Charging Issue

[ollie2024]

Morning all,

I have a Solis S5 hybrid inverter and 2 x 5kw pure drive batteries installed. I noticed this morning that I was exporting quite a lot back to the grid which was odd as I knew the batteries didn't charge overnight as it was forecast to be sunny today. However it seems to be limiting the battery charge to around 1kw. Is there any reason for this? Even when I tried to charge from the grid it wouldn't go much above 1kw.

 

[SeaGal]

Morning all,

I have a Solis S5 hybrid inverter and 2 x 5kw pure drive batteries installed. I noticed this morning that I was exporting quite a lot back to the grid which was odd as I knew the batteries didn't charge overnight as it was forecast to be sunny today. However it seems to be limiting the battery charge to around 1kw. Is there any reason for this? Even when I tried to charge from the grid it wouldn't go much above 1kw.

Yep. I'm guessing that your batteries are too cold and the puredrive BMS is, correctly, limiting charge power. Not sure of the characteristics of PureDrive, but many BMS's will limit charge current below 10C, FoxESS limit it below 15C.

It was pretty cold on Sat morning here in East Anglia I was working on my solar system in an unheated garage! The solution is to add heaters if you can't heat their environment - my batteries stayed at 21C, unlike me

 

[rpdom]

What @SeaGal said. I got caught out last winter when my loft temperature dropped close to freezing and my Pylontechs would only charge slowly when the sun came out. This year I've wrapped them in some insulation (which I'll remove for the summer) and make sure I give them at least a bit of a charge overnight to warm them up a bit.

It doesn't matter if I charge more than I need as my overnight rate is quite a bit lower that my export rate, so any extra PV just gets exported during the day and covers the cost of the import.

 

[ollie2024]

Thanks for the replies.

Apologies for not replying sooner. You were correct, it reached -3 here in Norfolk so was quite cold. I managed to enclose the batteries within a storage container from B&Q and then insulated it on the inside with Celotex. This seems to have done the trick nicely.

 

[SeaGal]

Thanks for the feedback - always good to hear back.