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svsonder avatar image
svsonder asked

Frequent low battery alarm when battery even full

We have Quattro 12/5000/120-2x100120V VE Bus System and four Relion 300amps batteries. All work was done by Just Catamaran. We noticed the low battery warnings on VRM site with the preset warnings. I know for sure the batteries are not low since we have been at the dock lately and plugged in. This happened before as well but here are some recent pictures. It seems that this happens when the load is high, for example, when we have AC and hot water heater. But it is usually under 3K watts. Our inverter is 5k, so I do not believe it is over our capacity. The pictures below had only AC (12BTU and we have soft starter) on since we turned off the hot water to test. We also checked all the wires per our dealer suggestion and do not see any loose wire. What could be the reason? And any suggestions on how to solve this? Any other charts should I look at to further identify issues? Will it hurt the system?


low battery warning
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2 Answers
solarhack avatar image
solarhack answered ·

Hi

I had a similar problem. I found this occurred when a spike in power consumption (Usually not visible on the VRM) temporarily pulled the voltage below the low voltage level. If the system was under reasonable load I would also get the DC ripple error. I realized that my battery was undersized for those peak loads. I added a second battery and it fixed the problem. In general there are a few things that can cause low voltage and DC ripple errors to occur together. These could include:

  • Undersized battery (Too low continuous or peak discharge rate)
  • Faulty battery
  • Poor connections
  • Undersized wiring / wiring length / too many fuses



Regards

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svsonder avatar image
svsonder answered ·

Thanks. We checked all the connections and they are good. We have 1200amps of batteries and 5K inverter, so don't think it is that. Our installer said they used the thickest cable sold, so no more upsize. The only thing might have left is faulty battery, how do we check that?

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solarhack avatar image solarhack commented ·

Hi

A few points:

  • The 1200Amps is not the peak load, its the Amp Hours. The peak sustained load is probably around 400A with peak of 800 for 10 seconds or something like that. However in your scenario it should still be OK. DC continuous peak power draw will be around 4800W. The AC peak draw will be limited to around 4KVA. The potential is your load exceeds this for more than 10 seconds
  • Testing a faulty Li battery should be done by your supplier and isn't that simple and you need the right tools. Have you checked the battery health and cell readings in the Victron console?

Sorry I can't be more help than that

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svsonder avatar image svsonder solarhack commented ·

Thanks! Everything on the console looks good. My dealer also checked everything and cant find anything. The alarms on the control all show okay. Only on the VRM shows these short low battery warnings. They can’t figure out why since we are not on site and they can only look at remotely.

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svsonder avatar image svsonder solarhack commented ·

One more question. I just checked the Peak load spec for ReLion battery and it is 200Amp. Is it per battery or is it all combined? We definitely exceeded 200 amps for a few seconds when we use two things at the same time. If it is all battery combined need to be below 200amps, then the alarm is correct. If it is per battery, does it mean I have maximum 800amps peak load?

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