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EG4 Lifepower4 48V Top Balancing Firmware.

I upgraded my 4 packs I bought last year along with the two new I just purchased. The four older lifepower4 set showed a cell and pack over voltage until I discharged a bit.

Is there any concern with this since I was running older firmware? It seems the previous firmware was allowing cell/pack voltage to be too high.
 
jarred125 said:
I upgraded my 4 packs I bought last year along with the two new I just purchased. The four older lifepower4 set showed a cell and pack over voltage until I discharged a bit.

Is there any concern with this since I was running older firmware? It seems the previous firmware was allowing cell/pack voltage to be too high.
Click to expand...
Brobably nothing to worry about. The BMS will detect the overvoltage and turn off charge before the cells are damaged.
 
FilterGuy said:
Brobably nothing to worry about. The BMS will detect the overvoltage and turn off charge before the cells are damaged.
Click to expand...
That’s the issue, until the firmware update yesterday there was no OV condition. After the firmware update is when all four packs three pack and cell OV protection. So it was running in this state for almost a year now, the new firmware just brings the condition to light.

Edit: checked again today. All six batteries are at the same firmware, communications hub is as well, all batteries reporting cell and pack OV protection on the hub. Would be great to know if this is normal behavior now.
 
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Well this isn’t great. Since the firmware update to the communications hub and batteries my inverter is now behaving oddly by limiting production randomly and not exporting to the grid. Disconnecting the hub and disabling BMS on the inverter returns it to normal. My inverter is a Solark 15k. Solark support very quickly let me know that EG4 isn’t a supported brand, which I knew, but something feels badly off now.
 
jarred125 said:
Well this isn’t great. Since the firmware update to the communications hub and batteries my inverter is now behaving oddly by limiting production randomly and not exporting to the grid. Disconnecting the hub and disabling BMS on the inverter returns it to normal. My inverter is a Solark 15k. Solark support very quickly let me know that EG4 isn’t a supported brand, which I knew, but something feels badly off now.
Click to expand...
What are you charging to? Maybe try absorb of 57V and float of 54V so you aren't as likely to trigger BMS over voltage. Seems like running without comms is the most stable option but then what did you spend hundreds/thousands of dollars more for versus a non comm battery choice.
 
Brucey said:
What are you charging to? Maybe try absorb of 57V and float of 54V so you aren't as likely to trigger BMS over voltage. Seems like running without comms is the most stable option but then what did you spend hundreds/thousands of dollars more for versus a non comm battery choice.
Click to expand...

This is nuts. After updating the firmware on the hub all of the settings are reset to the defaults… including the inverter communication option! It was reset to EG4 as the inverter, not a single line in the instructions indicates this is what will happen. I should have checked it, I know better, I have worked in tech for 26 years and you always double check but I didn’t this time.

It seems the hub is somewhat useless right now, if the batteries charge completely (all defaults on the communications hub) it causes the inverter to act almost as if I’m in no grid sell and limited production to load.

I knew I shouldn’t have updated this firmware…..

I was letting the batteries charge to 100%. No settings had been changed, just the firmware updates done. Before the batteries would top out at 99% SoC according to the hub and inverter, now they will actually report 100%. I have the Solark limiting batteries to 98% now and PV production is running as normal.

Edit2: also seems the default charge voltage is insane, 57.6 and recommended is 56.2. I am unsure what battery bank this hub is made for. I thought it was specific to the lifepower4 48v, because the charge voltage would be insane for the 12 and 24V. So where in the world does 57.6V come from??

Edit3: I have adjusted the charge voltage to 56.2V per the spec sheet and it still sends the pack/cells into OV protection mode.
 
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Came back out this morning to find the communications hub had set the charge voltage to 57V, even though I had set it to 56.2V yesterday. I had three contacts with Signature Solar support today, honestly, I feel as though this firmware for the hub is less than half baked but nobody really can inform me of what should be happening.

I dropped all batteries to around 90% SoC today and then did a "trickle" charge on each back up to full at 10A. Turned the breaker on for each of the batteries and that sent the two new batteries into OV protection mode.
 
jarred125 said:
Came back out this morning to find the communications hub had set the charge voltage to 57V, even though I had set it to 56.2V yesterday. I had three contacts with Signature Solar support today, honestly, I feel as though this firmware for the hub is less than half baked but nobody really can inform me of what should be happening.

I dropped all batteries to around 90% SoC today and then did a "trickle" charge on each back up to full at 10A. Turned the breaker on for each of the batteries and that sent the two new batteries into OV protection mode.
Click to expand...
@EG4_Jared check out the last few posts.
 
Instead of battling this why not set the Sol Ark to Voltage where mine atleast behaves very nice without issues?
BMS comms are just a way to set all voltage levels automatically instead of manually.
There are really NO other differences.
 
LydMekk said:
Instead of battling this why not set the Sol Ark to Voltage where mine atleast behaves very nice without issues?
BMS comms are just a way to set all voltage levels automatically instead of manually.
There are really NO other differences.
Click to expand...
The issue for me is finding that spot. The battery spec says 56.2V, right now that might actually cause it to behave, however the two newest batteries are still going into OV protection but that might be due to them being new and needing a few cycles (so I read elsewhere).

The biggest concern with this firmware is having bad behaviors I have not had running the previous firmware for the hub. The Solark limiting PV production when the batteries went "full" should not happen. Anyways, I now have monitoring enabled for each of the batteries using the Wombat project from a member on here (https://github.com/gonzalop/wombatt/tree/main). So I can better track what these batteries are doing without having to resort to BMS Test.
 
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jarred125 said:
This is nuts. After updating the firmware on the hub all of the settings are reset to the defaults… including the inverter communication option! It was reset to EG4 as the inverter, not a single line in the instructions indicates this is what will happen. I should have checked it, I know better, I have worked in tech for 26 years and you always double check but I didn’t this time.

It seems the hub is somewhat useless right now, if the batteries charge completely (all defaults on the communications hub) it causes the inverter to act almost as if I’m in no grid sell and limited production to load.

I knew I shouldn’t have updated this firmware…..

I was letting the batteries charge to 100%. No settings had been changed, just the firmware updates done. Before the batteries would top out at 99% SoC according to the hub and inverter, now they will actually report 100%. I have the Solark limiting batteries to 98% now and PV production is running as normal.

Edit2: also seems the default charge voltage is insane, 57.6 and recommended is 56.2. I am unsure what battery bank this hub is made for. I thought it was specific to the lifepower4 48v, because the charge voltage would be insane for the 12 and 24V. So where in the world does 57.6V come from??

Edit3: I have adjusted the charge voltage to 56.2V per the spec sheet and it still sends the pack/cells into OV protection mode.
Click to expand...
Newer firmware for EG4 LifePower4 batteries has moved the requested charge voltage to 57.6V. And they charge up to Cell OV is tripped (internally) which resets the BMS to 100%. Those have been the settings for the last several firmware versions.

Can I ask which firmware you are using on the EG4 Lifepower4 Communication Hub? And on the batteries?

Has anything gotten better since you changed the Inverter Setting on the EG4 CommHub back to SolArk?
 
LydMekk said:
Instead of battling this why not set the Sol Ark to Voltage where mine atleast behaves very nice without issues?
BMS comms are just a way to set all voltage levels automatically instead of manually.
There are really NO other differences.
Click to expand...
This isn't true. There are several various safety features which can not be activated without closed loop.
 
LydMekk said:
That is not correct. The same protection a BMS offers are not only available when doing BMS comms.
Click to expand...
I can see how a comms enabled battery could potentially send a signal to the inverter to shutdown if it senses a critical problem. That's how they do it in Mega packs etc. But I don't believe that's being done with our residential level 5/15kWh packs etc.
 
shortman said:
Newer firmware for EG4 LifePower4 batteries has moved the requested charge voltage to 57.6V. And they charge up to Cell OV is tripped (internally) which resets the BMS to 100%. Those have been the settings for the last several firmware versions.

Can I ask which firmware you are using on the EG4 Lifepower4 Communication Hub? And on the batteries?

Has anything gotten better since you changed the Inverter Setting on the EG4 CommHub back to SolArk?
Click to expand...
I’m running the latest versions published on the EG4 site for the hub and batteries as of this Saturday.

The setting back to Solark has not changed the issue where the Solark PV production limits are hen the batteries reach full, the only way I achieved that was backing the charge voltage down to 56.2.

EG4 needs to update their documentation because the manual for the hub still states you should set it to the specs for your battery.
 
LydMekk said:
That is not correct. The same protection a BMS offers are not only available when doing BMS comms.
Click to expand...
Just like @Brucey stated. I also was assuming the same logic as your statement above until I ran into a case where the transistors failed closed. The BMS could no longer stop the current and the only thing that saved things from becoming more damaged was the inverter sensed the failure condition of the BMS and stopped all current flow due to closed loop communications. I'm a firm believer in that mode of operation now.
 
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jarred125 said:
I’m running the latest versions published on the EG4 site for the hub and batteries as of this Saturday.

The setting back to Solark has not changed the issue where the Solark PV production limits are hen the batteries reach full, the only way I achieved that was backing the charge voltage down to 56.2.

EG4 needs to update their documentation because the manual for the hub still states you should set it to the specs for your battery.
Click to expand...

I just wanted to confirm if this issue was still happening since I am a little late to the thread. If so, could post a few pictures of the battery bank, settings in the ComHub and connections to the Sol-Ark? Also, I will put in a request to have the Communication Hub manual updated.
 
EG4_Jared said:
I just wanted to confirm if this issue was still happening since I am a little late to the thread. If so, could post a few pictures of the battery bank, settings in the ComHub and connections to the Sol-Ark? Also, I will put in a request to have the Communication Hub manual updated.
Click to expand...
I can't get photos anytime today, but I can describe how everything is connected.

Each battery ties to the bus bar sold by Signature Solar (https://shorturl.at/amzG8)

They are connected each with 24" 6AWG conductors. The positive and negative conductors leading to the inverter are at opposite ends of the bus bars, this connection is made with 4/0 copper welding cable meant for 600A. They connect to the Solark battery terminals via this bus bar (https://www.solar-electric.com/homegrid-hg-sol-ark-15k-busbar-pair.html).

Leaving the communications hub at the default settings caused major issues with the Solark even after setting the CAN communication back to Solark after the firmware reset it to EG4. This was described by another forum member here where PV production gets limited once the batteries are "full", I am taking a much more cautious approach and hope that PV production isn't limited by lowering the charge voltage on the hub to 56.2V.
 
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