i have a EasySolar 2 connected to a Fogstar 15.5kWh LiFePO4 battery, the problem i’m having is the alarm on the battery keeps going off when this happens there is a hub-1 error shown on the victron unit. Fogstar say the alarm on the battery goes off because of the hub-1 error, i think the hub-1 error happens when the alarm on the battery goes off and the battery BMS disconnects the battery. Who is right? The communication cable is new there are no connection errors recorded in the victron logs and the battery is communicating with the victron as it should and is controlling the values in the victron. DVCC is on on the victron and it shows that the battery is setting the values and seems to work fine apart from the alarm on the battery going off randomly, it can go off in the night or day when power is coming in or being used it can also go off when there is no power going in or out, There is no consistency to the alarm on the battery going off
Any help would be gratefully received
What versions are you running on the internal GX and inverter?
Victron can’t make an alarm trigger on the battery, that can only happen if the BMS has an issue, something that can be caused by poor settings, but if the battery is connected it is managing the charger, that shouldn’t happen.
You would need to dig into the BMS logs if you have access to it.
I don’t know the versions of GX the easysolar2 is using and i can’t access the victron at the moment as the battery is back with fogstar who are saying the alarm on the battery is caused by the victron
They would need to provide a more detailed justification.
As an unsupported battery they really need to provide the support for it.
Typically the system will log more informative errors, especially if it is up to date.
If the battery is in control via DVCC then the inverter/charger is following the BMS instructions, so the only cause can be battery firmware/settings or an installation fault.
There isn’t enough to go on here though, it will need a lot more detail.
I would push back to their support people, it’s too easy to blame someone else when not providing any form of justification, analysis of the BMS fault from the battery or pointers where to start.
Here are my rough notes when trying to work out what the problem is and how to fix it. There maybe errors and some incorrect assumptions in this if so please let me know
problem: the alarm on the battery keeps going off and switching off the battery, there is no consistancy to when it goes off
Is the fault in the battery?
Is the fault in the victron?
can the victron cause an alarm on the battery?
can a fault in the communications(comms) cause a fault in the battery?
the victron controls the charge going into the battery via the comms so if the comms fail then the victron could use default settings probabley those for lead acid batteries. Then the victron could feed over 60 volts to the battery if doing an equlization charge this would trigger an over voltage alarm in the battery BMS
This could have happend when the comms connection failed and wasn’t connect for a few days. The alarm did go off. The comms issue was fixed and has been working flawlessley for months.
Faults were still happning with the battery alarm going off, but it would sometimes go off at night when there was no power going in so no posibility of over voltage so even if the comms failed there was no chance of an over voltage alarm being triggered by the BMS
the reason for considering a comms issue, or the victron causing the alarm is that’s Fogstars conclusion.
The victron can’t make an alarm trigger on the battery
The alarm has come on imediatly when the battery is turned on and the victron is off
The system has worked for days without any problems, used a lot and had a lot of power going in and out. Then at some random point the alarm has gone off
on alarm it has been noticed that hub-1 error appears on the victron, this error means there is a comms issue.
This error is assumed to be the battery BMS turning off the battery, like when you turn off a computer it is no longer connected to the network.
Does the hub-1 errer cause the alarm on the battery to go off?
No because this is an error caused by the battery going off, the victron cant control the battery alarm directly.
What normally causes a battery alarm to go off?
over voltage, under voltage, to hot, to cold, the BMS is designed to montitor the cells of the battery and turn off the battery if any values pass limits, thus protecting the battery cells.
It is assumbed that if the alarm goes off it has something to do with the battery
could a faulty cell in the battery cause an alarm, yes
can a fault appear intermitantly in a cell and then work fine for days? yes
could the battery be getting to hot or to cold? no the battery has a heater and is in the middle of a building so moderate temperature all year round.
In the logs there is sometimes a very low voltage reading min voltage below 5v, is this caused by the battery voltage being being low or dropping suddenly for a short time on the same day max:56.05 min:4.42
could this drop in voltage be the last recorded voltage recorded when the battery shut off, so not a true representation of the battery coz its like the last little dribble of power before everything shuts down? maybe
It remains to be seen if it is a fault, it may be unexpected behaviour due to its programming.
Only the BMS knows and every battery manufacturer has tools to read logs from the BMS.
It should be obvious to your supplier exactly what the alarm is which would provide an opportunity to troubleshoot.
Unlikely, the inverter will log events and alarms, it has safety mechanisms that would kick in if a fault developed. The charger just follows the BMS charge instructions. This doesn’t rule out an installation issue such as bad wiring or connections which would be transparent to the hardware.
It can’t directly trigger an alarm, it could however try pull more power from the battery than it is capable of giving or overcharge it, the latter typically more installation-related than directly victron.
No, it can cause a fault in the Victron system. The whole system will power off with a BMS lost error if the battery is disconnected for too long.
It first goes into passthrough and ceases to charge while comms are lost. It is a failsafe.
This can’t cause a battery failure, the battery failure would cause this.
The system does not default to internal settings. You would first have to power everything off for that to happen. The system does not seamlessly move from managed to unmanaged states.
Equalisation is not enabled for a lithium charge profile.
You should start by updating the GX and inverter. Double check all settings, including those in the mppt’s. We would usually refer you to a config document for the battery, but as this is not a supported battery, the supplier should give you a complete how-to guide for setup so it is done right.
Have a look at what the certified batteries provide for an example of the detail they need to give you:
When i first installed the system i had help from Fogstar setting the settings in the Victron. At the time i made notes. After installation the system worked fine for about a couple of years. The customer then got another engineer in to try and get the battery to charge from a generator, they made changes to the settings. This is when the problem first started. They asked me to sort it out, which i did
When i got to the system a few weeks later i found the Victron was set to lead acid and the comms was not working because the baud rate was wrong. I reset the comms which then showed up on the Victron and the Victron also showed that it was being controlled by the battery. At the time i thought it was all working ok but then a few days later we had another alarm. I double checked, trippel checked all the settings and found no problems. I also contacted Fogstar technical support and did everything they surgested.
The problem persisted with random alarms going as described above. There is no problem with the comms or the wiring which i’ve checked multiple times and can’t find any fault there, cables are undamaged, thick enough to take the power all connections are clean and solid, all cables were new at time of installation.
The only strange things noticed on the Victron is the hub-1 error when the battery goes off and the low voltage readings in some of the daily logs.
My conclusion is there is a fault in the battery and i think its a problem with one of the cells in the battery that is weak and sometimes fails. I’ve had this sort of problem with lead acid batteries where one of the cells has failed. I asked Fogstar if they had checked the individual cells but not received a reply yet
Based on the comments above that is a fair conclusion. Can you chart the BMS min/max cell voltages from VRM?
Hub-1 seems to be a dated state, hence the suggestion to update software, firmware and assistants.
I can’t access the battery cell voltages on the Victron only the min and max values of the whole battery. There is the option to see the cell voltages on the battery but nothing there looked low when i last looked they were all about the same. The battery is with Fogstar at the moment so i can’t check it at the moment