There's a new distributor of LFP batteries in Europe for a couple of months now, under the V-TAC brand. V-TAC was founded some 20 years ago at UAE and has a very strong presence in Europe, particularly eastern Europe and the UK. They've been hard into the LED and lighting business. They've recently started offering LFP batteries for solar projects, along with other energy bundles of dubious quality. I am interested in their 10kWh model (model name: AT48-200H or VT-12040), since I can source them locally for under €250/kWh and they come with a full 5-year warranty.
According to the local distributor, the battery is made by Vestwoods, who are a quite well-known producer of batteries, however I haven't seen any in that form factor from them.
I am trying to figure out the model of their BMS and whether there is any chance of it getting along with an ESS GX setup, either officially or through Louis' excellent serial tool. Here's a photo of the BMS they are using, in case it rings any bells (searching for "CPES-BMS16S" online wouldn't produce any results):
They have published lots of documentation on their website for all models, and there's also a compatibility chart that displays Victron among the compatible brands; it doesn't mention to what extent, though.
I would appreciate any additional information or insights.
Here's the manual, including communication ports pinout
Update [Feb, 2024]:
I have been working with this battery on a zero-feed system for almost a year. There have been a few firmware updates for the battery o far, now running on most recent version (v.1.048.088). I still haven't been able to identify the BMS manufacturer.
Battery seems nicely built, I particularly like the easy access to the cells, which is essential for a yearly manual top balance, since the BMS hasn't been doing a super great job so far (will have to see with the latest firmware version).
GX connectivity was definitely not trivial, since the directions on the manual were wrong, both for cabling as well as for settings. Please see discussion in this thread for more info. Finally managed to make it work.
BMS transfers CVL, CCL and DCL values to the GX device, which do work as intended. I'm actually quite pleased with the charging profile the BMS dictates to the System. Have a look at the following graph:
An obvious issue is that the BMS over-reports all currents by about 10%, which is clear at the graph, and has been double-checked using a clamp meter. This results in SoC deviation, which really messes things up. I have only cycled the battery once since installing the latest BMS firmware, maybe it eventually gets hold of the correct values, although I wouldn't bet on it. I should probably get in touch with the manufacturer and ask for a way to calibrate the current readings. If anyone has a way to fiddle with the BMS settings through some software, please chime in below.
Otherwise, GX communications seems to be solid, reversed current flow reported by other users seems to have been corrected, and my battery charges all the way to 100%, although this could be a result of my manual top balancing a few weeks ago.
Another thing that's missing from the communication is the min/max cell voltage readings, which are nowhere to be found through the Remote Console.
