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dayandnight avatar image
dayandnight asked

Pylontech warning low temp after internal faliure

Hello,

I got this now three times during the past four weeks. Suddenly there is a Notification / alarm when the Pylontech batteries are almost full.



It starts with a "simple" Internal failure at 12:03 and after some time it is followed by a low temperature warning, today with 23.7°C ;-) followed by a second internal failure alarm at the same time.

Any ideas? Can I try to find it out what happened and what caused it.

In VRM it shows some more information

Battery Monitor [512] Automatic monitoring Internal error alarm: Alarm 2020-06-18 12:18:19 3m, 46s




I think it might be a sort of communication problem. The pylontech batteries doesn't show any Alarm LED or any other sign of problem. I am still running a release candidate firmware 2.60~23 and there is a some how newer version with 2.60~25 available, but in understanding never change a winning team, if not neccessary, I hope I get some advises here.

I looked at the monitoring during this time



Here some more detailed screenshot from VRM for battery information for 12:03


and for 12:18 when the second alarm notification occurred.

But I couldn't see anything really spectacular. Perhaps it might be interesting that the Pylons BMS changed exactly at the first point of time the CCL down from 80A to 20A.

Any ideas, what I can do to follow the alarms and to find out what did it cause?

Any help is welcome.

DayAndNight

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9 Answers
dayandnight avatar image
dayandnight answered ·

Hello

Problem still exists. Today I got again some alarms in my system: "Pylontech battery Alarm Internal Failure" in combination with a "low temperature" warning. The batteries themselves doesn't show any red LED or any visible alarm signal.

Since the last time when I have seen this message I upgraded to the actual release candidate Firmware 2.60~25 - I hoped this will perhaps solve it. Obviously not. But we had in the past days very bad weather and so today it was the first time the batteries were charged to 100%. It looks to me that it happens when the batteries reach the first time 100% SOC.

Perhaps the following information if helpfully. When I look at the temperature of the batteries it shows at the time of the alert a drop from 23°C to 21°C. Nevertheless 21°C is not bad.


Does anybody have an idea what does this Alarm mean in detail? "Internal", ? Does it direct to an internal error of Victron system or "Internal", does it direct to an internal error of the pylontech battery?

A specific unit? But how to find out which battery unit does cause this. The message itself is somehow "small" of information to me.

In the Alarmlog as device is mentioned the battery monitor with a figure [512] Any idea what does [512] direct to?

Might be someone of Pylontech @Ned Yu (Pylontech) can assist, too?

I would be very happy and appreciate very much any idea and help. Perhaps somebody of the community or of Victron can direct me into the right direction where and how to investigate this problem.

DayAndNight


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Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) avatar image
Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) answered ·

Hi @DayAndNight

Did you read out the batteries? what does your battery supplier say about this?

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dayandnight avatar image dayandnight commented ·

Hello Daniël,

no I was up to now not in touch with Pylontech. I directed my question below to @Ned Yu (Pylontech), too and hope from there will be additional help.

I have seen today another user @Drae who is collecting data directly from the batteries. I will ask him to explain how he manage it to communicate with the Pylons directly. Hopefully to get than more data directly from the batteries. I don't have any idea what software to use for this and what cable is needed.

A question, perhaps you can help The warning "Low temperature" is it in reality a warning based of a message which was sent from the Pylontech BMS to the GX-device? And the BMS is somehow fooled with 23°? Which is obviously not a low temperature! Or can it be completely different and it is a miss-interpretation from Victron software, Victron GX-device?

Without knowing what or where is the beginning of such alerts, it is hard to understand for me what to do?

I wonder, who is doing the decision to give here an alert / warning? Is there a sort of log file which is done and collected form Victron software GX-device to follow possible problems and collect more details there?

What do you suggest?

DayAndNight

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

Hi @DayAndNight

This is all information from the battery.

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dayandnight avatar image
dayandnight answered ·

Hello!

I wanted to post an update for this. As the described alerts did show up again and again and in smaller intervals. By chance being on site when the alert happens, I could track the temperature alert to one specific device, because the red alert LED was ON.

I removed this device out of the parallel before eight devices and hoped that my alerts for low temperature and "internal" errors are gone with the remaining seven devices.

Unfortunately today the "internal error" showed up again. But not the "low-temperature alert". I asked my customer to look if there is a alert led lit! And it was. So I assume I have two defective Pylon batteries I have to sent back for warranty replacement.

I keep you informed!


DayAndNight



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ewalderasmus avatar image ewalderasmus commented ·

@DayAndNight


Any update?

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dayandnight avatar image dayandnight ewalderasmus commented ·

Hello @EwaldErasmus,

yes! Here is the update. It was a nightmare of service and needed much patience and time.

Support of Pylontech in China was were helpfully and they decided that a pcb or a sensor with is responsible for temperature may be defective and it should be sent for repair or exchange to a Pylontech service point in Germany.

The problem was, that the distributor/dealer for Pylontech here in Germany where I bought the devices was not very excited to help. So it was necessary to spend a lot of time for convincing the disti and to bring them in touch with Pylontech warranty department in China ... and finally it took weeks until the unit was picked up at our warehouse and brought to this Pylontech Germany service point.

And here started again the same story again. The service point didn't have any information neither from the German distributor nor Pylontech China .... so it was again my job to connect Pylontech China, German distributor and Pylontech Germany service point ....

Finally after some time the unit was ready for collecting from the Pylontech service point to be brought back to the distributor. Repaired? I don't know up to now. When it arrived at the distributor site it disappeared elsewhere in the warehouse and it took me again weeks to find somebody to track it and to send it back to us.

I started this in June/July, I think I got it back end of October. During this time I increased the total capacity to 10 x Pylontech USB2000+ and for having an even number of devices in my housing during time for repair I bought an additional / spare one.


And the good point! This thermal error never appeared again. So it was definitely this device and now I have 11 pieces but no space left in my housing and I had up to now no time to test the unit which was out for repair.

I didn't have any expense for this and the only thing I know by sure they didn't exchange it and they (tried) to repair it. But there wasn't any information or report what they did!

DayAndNight

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enersol avatar image
enersol answered ·

@DayAndNight I have the same problem here: internal failure alarms and low battery alarms. I have 8 batteries in the 15 kVA (3 x MP-II 5000) system. Do You have any idea how to detect which battery is defective?

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dayandnight avatar image dayandnight commented ·

Hello enersol, @EnerSol

in my case the faulty battery shows the red Alert-LED on the battery during the failure condition.

pylon-no4-alert.jpg

So it was not so complicate to identify the unit.

I think the best way is to get the proper communication cable and the software battery-view from Pylontech. With this software you can monitor all batteries when connecting to the master battery. I got this cable from a former ebay site which is now called "Kleinanzeigen". This cable has on one end the activ USB connector and on the other end the connector for pylontech. There three different versions available, one for "old" US2000B - one for "new" US2000C and one for both type of Pylontech batteries.

With this software it will easy to identify the faulty battery and additionally you can see on top which cell in this battery is responsible for the problem.

battery-view.jpg

In the past I found it very strange, based on the different descriptions in the web how to do myself the cable. With the right cable it is very easy. Even when the pylontech software seems sometimes to be buggy. But I monitored my battery stack for days and it worked like a charm and helped me a lot.

Wish you success!

Servus DayAndNIght

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welshfarmer avatar image
welshfarmer answered ·

Just came on here via google search as I now have the same problem. After about a week of internittent messages it has now resulted in one of my 4 USC 3000 batteries shutting down with the red light on. On the GX it was showing -10C as a temperature (despite it being 25 degrees here), so I guess a temperature sensor has failewd in that battery. Going to call my supplier in the first instance and see what they say. Seems to be a commoin fault!

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dayandnight avatar image
dayandnight answered ·

Hello @MarkEss ,

in my case the faulty battery had a red led, which made it easy to identify it. I highly recommend to get a communication cable and the Pylontech software batteryview which makes it easy to locate the problem. And it does allow you to get an overview of all your batteries in one run.

Do you reach normally 100% SOC? How many batteries you have in the stack?

I am asking, because you have a warning of "Cell imbalance", too - this might be a sign that your batteries doesn't get enough time to balance, which may cause such a warning. As first step I would try to solve this.

Nevertheless, low temperature sound strange. I never got an explanation for this in my case.

Finally my battery was for reapir and came back with another problem. But in the end the battery was replaced by a new one within guarantee period.

Servus - DayAndNight - Ewald.

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markess avatar image
markess answered ·

Hi @DayAndNight , thanks for the tip. I have 5x us3000c (17.5kWh). They regularly sit at 100% for hours this time of year. I did charge them independently, one after the other, a few months ago to balance them. Functionality seems fine and they are only 8 mths old, so not inclined to touch them. If it persists I can probe more as you recommend.

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markess avatar image markess commented ·

I also get pylontech notifications every week or 2 currently. They are not 'real' in the sense that there is no low voltage and cell balance is within 30mV.


What should I do? Or just not worry about it. Everything seems ok.


screenshot-20230613-1556042.png


If I go into the pylontech --> alarms menu it says all is "ok".

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fenics avatar image fenics markess commented ·
I get the exact same error. First 3 weeks, no problem at all. Now i get this errors now and then... weired.
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alberto-fernandez avatar image
alberto-fernandez answered ·

Hello had the exact same error, battery low temperature, but my battery has the red light on continously, 10x US5000C, checked cell temperature lowest is (-40 Celsuis) defínetly a sensor error, we are in Mexico, lets see if Pylontech warranty is as good as they claim.


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quat-allah-as-shams avatar image
quat-allah-as-shams answered ·

@Alberto Fernandez @Fenics @MarkEss

I had the exact same issue. Upgraded the firmware to latest on all batteries in battery bank. Seems to have solved the problem.

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Victron Pylontech battery compatibility guide

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