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Schalk van der Merwe avatar image
Schalk van der Merwe asked

Battery Monitor alarm on Freedom Won

Good day
I hope that maybe a staff member or advanced installer could add some more clarity on how the VRM alarms work please. I got 48 FW batteries in the field, so not my first one.

Problem:

I am having trouble with Battery Monitor (512) alarms on 2 of my sites. Every now and then the following 3 alarms appear (in Alarm Logs on VRM):

  • Battery Monitor [512] Automatic monitoring High charge current alarm: Alarm
  • Battery Monitor [512] Automatic monitoring High battery temperature alarm: Alarm
  • Battery Monitor [512] Automatic monitoring Low voltage alarm: Alarm
  • once even a Cell Imbalance was thrown in there

According to my distributor, the battery BMS sends alarms to the GX which in turn reports them to VRM.

Freedom Won insist they do not send alarms to the GX, but only values. They want me to adjust the values as to not trigger these alarms, but no-where can I find a place where I can adjust the low/high values for battery temp, volts or current.

Few notes:

  1. They do not clear by themselves, you have to manually clear them. Once manually cleared, they stay way (don't reappear strait away). So far it has been more than a month apart;
  2. If you search them in ADVANCED, you have to zoom in almost to a minute interval before you see them in in log, the last one I zoomed to 0.5s interval, and still count not see the alarm on the 'Battery Warnings And Alarm [512]' widget. I will attach one I was able to see the alarm in the alarm widget, but unless you zoom in this much, you don't see it.
  3. you never see the low/high value in temp/current/volt widget, but that could be due to the nature of average-per-minute logging, which is understandable;
  4. One GX is running 2.83 and other runs 2.85. One suggestion by FW was to 'roll back to a previous firmware', and once I finally got a answer on the last stable firmware they recommend, it was 2.85, so I am not sure if that person can help me. I gave them access to VRM, but they did not ever bother to log in, just generic responses;
  5. On previous occasion we have requested FW to log in remotely, reload battery firmware and go thru all settings;
  6. Inverters (both is MPII 5kVA) are running 490 or higher, MPPTs are also on latest firmware;
  7. One site is a UPS, newer site has a RS 450/100 MPPT and a SmartSolar 150/60;
  8. One site (UPS) has a FW5/4, other site (with MPPTs) has 2x FW10/8, both is on firmware 6.8 according to VRM Remote Console;
  9. On the one with MPPTs, it happened once at 17:56, on the UPS site it happened twice, once at 3am, once 8pm (real estate office, no-one present)
  10. not one was related to a load shedding schedule, high usage, extreme weather or any other abnormality;
  11. I am convinced it is a false alarm from battery BMS, but that is my opinion. If correct, was hoping there is a way to delay false values/alarms like this and only if they occur for longer that a set period, like a minute, to log them. If FW is correct and there is a place where I can adjust temp/current and V values, that would be the jack-pot solution.

Images:

image.png (see note 2 above)

If someone could help me understand:

  • Maybe I missed the place where one can adjust these values
  • Get clarity on whether the BMS send these alarms, or whether it is just values, that the GX/VRM interpret as alarms.

If anyone want to discuss telephonically: Schalk 07 437 7620 (also for WA) schalk@baysolar.co.za

Lithium BatteryBMSfreedom won
image.png (60.9 KiB)
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Schalk van der Merwe avatar image Schalk van der Merwe commented ·

a better response from FW (2 consultants replied, only saw this one now):

Hi Schalk van der Merwe,

Thank you for the mail and apologies for the delayed response. Please note that the freedom Won LITE batteries do not have cell imbalance alarms programmed in the CAN BUS profile, meaning it is not possible for the GX device to receive this messages. Regarding the high voltages and low voltages, please have a look when the alarms are triggered, these seem to be false alarms. We had a few customers downgrade their GX devices and the issue seems to disappear. Also, it seems the issue is not only with the freedomWon batteries. Please have a look at the following from the Victron community :


We are also looking into this and will let you know when we find a permanent fix.
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Schalk van der Merwe avatar image Schalk van der Merwe Schalk van der Merwe commented ·

Thx Mandla, Thank you for the response.

few notes:

  • the 3rd one is not related to Battery Monitor, but VE.Bus;
  • you say you don't send cell imbalance alarm, yet I see it. If someone could maybe help me understand where this alarm originates. I guess it is possible that GX/VRM generate a cell imbalance if the low and high cell V is to far apart;

I understand you are working on this, but until then, please advise the last stable version please. Respectfully, to tell me to downgrade from 2.85 to an older version does not help. I have to download a firmware, put it on a SD card, drive there and reload all settings. I could also do it remotely, but I can only select a previous one that was installed there. As luck would have it, it would prob not be the one you need.

In both cases I need to know what firmware version please.

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Schalk van der Merwe avatar image Schalk van der Merwe commented ·

new alarm on UPS site from yesterday:

screenshot-2022-06-01-070740.png

I would really appreciate what is triggering this alarm please?

  • High voltage: the 55.5V is under he 55.8V charge value, so why is it flagged as an alarm?
  • Cell imbalance: what constitute as a cell imbalance? is it an alarm sent by the BMS or is the the GX that triggers this alarm based on low/high cell values sent from BMS?
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screenshot-2022-06-01-070740.png (25.9 KiB)
Ingo avatar image Ingo Schalk van der Merwe commented ·
Just out of interest, what is the Min/Max cell voltages when this happens as I don't see that earlier question by Nick answered anywhere. It will be under the Battery Details screen on the GX.
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2 Answers
nickdb avatar image
nickdb answered ·

You might be better off asking Orion, who's BMS FW use.

The GX will monitor the limits set by the BMS (CCL, CVL etc) and will trigger alarms if exceeded.

An "imbalance" alarm doesn't exist, a bms will usually just flag an over-voltage event - in a FW this would be unusual as the BMS doesn't use a fixed CVL, it is very variable to prevent precisely this event.

You would be familiar with the behaviour of the battery as seen in the chart.

screenshot-2022-05-28-at-090544.pngedit. Have you checked that the voltage at the multi/quattro agrees with is what is at the battery - so no loss etc? Could have a duff connection somewhere contributing.



screenshot-2022-05-28-at-090544.png (95.1 KiB)
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nickdb avatar image nickdb ♦♦ commented ·
To add. A BMS will generally include a state register in its CAN broadcast, this would be a number which corresponds to typical industry events in info, warn, fault severity (or similar).

A BMS is definitely capable of triggering these types of events and should also log them internally- if you have a bms viewer.

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Schalk van der Merwe avatar image Schalk van der Merwe nickdb ♦♦ commented ·

mmm, good idea. Please see below the widgets for the UPS (no external charge/discharge). This system the battery is DIRECTLY on the inverter, no Lynx/busbar. So no-where any power could escape too.screenshot-2022-05-30-071421.png

I am completely at a loss on how to interpret this difference in V and A between the 2...

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screenshot-2022-05-30-071421.png (93.2 KiB)
Schalk van der Merwe avatar image Schalk van der Merwe commented ·

Thank you for your help so far

Cell imbalance alarm (from UPS site):

screenshot-2022-05-30-072118.png

Oher site with MPPTs:

screenshot-2022-05-30-072215.png

NOTE: all of these alarms did not go away, they had to be manually cleared.

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screenshot-2022-05-30-072118.png (63.3 KiB)
screenshot-2022-05-30-072215.png (19.1 KiB)
nickdb avatar image
nickdb answered ·

Reviewing FW's own docs, they broadcast the following:

The CAN interface can provide the following functionality to compatible devices:


  1. Charge Current Limit of all Lite’s connected
  2. Actual Battery Temperature (highest of all lites connected)
  3. Actual State of Charge (minimum of all lites connected)
  4. Discharge Current Limit of all Lite’s connected
  5. Actual Voltage
  6. Actual Current (total of all Lite’s connected)
  7. Maximum real time charge voltage setpoint
  8. Battery Name
  9. Highest Cell Voltage of all Lite’s connected
  10. Lowest Cell Voltage of all Lite’s connected.
  11. Firmware Version
  12. Ah capacity of all batteries connected
  13. Advanced communication between all connected Lites

So they don't seem to send a status/alert packet.

In which case it will be the GX interpreting the data it is receiving, so something will be reporting being outside of spec.




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Schalk van der Merwe avatar image Schalk van der Merwe commented ·
Thank you @nickdb , in that case i hope someone from Victron can assist in place where I can adjust these high/low setpoints, as that is what FW request.
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nickdb avatar image nickdb ♦♦ Schalk van der Merwe commented ·

I am not sure that they can. In all likelihood something is either correctly or incorrectly reporting conflicting measurements to the GX.

At the times you see the issues, what CVL, DCL and CCL are being sent by the BMS?

If those are all flat and default (should be outside of charging times) then the battery is happy. If any parameters are dropping then the battery is outside it's comfort zone.

You would want to check that all the voltages at the inverter etc and battery all agree with each other.

You have done enough of these to know all the parts play nicely together, if they didn't it would be more widespread. So the question is what is different.


Edit: missed your comments further up.

You would expect any voltage drops to only be under load, at low draw they should be within a couple of hundred mV of each other.

If they are close above 60A or more then cabling is fine.


Under the BMS tab in the GX is an alarms and history tab. Are there any configured alarms in the "alarm tab"?

What does the min/max cell voltage widget show at this time?


Have you been able to get FW to connect remotely to check BMS log events?

If I compare to a pylon, you will see it is checking/sending fault conditions:

screenshot-2022-05-30-at-090632.png


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nickdb avatar image nickdb ♦♦ Schalk van der Merwe commented ·
Apologies if you have done this already.

If you can connect the supplied USB to your notebook and use their BMS viewer, it will show any internal events logged. It will at least give you a good view of battery internals.

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