SBV4600 Off-grid use not available?

runmeshaw

Hello, I bought the SBV4600 pair so that I could hook it up to my transfer switch and power a set circuits while charging it with solar power. Today I read a review on the website that once the SBV is fully charged using solar, that the outputs no longer work and are shut off? Can anyone that's using solar to charge their units confirm this?

What is the return policy on these units? I definitely want to return the units if the above is true.

rex

software issue that should be solved with next updates. set charge level limit to 99% till update. ask support for any other topics.

theseven

So it turns out that this is not enough to mitigate that issue. Today my SBV jumped from 98% to 100% when one cell hit 3.65V and turned off AC despite the limit being set at 99%. To make matters worse, if I then set the limit to 98% while it's already at 100%, it will happily keep charging, so I have to disconnect solar to even get it below 98% and get AC to turn on again.

theseven

charge limit appears to be ignored for solar charging though. as far as I can tell tell, the only way to ensure reliable operation in an off-grid situation is to make sure to always have at least 1kW of load on it if SoC is high. that will keep the battery at 95%.

lightningstormz

I have US version of the SBV4600 and have not noticed this issue. I have a charge limit set to 80% since it will significantly prolong the life of the battery. With any lithium battery, you should not charge it to 100% as it will significantly reduce the number of cycles you can get out of it

theseven

Well, at least on the latest EU firmware, it just keeps charging from solar until it runs into error code 217 (overvoltage protection?), no matter what I set the SoC limit at. That then shuts down the outputs. Funny how Zendure seems to have deleted the review that was mentioned above btw. In fact they deleted all

rex

are you by chance close to the 150 Voc limit?

21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3

This is exactly what happened to me and now my unit will not charge. Anyone know how to get around this. Support just lies, or maybe they are not competent?

theseven

around 115Voc, MPP is around 105V. At high SoC it appears to throttle back to 10A solar input, but that is still 1kW and more than the load at that time. In the evening I've seen the unit cycle the charger at 100% SoC while repeatedly tripping 217 , but in the morning it just cuts out and trips 217 and 331 errors.

theseven

so I just gave this another try. right now we're at 102V MPP and 108Voc, and the charge limit appears to work, while it didn't work on thursday. So either there is some threshold closely above that, or there was something else wrong earlier. The first tests were just hours after I got the unit and possibly the first time it saw 100% SoC, so perhaps the fuel gauge or cell balancing was just way off, confusing things. I'll keep an eye on it. That 99% setting seems to work for now, but long term I'd be concerned about thermal cycling stress and charger relay wear it cycling several times per minute

rex

got feedback from support that they are working on this and will release new firmware next week to mitigate.

theseven

Who's your support contact? I'd love to get in touch with someone who actually wants to get these issues resolved, but so far I'm not having any luck even getting them to give me any useful information, let alone understand a technical issue.

rex

support@zendure.com, othing special

rex

try a lower soc limit till they provide new software. I do not have enough sun to test this ...waiting for clear sunny

theseven

I think my support ticket might now have finally escalated to someone with some technical knowledge - I got a response from someone else today. Yes, a 97% limit seems to mitigate this for now. Triggering this requires a lot of solar power (4.8kWp in my case, realistically up to 3kW at this time in this orientation) + a long stretch of charging after a long night at midrange SoC for the battery to creep out of balance.

theseven

So the DC firmware update to hopefully resolve this has just been released. I'll remove my SoC limit and see what happens...

theseven

Sadly the issue isn't fully fixed. Although it now occurs much less frequently, it is still occurring from time to time. I also have reasons to believe that an SoC limit might not fully mitigate this either.