hour
Observer
Wonder if that could cause a victron charge controller receiving voltage from the ve smart network to overcharge. That’d make one of my lfp cells go boom, even underreporting like 0.5v
LiFePO4 Install
- Thread starter dreadlocks
- Start date
Wonder if that could cause a victron charge controller receiving voltage from the ve smart network to overcharge. That’d make one of my lfp cells go boom, even underreporting like 0.5v
dreadlocks
Well-known member
yeah i dont know what the ******** is going on right now, everything is just bad.. installed the bus bar, hooked everything back up nice and tight.. it was worse.. thinking either inverter or solar has gone sideways, not sure yet.. tearing all this down wont be easy.
dreadlocks
Well-known member
The BattleBorn is dead, cant find my multimeter right now.. but I pulled the battery and it wont even fire up a test lamp that I have confirmed working.. not sure ****** happened here.
Guess we're gonna find out how good this 10yr warranty is on BattleBorn, stay tuned..
Here is a breakdown so far as I can recall:
Guess we're gonna find out how good this 10yr warranty is on BattleBorn, stay tuned..
Here is a breakdown so far as I can recall:
- Labor Day weekend.. Friday night everything was normal.. Woke up Saturday to 50% SOC
- Made Coffee just fine saturday morning, deployed portable solar in evening when apparent fixed was not gonna cut it.. Got back up to 85% SOC.
- Sunday Morning woke up, battery @ 40% SOC..
- Tried to Make Coffee, but coffee machine clicked off moments after turning on.. Didnt have tools to dig into it so fired up Genset and made coffee.
- Sunday night battery was back up to ~85% SOC
- Monday Morning, about 35% SOC.. tried again to Make Coffee.. still failed same way, used genset again..
- Packing up camp all power cut off when everything looked fine, crawled into space and started checking fuses and stuff and it came back on all on its own without messing with anything.
- Drove home Monday 11am to 5pm, expected full charge when I got home due to Solar.. but was still sitting at ~40% SOC when I got home, assume the LVD dropped the battery or something.
- Plugged it into shore power in driveway, charged it up to ~80% SOC until BMV Alarm for high temp (110F) was hit.. disconnected battery went to sleep. had been a hot day I figured.
- Tuesday Morning charged it to 14.6v, Recalibrated SOC, made some tweaks to BMV settings, and pulled charger immediately once it stopped taking a charge, kept an eye on temps and they were just above ambient.. let it sit idle the rest of the day.. was resting at about 13.8v
- Wednesday went out to check inverter, again same failure mode.. crawled into crawl space to check error fault on Inverter.. low voltage, check cabling.
- Monitored voltage and it was going all over the place, seemed dependent on load.. (see attached screenshot)
- Disconnected Inverter, Solar, and AC Charger, bypassed Battery Protect
- Put a wrench on the Shunt and found I could tighten the output of the shunt up a little bit, but was by no means loose.. went and checked the voltage.. still seemed low but was staying above 12v, thought I had found the culprit.. in retrospect i shoulda watched it longer.
- Pulled Disconnect, Installed new ground bus bar, hooked everything up to new bus bar.. went back into the trailer expecting everything to be fine when I reconnected.
- Nothing worked, BMV dead, Disconnected everything again, only BMV hooked up to battery.. still no power..
- Removed Battery, put it on a test lamp.. nothing, not even a flicker of light.
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...this is a bummer
dreadlocks
Well-known member
I do suspect the BMS is in some protect mode and has cut off the battery entirely.. but it dont seem like I can do anything further.
After I had stripped it down to only the BMV hooked to the battery, and was getting nothing.. I hooked the AC charger back up to the circuit and the BMV came back alive and was reading the charge voltage solid.. I left it on for a few mins and then shut charger off and the BMV died.. I verified power was getting to the terminal posts, that was the last test before I yanked everything.
So I guess now I send it back to BattleBorn on my own dime, and pray they dont think I abused it and charge me to fix it.. I've never pampered a battery so much in my life as I have this one, until today I had never even seen the BMS protection do anything.. guess this is the real test everyone wanted to know.. will BB make this right, a 1yro LFP that was treated like a goddamn princess has failed long before it should have.
Tomorrow I'll pull the inverter out and hook it up to whatever battery I can find and just verify it does not have some sort of internal fault.. but even if it did, the BMS and LVD and BMV shoulda never let it damage the battery.
After I had stripped it down to only the BMV hooked to the battery, and was getting nothing.. I hooked the AC charger back up to the circuit and the BMV came back alive and was reading the charge voltage solid.. I left it on for a few mins and then shut charger off and the BMV died.. I verified power was getting to the terminal posts, that was the last test before I yanked everything.
So I guess now I send it back to BattleBorn on my own dime, and pray they dont think I abused it and charge me to fix it.. I've never pampered a battery so much in my life as I have this one, until today I had never even seen the BMS protection do anything.. guess this is the real test everyone wanted to know.. will BB make this right, a 1yro LFP that was treated like a goddamn princess has failed long before it should have.
Tomorrow I'll pull the inverter out and hook it up to whatever battery I can find and just verify it does not have some sort of internal fault.. but even if it did, the BMS and LVD and BMV shoulda never let it damage the battery.
dreadlocks
Well-known member
Stats from the BMV:
Deepest Discharge: -98Ah (Testing LVD)
Average Discharge: -40Ah
Cumulative Ah drawn: -3446Ah
Discharged Energy: 44.8kWh
Charged energy: 47.8kWh
Total Charge cycles: 26
Synchronizations: 7
Number of full discharges: 1
Yeah but what do they determine to be abuse? Wont know until they look at it I suppose.. I have everything setup the way they recommend as far as charge params, they even give Victron specific settings that I been using.. I discharged it completely once to figure out how deep a 12vdc LVD would activate, and immediately recharged it.. I never left it on a charger fully charged, I stored it at partial charge over winter.
Deepest Discharge: -98Ah (Testing LVD)
Average Discharge: -40Ah
Cumulative Ah drawn: -3446Ah
Discharged Energy: 44.8kWh
Charged energy: 47.8kWh
Total Charge cycles: 26
Synchronizations: 7
Number of full discharges: 1
Yeah but what do they determine to be abuse? Wont know until they look at it I suppose.. I have everything setup the way they recommend as far as charge params, they even give Victron specific settings that I been using.. I discharged it completely once to figure out how deep a 12vdc LVD would activate, and immediately recharged it.. I never left it on a charger fully charged, I stored it at partial charge over winter.
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shade
Well-known member
Between the battery's data and your Victron logs, I'll bet you'll come out ok with Battle Born. Whatever the fault, I'm glad it shut down without any excitement, and it doesn't seem to have ruined a trip.
Please let us know how it goes with BB, and if you get the rest of the system functioning with a temporary replacement battery.
Please let us know how it goes with BB, and if you get the rest of the system functioning with a temporary replacement battery.
dreadlocks
Well-known member
So the latest update, I've been in contact w/Battleborn, they been very responsive.. found multimeter and battery was at 0v, in a protect mode.. I let it sit for a day or so and hooked it up to the other battery to give it a "jump" and it came out of protect mode.. I then charged it back up to 14.4v, let it soak for a few hours.. pulled the charger, put just the fridge and lights back on it.. and it lasted 2 mins before going back into protect mode.. here's what I saw from the Victron App as the BMV flatlines cuz its got no power:
In the meantime I pulled the OG interstate battery that came with this trailer out of my lawn mower and put it back in.. verified everything works fine, the solar, inverter, bus bar, everything.. no faults or unexpected behavior other than the interstate battery is in better shape than I had thought it would be.. sigh.
In the meantime I pulled the OG interstate battery that came with this trailer out of my lawn mower and put it back in.. verified everything works fine, the solar, inverter, bus bar, everything.. no faults or unexpected behavior other than the interstate battery is in better shape than I had thought it would be.. sigh.
12.45V or 3.11Vpc should be below any discharge LVC, represents within 5% of dead dead flat, should never be allowed to regularly go so low in normal cycling, that will result in any LFP bank losing up to 80-90% of its lifetime cycles.
Certainly can't do any kind of capacity / discharge test from there!
You need an adjustable power supply and very accurate DMM and ammeter.
Get it reactivated, put it on a 3.45Vpc / 13.8V charger at low amps, say 10-20A per 100Ah capacity.
Charge at that rate overnight, or at least 6 hours.
Disconnect the charger, let it sit a bit, measure OCV. Keep going until that comes back at 3.32 - 3.34Vpc, 13.28-13.36V.
That is "full enough" for normal cycling, going higher is also stressful and hurts longevity, but may be required for cell balancing.
Do you have access to the per-cell balancing leads?
Now, raise the voltage setpoint to 3.6V/14.4V and if possible go to higher amps, up to 80A per 100Ah, or whatever max their BMS allows.
As you charge, measure voltage **at the posts**. Once it hits 14.4V, hold that steady, and observe your current rate, you should see it start to taper in a pretty short time, say within 15min or so.
Stop charging once current drop to between 1 and 2 amps. It is possible the BMS will cut you off, if so drop the V setpoint in .2V increments and repeat, the key is keep going until that endAmps spec is hit.
Let it sit isolated for at least an hour, you should be at 13.35-14.15V, if not rinse and repeat that last.
That is "vendor-spec benchmark Full".
Once there, now draw a small bit of energy at a slow rate, say 5A over an hour, or 5Ah down. Let it rest an hour and then check OCV.
Keep doing that and record your **resting** voltages at each stage on the way down. Don't need to be precise about the 5Ah increments, but that would be ideal.
Soon as you get anywhere near 12V, **stop discharging and immediately** start recharging again as above.
If you don't see a total over say 70Ah, your battery is past EoL, and if under warranty they should replace, even at say 85% if you've done under 100 cycles.
Certainly can't do any kind of capacity / discharge test from there!
You need an adjustable power supply and very accurate DMM and ammeter.
Get it reactivated, put it on a 3.45Vpc / 13.8V charger at low amps, say 10-20A per 100Ah capacity.
Charge at that rate overnight, or at least 6 hours.
Disconnect the charger, let it sit a bit, measure OCV. Keep going until that comes back at 3.32 - 3.34Vpc, 13.28-13.36V.
That is "full enough" for normal cycling, going higher is also stressful and hurts longevity, but may be required for cell balancing.
Do you have access to the per-cell balancing leads?
Now, raise the voltage setpoint to 3.6V/14.4V and if possible go to higher amps, up to 80A per 100Ah, or whatever max their BMS allows.
As you charge, measure voltage **at the posts**. Once it hits 14.4V, hold that steady, and observe your current rate, you should see it start to taper in a pretty short time, say within 15min or so.
Stop charging once current drop to between 1 and 2 amps. It is possible the BMS will cut you off, if so drop the V setpoint in .2V increments and repeat, the key is keep going until that endAmps spec is hit.
Let it sit isolated for at least an hour, you should be at 13.35-14.15V, if not rinse and repeat that last.
That is "vendor-spec benchmark Full".
Once there, now draw a small bit of energy at a slow rate, say 5A over an hour, or 5Ah down. Let it rest an hour and then check OCV.
Keep doing that and record your **resting** voltages at each stage on the way down. Don't need to be precise about the 5Ah increments, but that would be ideal.
Soon as you get anywhere near 12V, **stop discharging and immediately** start recharging again as above.
If you don't see a total over say 70Ah, your battery is past EoL, and if under warranty they should replace, even at say 85% if you've done under 100 cycles.
shade
Well-known member
What does Battle Born say is the next step?
dreadlocks
Well-known member
Ive not been taking it down anywhere near that low voltage normally.. I been using SOC gauge mostly and not keeping too much eye on voltage, but from what IIRC, most days I'd never see it get any below like 12.7v w/loads.. it'd always be resting >13v... unfortunately w/BB I dont have access to any balancing leads, the BMS is inaccessible to me.
Voltage was measured at the posts, charged it to 14.4v until it was well under 1A, hooked a 7A load up to it and battery was under 12v in less than 2min.. I forget what resting voltage was but I'm pretty sure it was within 13.35-14.15V.. I can try again a few more times but it dont seem that I have much more than 1-2% capacity anymore.
*edit* I just checked the battery, it brought its self out of protect mode overnight and is resting at 13.56v
This is where I kinda regret not investing another $600 or so and getting a Victron LFP, then I'd know everything the BMS knows right now.. but in my defense, not only did I not know about the victron LFP when I bought this one, I had trouble justifying the cost of the BB back then let alone the Victron.. now that I'm more sold on performance of LFP, I think it'd been worth it.
Ive yet to hear back from BB about this latest round of tests, but their office had closed by the time I had got the battery out of protect and recharged.. so We'll see from here, I'll get it out of protect mode and try again, and see what resting voltages are.. maybe get a full log from >13v to shutoff with more accurate time than my estimate.
Monday is my 10yr Anniversary (9/9/9), so this weekend the battery is a low priority.. Ive got, ermm. better things to ******** around with if yeh get my drift.
Voltage was measured at the posts, charged it to 14.4v until it was well under 1A, hooked a 7A load up to it and battery was under 12v in less than 2min.. I forget what resting voltage was but I'm pretty sure it was within 13.35-14.15V.. I can try again a few more times but it dont seem that I have much more than 1-2% capacity anymore.
*edit* I just checked the battery, it brought its self out of protect mode overnight and is resting at 13.56v
This is where I kinda regret not investing another $600 or so and getting a Victron LFP, then I'd know everything the BMS knows right now.. but in my defense, not only did I not know about the victron LFP when I bought this one, I had trouble justifying the cost of the BB back then let alone the Victron.. now that I'm more sold on performance of LFP, I think it'd been worth it.
Ive yet to hear back from BB about this latest round of tests, but their office had closed by the time I had got the battery out of protect and recharged.. so We'll see from here, I'll get it out of protect mode and try again, and see what resting voltages are.. maybe get a full log from >13v to shutoff with more accurate time than my estimate.
Monday is my 10yr Anniversary (9/9/9), so this weekend the battery is a low priority.. Ive got, ermm. better things to ******** around with if yeh get my drift.
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luthj
Engineer In Residence
What is the voltage the the BB unit starts balacing? You may need to push the votlage up to 14.5 or 14.6 to get the balancing circuitry started? Its possible you have one low cell group, and you need to give the bms some time to shunt current around the full cells.
Its not ideal, but several LFP BMS systems I have seen, don't start shunting current until a specific voltage is reached, either full pack voltage, or individual cell voltage.
Its not ideal, but several LFP BMS systems I have seen, don't start shunting current until a specific voltage is reached, either full pack voltage, or individual cell voltage.