Hello everyone,
yesterday we were trying to power up our Victron system for the first time (Victron device switches still in 0 position). It consits of 3 Multiplus II 48/8000, a MPPT RS 450/200, a MPPT 150/35, a Cerbo GX and 8 Pytes E-Boxes connected in parallalel in groups of 2.
So as the title suggests, as we later found out after things went really bad, we had a reverse polarity on the RS 450 (3 people controlled it several times, including a professional electrician…. I have no idea how this could have been overseen 
)
In detail, after switching on the batteries and pressing the switchbutton, they did their startup cycle. One battery after another tried to switch their relays on, going into alarm state. After a few batteries tried to switch the relay, the result of that situation were arcs in the batteries and one of them starting to smoke.
After inspecting the circuit boards later, we found out, that the arcs were coming from the Mosfets. One circuit board completly burned down from there. I haven’t inspected all of the 7 other batteries yet, but one has a cracked Mosfet and some visible black traces of the arc and 2 more just have very little colorchanges on single SMD parts.
So I am trying to figure out what devices and parts are damaged after that incident and what needs to be replaced. For sure at least the boards in the Pytes where the Mosfets are sitting are garbage. So those have to be replaced for sure. But the main two question regarding the batteries are:
- Do the BMS boards have to be replaced as well? Maybe they have some sort of “hidden” damages which can’t be recognized easily?
- Could the cells itself have taken damage aswell? There are no visible damages anywhere near the cellblocks, not even on the one that started burning inside. I want to be 100% sure if they are ok before using them inside of the house of course.
Furthermore I need to find out if any of the Victron devices has taken damage aswell, especially the RS450 which was the cause of the problem with it’s reverse polarity. How can i best find out? During the situation, there where no visible or audible effects coming from any Victron device and there is no optical damage inside.
I am very well aware that this is actually an unforgiving mistake. I don’t even care about the money, I am mostly disappointed of myself, as I spent months planning and implementing the system and I am absolutely no beginner in electronics. I did the whole electrical installation of the house with KNX and so on and had an professional electrician on site, inspecting everything before powering it up.
And in the end, if fails with such a mistake…. Not even one due to missing knowledge or something like that but plain stupidity.
I am also very well aware that it still was luck, that this just ended with some smoke and damaged parts. This is why I take the situation very seriously and want to make sure, everything is working 100% before even touching any battery again.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Kind regards,
Christian
) and the RS450 was still switched off. It really was just the first power up for programming the MP II and having access to the Cerbo. Furthermore, i planned to recharge the batteries via AC IN a bit, so that they wouldn’t sit around uncharged for too long. But obviously I didn’t even get to that point.
My first thought was a short circuit in a battery but then i found the wrong polarity… My reseller (Panda-Solar) told me, that they didn’t have any short circuits whatsoever in thousands of sold Pytes batteries…
