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So I did a full discharge test of my batteries through the inverter running the entire house to see how much capacity in the battery bank was usable and also roughly how many days I could go with my normal use. Started the test at about 7pm on Friday and the inverter shut off with a transformer voltage error on Sunday at about 5pm so I know I have a bit over a day and a half. Maybe Sid can chime in with how low the voltage can go before it throws this error but I have the BMS set to kick out at 44V or 2.75V per cell but I have the inverter ATS/charging set to kick on at 48V (as it won't seem to let me set it higher) and my best guess when reading the BMS log is that the voltage dipped to 48.5 for a very brief time when the well pump started but then the inverter kicked out with this error. I know that things can get dicey on the low end and I am not sure if the voltage dip was lower. The BMS may not have recorded the lowest part of the dip and the inverter possibly tried to transfer and received an error when trying to do so under load. But I have tested this manually before and it worked with a small load when I first hooked up the AC input on the inverter.
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I powered the inverter off and back on again and it came up without issue and started the well pump and ran until the pressure switch satisfied and kicked out the pump. Not sure if the batteries had enough time to recover in that minute or so it took me to go downstairs and reset the inverter. I was keeping an eye on the battery voltage as I knew the battery would be getting close to the discharge knee but around 48v I should still have around 8-9% capacity left. Just thought it was weird as I would have expected the inverter to transfer or shutdown due to low battery voltage and give a different error. Either way I don't plan to run the battery below 50v under normal use with solar doing the bulk of the charging but wanted to see where the system would shutdown or if it would transfer properly and wasn't sure what to make of this.
but I have the inverter ATS/charging set to kick on at 48V (as it won't seem to let me set it higher)
Ah yes, the manual I need to write...
All of the battery voltage settings are referenced and scaled to the "nominal" setting. For example, UVP settings can't be set higher than Nominal (normally 48v), and OVP settings can't be set less than Nominal.
Same with several of the trigger settings. If you need a higher nominal ("center") voltage, you can increase that number in the configuration. (Note that this will adjust ALL the other setpoints, as they're all referenced to this one.)
Started the test at about 7pm on Friday and the inverter shut off with a transformer voltage error on Sunday at about 5pm so I know I have a bit over a day and a half. Maybe Sid can chime in with how low the voltage can go before it throws this error
Umm...it shouldn't be throwing that error. You should get a battery voltage error long before this error appears.
From one of your past posts, it sounds that you're running 1.1r2. So there are only 2 cases that this error can appear:
- Battery charge mode, and transformer charge current can't be regulated low enough
- Inverter startup: while the soft-start ramp is still active, there is <64vAC detected on the output, AND the transformer throttle is >100%. (This safety is to prevent blowing FETs with a miswired transformer/disconnected secondary/feedback failure.) If you were running the inverter in power-save mode with the well pump...that could definitely cause a false trigger of this error. (I probably need to revise the threshold down closer to 30v or less.)
At 48v, the transformer throttle will be past 100% for normal operation, and coupling that together with the well pump startup surge (in Power Save mode)--yeah, it could false trigger. Need to address this in an update.
I believe I have power save mode disabled as the entire consumption of the house never drops below 45-50 watts anyway. I will have to take another look at the settings. I have the charge mode set to 50% IIRC but have tested it all the way up to 97% current without issue. I will have to take a closer look at all of the settings when I get a chance.
I believe I have power save mode disabled as the entire consumption of the house never drops below 45-50 watts anyway. I will have to take another look at the settings. I have the charge mode set to 50% IIRC but have tested it all the way up to 97% current without issue. I will have to take a closer look at all of the settings when I get a chance.
OK, that's weird then, because that error can ONLY get triggered if the soft start is still active--and that lasts less than 1/4 second. Unless there's a bug with the soft start flag (which I've seen...thought I fixed it though. Will need to look into this.)
The error getting triggered at charge would be immediately after it switches over; this is in case the transformer voltage specification isn't matched up properly. During charge mode, the MOS H-bridge works as a bridge rectifier in reverse (through the blocking diodes)--meaning that if the rectified transformer output voltage exceeds the battery voltage, the resulting charge current can't be controlled. That's what this error is for; in a normal GS setup, the rectified transformer output voltage is far below the battery voltage, meaning that this error should not be possible to encounter.
Glad to hear that charge is working for you. Currently, I've measured charge efficiency at ~60%; I plan to revise the charge technique to a more PFC-style method (via software update), which hopefully will increase the efficiency closer to 80%. (Can't do anything about the voltage drop in the FETs!)
Looked at the code that causes the "Xformer Volt Err", and turns out that I had a comparison backwards--which could cause this issue. However, this error should only be possible during the soft-start when the inverter mode is beginning. It can only happen later IF the soft-start flag somehow hasn't been cleared--but the code for that looks good. Will need a bit more diagnostic info to say for sure--it helps a lot if you can readily reproduce the error.
I did the same to my GS inverters this weekend, ran the batteries to zero, guess what, they didn't shut down till after the batteries were dead as a door. I'm guessing my master battery settings got reset and just love sucking all that power out of those batts. 😛
9 hours ago, The Blind Wolf said:I did the same to my GS inverters this weekend, ran the batteries to zero, guess what, they didn't shut down till after the batteries were dead as a door. I'm guessing my master battery settings got reset and just love sucking all that power out of those batts. 😛
Oops. Yes, the settings in the master would have been reset; not sure if the slave inverter's settings were ever set.
Oops. Yes, the settings in the master would have been reset; not sure if the slave inverter's settings were ever set.
Nope we never set the slave, it wouldn't have matter if the master had it setting still, it would have shut the slave off.
Oh well, will get with you sometimes soon, not in a rush at the moment, got other things on my plate. I did fix the wire heating issue though. got rid of any small wire deal.
Looked at the code that causes the "Xformer Volt Err", and turns out that I had a comparison backwards--which could cause this issue. However, this error should only be possible during the soft-start when the inverter mode is beginning. It can only happen later IF the soft-start flag somehow hasn't been cleared--but the code for that looks good. Will need a bit more diagnostic info to say for sure--it helps a lot if you can readily reproduce the error.
I haven't had the time to mess with it lately but I think I can reproduce it. I am in the middle of helping my brother's family move homes and I just get back from a short 3 day vacation so the inverter has only been powering the minimum stuff lately. I will try to get some more pictures or maybe even some video if it happens again.
Ok so I had some time to play around with this and I now know a bit more about what is happening. So as early as 1.1r1 (IIRC) I had the GS inverter connected to grid and it seems to sync fine and even at least with the last revision 1.1r2 would allow me to charge or set to ATS and have it transfer successfully at least manually. I had the inverter go into the same transformer voltage error when it tried to transfer and start charging the batteries at 50V on the bank. Every time it tries to start charging the bank it gives this error it seems even though in the past I was able to manually transfer without issue and then manually charge the battery bank. Not sure what has changed other than firmware since that time and I also would get the same error every once in a while with 1.1r2. It seems I can pretty much reproduce the error at will.
The good news is that I can just set the inverter to inverter mode only or just keep the AC input breaker off and the inverter keeps running without issue. So it's not that the inverter was tripping on overload, its that the battery bank would dip down enough when starting the well pump that it would trigger the inverter to transfer and try to start charging the bank which was causing the error.
Very good info to know.
1.1r2 I wrote code to auto-zero the transformer amperage sensor at startup (previously it was a hardcode value). Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the "Holy Grail" software solution for the L1 filter cap being on the wrong side of said sensor. If 1.1r1 worked fine and didn't throw the Xformer Polarity error, this could potentially explain why.
8 hours ago, kuhrd said:So it's not that the inverter was tripping on overload, its that the battery bank would dip down enough when starting the well pump that it would trigger the inverter to transfer and try to start charging the bank which was causing the error.
Very good to know.
Looks like I need to increase the threshold for the Xformer Polarity--because if it's backwards, a LOT of power is going to flow through the FETs (basically a dead short through the blocking diodes). I had 'scope shots of this (in tests), but can't seem to find them right now for some reason.
The Xformer Volt error in charge is more or less not needed in GS inverters--more there for customers (down the road I guess!) who want to make their own inverter, and might use a higher voltage transformer specification...and need to be aware of the minimum voltage charge output. In other words...probably should push that one up a tad as well.
<a contenteditable="false" data-ipshover="" data-ipshover-target="/profile/23-kuhrd/?do=hovercard" data-mentionid="23" href="/profile/23-kuhrd/" rel="">@kuhrd1.1r4 or immediate emergency?
@kuhrd1.1r4 or immediate emergency?
I can wait for 1.1r4. As far as I recall ATS and charging at least manually was working ok in 1.1r1 and I am pretty sure I started to see this error starting with 1.1r2 but I don't remember for sure. I don't think I tested the ATS or charging with 1.1r3 right after the update. As it is right now it seems like the second it tries to transfer and go into charge mode it throws the error.
I know I asked someone for this diagnostic...both Sean and I desperately need to get a CRM system implemented so we stop losing track of customers (much to their frustration). If it was you, then just tell me 😉...
(did a search...it was @jnock)
...if you can report back what the Load Level value is at several stages, that'd be very helpful. (OUT -> Diagnostic -> scroll down to Load Level). I'm curious what it's reading in the following scenarios:
- no load...should be pretty close to zero
- small load (800W perhaps) on the L1 circuit (or maybe try a load on L1 and then on L2)...it should register very positive on one, and not much or at all on the other.
- ATS pass-thru (no charge)...should be pretty close to zero, or slightly negative.
Will see if I can make adjustments in the code so it works, and then release 1.1r4 to test.
So tonight it was able to successfully transfer to AC Pass-Thru and and I was also able to manually trigger it to charge without it getting mad with the Xformer Voltage Error so I took some pictures so you have a bit more info about what is going on. Battery bank was at 52.3 when I manually set it to AC Priority and also when I manually triggered it to start charging. I organized them into folders to make it easy to see what I was doing for each set of images. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Dnc4UhFIO34Mi_-axaoedpBKQF18Cb2Z?usp=sharing
Hopefully that helps provide some insight as to what is going on.
Oh almost forgot, it was 1300 watts because a milkhouse heater on low was the only portable load I had handy over 200 watts I could find.