Easy Solar 2 was working fine with 2 2000c pylontech. Added 3rd and now discharges to 60% then all led on the 3 batteries disappear and error 1&2 appears. in morning when daylight appears all comes back to life but at 60% charge
asked
Problem added 3rd pylontech
There is a process to follow when adding another battery as it most likely is not properly charged nor balanced and will throw the rest of the pack off. The majority of your issues so far has been down to not following best practices.
You should have properly charged the new battery before adding it.
The new battery should be master, and it is a good idea to keep the pack on "keep batteries charged" mode until they are properly balanced.
It may even require lowering the charge voltage a bit to help this depending on the state.
The bigger the imbalance, the greater the problem.
Thank you for reply I will give it a try. Could you tell me where this instruction is in the manual? As I hunted for the best practice and didn’t find this tip?
It's more something you pick up in the training and through experience, though if you search on the community you will find references from people that have had challenges after upgrading. If it's not something you do regularly you are going to trip up and learn the hard way :)
Sometimes you're lucky and you get one in a good state and it just works. Other times not.
The guidance on the victron/pylon docs for a new install and keep batteries charged does very much apply to adding packs because it is about getting everything balanced.
Follow the power on process as per normal in the batteries operational manual and follow this clause:
During capacity expansion or replacement, when parallel different SOC/voltage of module together, please maintain the system in idle for ≥15mins or till the SOC LEDs becomes similar (≤1dot difference) before normal operation.
One of the reasons to use a new battery as master is that it may have newer firmware and you want the latest to be in control.
Update followed your instructions but still have problems errors 1&2 came back up and it seems that once again when batteries discharge down to 60% they shut down as only a single blinking led occasionally showing. It also seems that we lose vrm. I did think this was due to lan cable being connected in its defying gravity upside down position and that it was falling out but after following an internet tip of modifying a small cable tie I am confident the lan cable is firmly held. (Lights are showing on cable led) Also yesterday batteries charged up to 100% as it was a sunny day. But system only drew 1.2 kw from solar and took an additional 5.6 kw from the grid. I am interested in your thoughts on causes of these errors. I emphasise I have followed your instructions to the letter. Including making new battery the master. But same problems Persist.
With status 1&2 that will be hitting battery life limits, this can happen with a new battery as the system may not fully charge and so it raises the limits. It will also be affected by PV (or the lack of) at the same time.
This is something you can chart with VRM using a custom widget and selecting gateway -> ESS batterylife SOC limit.
Hitting limits prematurely will increase your grid usage.
It is worth confirming via the GX console, in the pylontech tab, under details (it should be sending this info) that you see the correct number of modules reported online with the AH you are expecting to see.
If the batteries are having issues you would see in the "number of modules blocking charge / discharge" that 1 or more would be preventing discharge.
There may also be entries in the VE bus state chart.
It may be easier to see what is being reported, if you share your site via VRM and post the link here, in the main VRM menu there is a share option.
Just make sure you have added charts like battery voltage/current, PV yield etc so there is a good overview.
