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pracman avatar image
pracman asked

Stop low battery alarm- batteries in Stand By Power mode

I have 2 Multiplus 2 in parallel and 2 ZBM flow batteries from Red Flow. A new mode for the batteries 'Stand By Power' or SPS mode works with batteries hibernating at 100% SOC. No charging is needed. The Colour controller sees the SBS mode as 0%SOC and reports Low Battery alarm.


Looking at alarm rules has "Automatic alarm monitoring- Monitors a predefined list of parameters on all connected products."

How can I remove the 'low battery alarm' while retaining other required alarms I would appreciated? The only other listed alarm is "No data alarm"

SBS mode return the 100% batteries to me in a few seconds. Testing to date shows much better than the 60-90seconds during simulated grid failures. See "Standby Power Supply mode" on this page. The reduced cycling of the batteries meets my UPS objective much better.

Thanks in advance


BMV Battery Monitor
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2 Answers
Simon Hackett avatar image
Simon Hackett answered ·

Hi there. Yes, SPS (not SBS) mode is a new operating mode for the batteries - and we're all learning the ropes in terms of implications for associated energy systems.

In terms of the 'Low Battery Alarm', there are a few aspects of the answer to your question - with apologies for this reply being fairly long as a result.

By default the BMS only sends the SoC value for batteries in the normal 'run' mode, and that calculation doesn't include batteries in SPS mode.

You can include SPS-mode batteries in the SoC calculation with a setting change on the BMS:

Go to the 'Configuration->CANBus' page on the BMS and change the drop-down setting called "State of Charge" to be "State of Charge (SPS)" instead of the default "State of charge(all)" ( see screen shot below).

This will result in the SoC sent by the BMS, and reported by the GX, now including the SPS batteries. So the SoC will show up as 'more than 0%' - and (in your site) will then be 'what you expect'.

Ok, while that's good - unfortunately it will not actually remove the Low Battery Alarm being reported to VRM by the GX system.

That's because the Low Battery Alarm report is not based on SoC. Instead, it is generated based on DC bus voltage being low. As well as when SPS is enabled, this issue (undesired Low Battery alarms) also occurs on a single-battery Redflow site when that battery is performing its periodic maintenance cycle.

Now lets look at that Low Battery alarm in a bit more detail. It turns out that it is evaluated and reported independently in two distinct places in an overall Victron Energy system.

The first place it is evaluated and reported is on the screen of the GX directly. The GX will pop up a Low Battery alarm when the DC voltage falls away. This on-screen GX alarm can be disabled, (and with Redflow batteries, it should be).

The instructions to disable this on-screen GX low battery alarm are included in the standard Redflow integration advice here:

https://redflow.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025202052-Installation-guide-to-connecting-a-Redflow-battery-array-to-a-Victron-Energy-system

The second place a Low Battery alarm shows up - as you have noted - is in VRM, where it is bundled up with a lot of other alarms you will want to know about.

Unfortunately the Low Battery alarm reported by VRM is not suppressed when the on-the-GX alarm is turned off... and in general there is no apparent way (that I have found!) to disable the VRM's version of the Low Battery alarm.

.

Perhaps someone from Victron could comment on whether they might be able to change the VRM portal code so that if the Low Battery Alarm is disabled on the GX, then that alarm is not reported on the VRM portal.

That would seem to be a logical and reasonable way to operate here... i.e. as a general statement about alarms ... if a given alarm is disabled directly on the GX, I would think it would be both logical and useful for that alarm type to not be reported up to the VRM portal.


In this regard (alarm reporting) - I feel that consistency would seem to be a good thing in general -i.e. I think it'd be great if the VRM portal only reported alarms that are enabled on the GX itself, and didn't report alarms that have been directly disabled on the GX.


Regards,

Simon Hackett

(for Redflow)



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Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) avatar image Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented ·

Hi @Redflow ZCell Service

You can disable the VRM alarms easily:


There's a very good reason you can configure alarms in VRM differently than on the GX device itself, you might not want a loud beeping GX device, but do want to log the alarms or get an email as installer so you can keep an eye on customers systems.


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Simon Hackett avatar image Simon Hackett Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented ·

Hello Daniel,

The problem is that you do not have, in VRM, the same granular control (per-alarm on/off selection) that exists on the GX itself.

There is no way (that I have found!) to disable a particular alarm (or alarms) and to allow all others - it is 'all' or 'nothing' on the VRM portal.

What we would find very helpful is to be able to selectively disable alarms on the VRM portal, like the GX already allows (but it allows it only for the local GX alarm display).

In particular, for Redflow installations, it would be really helpful to be able to suppress "Low Battery" alarms from VRM while still forwarding other alarms through to the designated email address.

Kind Regards,

Simon

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Tim Serong avatar image Tim Serong Simon Hackett commented ·

Seconded. I've got a new Redflow installation as of last week, and the alarm logs in VRM currently show 1000+ "Low battery" lines that I will never care about, and somewhere in the middle are seven lines that I do care about (one "Grid lost" and a handful of "Battery voltage too high"s). This is remarkably annoying to sift through :-)

Regards,

Tim


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pracman avatar image
pracman answered ·

Changes made with thanks. I do like SBS TV and SPS mode in my Zcells. Edited my error.

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