Hello to the man that help me start my EV path. Family now owns 6. Cheers.

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Glad to help ha ha. 6!!!??

@neilmayo6868

Жыл бұрын

@@IanSampsonRLO 6 EV's

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Yes, thats what surprised me lol. What have you got?

@neilmayo6868

Жыл бұрын

@@IanSampsonRLO two model S's, one Y, BMW I3 and a Chevy Bolt EV, and EUV. All started with the fantastic Leaf.

@mcroft1234

Жыл бұрын

Ian started my EV path too, I have a env200 work van & Enyaq family car.

Thanks for the video this is a very important issue that you have raised thanks for sharing.

Sounds either there is a heating component trying to heat up the batteries or some sort of control issue in the fox inverter with the charge times or the ct configuration. It has been cold recently.There isn't any octopus agile integration going on is there ? Or weather compensation ? Lux have both features and it can causing interesting events to happen.

@DuncanCunningham

Жыл бұрын

this.

The only thing that i can think of is to connect it to a laptop/PC and pull up the log data and have a look at the time and date of the last update of the firmware/software and then you can have an idea if its an update fault.

Is there a minimum temperature as there could be an internal warmer in them, might be worth a look

Are the CT clamp(s) that monitor grid and house usage the correct way round?

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Yes, no issues at all until approx last 3 days.

Has it had a software update? , also double check the inverter settings , batteries like being 25c so this. Maybe part of the issue I’ll demand first fix it or offer an alternative, the issue us under warranty they subcontracted they have to find the solution

My new batteries were commissioned during the cold snap in December 2022, did the same thing. The battery will charge to 60% and settle. Must be a protection system to stop the electrolyte from freezing. It's a pity that Fox do not document this anywhere. I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's annoying, but we don't get prolonged cold weather in the UK too often. We'll have to wait and see how the batteries behave throughout the year

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Woke up this morning to a 32% SOC after getting down to 10% by 11:30pm (that will last a couple of hours today). Just a shame its almost been 100% of Jan where it has been like this - the odd day or 2 would be doable. Will see how it does each day. Frustrating thing waking up and it being hardly charged!

If someone can figure it out, it’s you. Can you power off all the units and restart? The switch off and on again thing didn’t help, you said reset. Sometimes crappy systems you have to switch the features off for a time or change, save and see if the changes apply and then change back to your fav one again.

Have you tried a factory reset?

Is it tied into the weather? So if severe weather is approaching does it charge up in case of emergency?

Oh no…

You might have tried this, Ian, but it could be useful: We have a GivEnergy system, with no Solar PV, and were rather annoyed to find that our inverter can only draw 3 kW from the mains, and can only deliver 3 kW to the house from our batteries, If the house needs more than 3 kW, then the excess is drawn directly from the mains supply, irrespective of battery SOC. The only solution GivEnergy can offer is to install a second inverter, to allow us to draw 6 kW. Check to see how much power your inverters can actually push from the battery to the house wiring. This is different to whatever the Solar array is delivering to the storage system and house, and I'm not sure how your generated input is being accounted for. Whatever, you might be simply exceeding the capabilities of your inverters.

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Inverts setup to allow a total of 8.4kw constant output. Batteries are capable of 5kw in snd 5kw out constant.

@BooBaddyBig

Жыл бұрын

That's normal. All inverters have limits. You can get inverters with somewhat higher limits, but they cost more.

Are they maybe trying to charge back up to a minimum SOC? Is what I was first going to ask, as I jumped the gun mid video. Sounds definitely like a config issue. Needs to be reset. Have you tried to do a restore to defaults, if that is available to you? My Givenergy pulls from grid if it goes below 4%, does it when it gets mixed up with its SOC, drops suddenly to 0% from like 5% when it’s under high load now and again. I had been playing with some settings and it ended up not allowing auto/demand discharge. Had to get Givenergy to sort it, apparently a setting normally only on the engineers options, had got borked. I wonder if there could be anything like one of your CTs not clipped to the correct feed, the battery could be deciding to charge as it thinks there is solar being exported?

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Worked for the first 5 or so days no issues, so the CT's are all good on the front. No idea tbh, think I will have to try and get fox involved. First4Solar just terrible at replying to emails so no idea if they will help with their install.

I think there is a software bug that means that when you set 'Enable force charge' but don't set 'Enable charge from grid' it will "phantomly" discharge the batteries I have been trying to work out what is going on but don't use that mode at the moment

😊👍🌹

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Same to you ;)

I don’t have fox batteries, but as a temporary solution can you force them to charge from the grid at 10watts only and rely on the solar to ‘top them up’. 🤷‍♂️

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Sadly no, the BMS overrides the user settings to 'protect' the batteries.

Oh dear!

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Tell me about it

Can you share the Facebook link or group

Givenergy systems fully charge and discharge the battery's on commission and after battery firmware updates to calibrate them. Regardless of setting / timings. Are you sure it's not just doing this? I'd leave it to do its thing..... I know its annoying its doing it at peak time... maybe leave off until cheap rate and try again...

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Narrowing it down it looks like its the cold weather in the fact that the BMS will override user settings and start charging to 'protect' the batteries. Will try and put a quick video up maybe later :)

@prop7184

Жыл бұрын

@@IanSampsonRLO Wow I'm really shocked, especially if the batteries are doing this to protect themselves. If so it would appear that Fox are going to extremes to maintain battery health in an effort to not replace batteries covered by the Fox warranty. However I have to say nothing like this has occurred with my Givenergy setup through either this cold spell or the previous cold spell in December. I checked my batteries last night and they were charging at full rate, no throttling has ever occurred as yet during my cheap rate nigh charging of the batteries. I only currently have a 4 hour window to charge my batteries which is just barely enough time. I need to get onto Octopus Intelligent in the summer but currently my Octopus Go tariff is cheaper per kwh than the Intelligent tariff. Givenergy have a 10 year warranty on the batteries and they seem confident enough in the type of battery tech used and BMS to allow full rate charging at all the temperatures my unheated garage has reached, which is close to zero centigrade at times. I am sure I must lose some capacity due to the batteries being cold but I have never seen any heating of batteries occur as yet. As Stephen stated I did see my batteries calibrate one time after they were commissioned back in November. I'm curious to know how your 10kwh solar arrays are doing in this recent cold spell with the high amount of sunshine we have also had? Yesterday my 12 year old 4kwh rooftop setup managed to harvest just short of 13kwh, which must be close to the best I have ever seen out of my system in January. As of 3pm today they have harvested 12kwh. Mind you I think I have been fortunate as I am nearly 1000ft above sea level so managed to stay above the fog all day today. Watched it rolling in from the north towards Ruardean at around lunchtime but it never made it up the hill were I live.

So this isnt relevant to this video but another very recent one of yours i cant find .In that video but you mentioned that your batteries were charging very slowly when cold and my brother who has pylontech (I think) batteries just mentioned to me that when the battery temp (not external temp) drops below 15Deg C they are configured to drop to very low input maybe 1.5kW IIRC.He is building an insulated enclosure (his are also in a seperate garage) and will be putting one of those warming cables used for greenhouses to try and see if that makes any difference. Hopey ou get this problem sorted.

Is it in the right time zone? 😂

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

ha ha, yes it is.

@SirHackaL0t.

Жыл бұрын

@@IanSampsonRLO Always worth checking these things. lol.

Are you sure it's not the inverter?

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Narrowing it down it looks like its the cold weather in the fact that the BMS will override user settings and start charging to 'protect' the batteries.

@ilovepizzadoyou

Жыл бұрын

@@IanSampsonRLO how cold is it in the garage?

Battery knows best ☺. Frustrating, you may have to insulate the garage.

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

They should really start to look at a finished product that can handle life on this planet ha ha. I think its either designed for countries that have 21-25c all year around or only tested in a lab. The version I have are not even designed for indoors - they are marketed as outdoor units with heavy emphasis on waterproofing etc. Imagine how poor the performance would be if they were not indoors like mine!

@berniebne8243

Жыл бұрын

@@IanSampsonRLO I sympathise. We were among the 1st in Queensland to get pv panels. I think a ended up knowing more than the installers. Over here you aren't allowed to play with high voltages unless you have a licence. The sparkies get on their high horse very quickly & have to be treated with kid gloves. Still it reminds me of your incredibly entertaining leaf videos.

kzread.info/dash/bejne/mmaay5iQopynmrQ.html This might be helpful to you. also, there is a midnight clock issue. try these settings as an example. Time Frames 1 & 2, setting Time Frame 1 to 21:35 to 00:59 and Time Frame 2 to 00:01 to 02:25

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

Narrowing it down it looks like its the cold weather in the fact that the BMS will override user settings and start charging to 'protect' the batteries.

@TheTony111111

Жыл бұрын

@@IanSampsonRLO might be worth trying some sort of insulation wrap on the batteries

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

@@TheTony111111 yes…and no lol, there is a part in the manual regarding distance required - so there is a min requirement for space around it anything wrapped around it directly would void warranty (i.e immersion jacket)

@TheTony111111

Жыл бұрын

@@IanSampsonRLO that's unfortunate. putting a heater in there defeats the whole purpose of saving money. 😢😢 keep us updated with videos of your solutions

@nickieredshaw7835

Жыл бұрын

@@IanSampsonRLOyer we found that with our fox battery’s this winter in the garage too , and that had firmware updates that make it worse and in the cold weather we had recently on this firmware it locked the Soc a lot we was losing 30 ish % of usable power in the batteries and slow grid charging and would have strange Soc drops ie 40% to 10% or lower even on night Soc said 5% that’s not possible with 300 watts load in 30 mins ! I contacted fox china and they said it’s normal in the cold etc but I documented it over a few nights and contacted them again and sent pictures videos etc and they said they heard of a few users having this issue and agreed to do firmware update and was done overnight and the next 24 hours it did multiple reboots and I guess more updates and then the next day was much better now getting lot better reliable use and now getting what it used to provide ie 11 ish kWh useable out of a 13 kWh battery and Soc is now once again linear and reliable down to 10% again ! And if you look in the app under settings you can turn system off and on remotely if you have problems like this without having to go to battery’s it’s under settings then basic parameters 2 and says sys on/off . And if you need any help with home assistant there is lots of very helpful people on the forums and if can help message me it can take a while to setup and get working with fox stuff ! Are you going to use WiFi or ethernet cable to get info into home assistant? Tried WiFi as not far from inverter but was buggy so just brought 20 meter ethernet cable was less than £10 as works great ! Home assistant can be done for next to free as you can use virtual machine on laptop or desktop you are already using or use old pc or laptop that you no longer use or by cheap old office computers, I’m using a old laptop we don’t use now as got replacement a few year ago was kids lockdowns homework laptop it’s about 6 years old and works great for home assistant only cost less than £10 for e lead and my time and now get 3-5 seconds delay on info from fox stuff is well worth the hassle as there web portal is better than there app but the info was still 3 -5 mins delay on info and the 60 seconds option don’t work for long within hours it goes back to 3-5 minutes and was annoying slow and very hit and miss reliability quite offen going down for hours or days sometimes! Home assistant rocks and doesn’t need to be costly and you can set it up to use fox cloud info so can be free but modbus is a lot better ie using data from the inverter directly .

Go back to the company

@IanSampsonRLO

Жыл бұрын

as per video no response....and I suspect I will need to chase over and over to get one as well.