Credit. That makes my bill -$60.31 so I have a nice credit going into the warmer weather. For this billing period, I ended up net exporting 92 KWHs. That comes out...

So your nominal voltage should be about 3.2 x 16 = 51.2 volts. Do you have a power supply that can put that out at at least an amp? Then you will also need a 9 volt battery and a resistor of about 20-200 ohms, or a small light bulb. Connect the minus side of the power supply to both the large...

I am using a Ji Kong aka Heltec BMS with the 2 amp active balancing and it has been working great. Only 4 months in, so I can't so how long it will last, but so far no issues at all. The way the Heltec balancer works is that it pulls current from the highest voltage cell. Only one cell at a...

Another So Cal Edison electric bill, and another negative balance. Both of my credits did drop a little, but on the energy side, it was only -$2 off my $350 credit. My "Taxes and Fees" credit is down to just $11 left, so it will be gone in another month or 2 at the most. But I think I can finish...

My simple rule of thumb is to try and keep the system under 100 amps during normal operation. 12 volts to 1,200 watts, 24 volts to 2,400 watts, and 48 volts to 4,800 watts. Of course, you can go beyond that, but past 10 amps, the wire has to get heavier, and if the wire run has any length, you...

To start a charge cycle, you only need to do one write to the XW-pro to tell it "Bulk Mode". It will start charging no matter what the setting are for the recharge volts and at any battery voltage. SO the easiest is to just send that command when you know there is sun on the solar panels in the...

Even if the BMS can tell an inverter and/or charger to shut off with data, I would still want the backup of an actual contactor or solid state relay to be able to disconnect the battery if something is going wrong. Software can fail. Everyone has had to reboot a device at some point. IF the BMS...

At "solar noon" with the sun directly over the panels, your 1,000 watt array will likely be able to make about 800 watts depending on panel angle, weather, and panel temperature. On a 12 volt system, that would be about 56 amps to the batteries, 28 amps at 24 volts, and just 14 amps on 48 volts...