[RE-wrenches] Magnum System - Discharged Battery Bank

Baxter, Gary gbaxter at sensata.com
Wed Dec 17 12:14:45 PST 2014


Good point on the battery monitor. It would be easy to add a Magnum BMK to system and get the battery history. Also the ARC (advanced remote control) stores fault history so you can see when the LBCO occurred along with battery voltage etc.


Gary Baxter
Product Manager
Magnum/Dimensions

On Dec 17, 2014, at 11:27 AM, "Jarmo.Venalainen at schneider-electric.com<mailto:Jarmo.Venalainen at schneider-electric.com>" <Jarmo.Venalainen at schneider-electric.com<mailto:Jarmo.Venalainen at schneider-electric.com>> wrote:

Hi:

Figuring out what happened after the fact is a very big challenge and always involves a lot of cost for both time invested and ultimately the new batteries.

Things can be made a lot simpler, even preventative, by using a small battery monitor which remembers battery V, I, SOC, etc........ for up to 10 years.

If you want more info, please contact me off-line.

JARMO
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Jarmo Venalainen  |   Schneider Electric   |  Solar Business  |   CANADA  |   Training & Development Specialist - Senior
Phone: +604-422-2528  |   Fax: +604-420-1591  |   Mobile: +604-505-0291
Email: jarmo.venalainen at schneider-electric.com<mailto:jarmo.venalainen at schneider-electric.com>  |   Site: www.SEsolar.com<http://www.sesolar.com/>  |   Address: 3700 Gilmore Way, Burnaby, BC V5G4M1

<mime-attachment.jpg><http://%20www.sesolar.com/>
*** Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail



From:   Corey Shalanski <cshalanski at joule-energy.com<mailto:cshalanski at joule-energy.com>>
To:     RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org<mailto:RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org>,
Date:   12/16/2014 06:27 PM
Subject:        [RE-wrenches] Magnum System - Discharged Battery Bank
Sent by:        "RE-wrenches" <re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org<mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org>>

________________________________



Wrenches,

I visited a customer today whose grid-tied battery backup system suffered some sort of catastrophic failure, and now I'm trying to play detective to figure out what happened and whose equipment/design is to blame.

Here is what I know so far:
- System is ac-coupled with a Sunny Boy 7000 (7.85kW array), Magnum MS4448PAE (x2), 3 strings of 4 12v batts (705Ah total)
- Site visit was triggered by the Sunny Boy registering zero output via online monitoring.
- SPST Solid state relay installed on Sunny Boy output, controlled via Magnum router, serves as secondary overcharge protection to Magnum's frequency shift feature. Technician who initially responded claims he measured 240v across the relay's terminals - relay manufacturer claims this is "100% impossible". We removed the relay from the circuit, and the Sunny Boy is again operational.
- On arrival I found the Magnum display showing a "Low Battery Charge" message with the bank measuring ~4Vdc. The individual batteries were in various states of charge, ranging from high of 6.3v to low of -2.6v. These measurements were taken at rest, all battery cables disconnected, and yes three of the batts were registering a negative voltage.
- Customer reports that he was not aware of any recent prolonged power outages.

The three potential suspects would seem to be:
- SS relay: The customer is convinced that this is the weak link in the system and somehow triggered this failure. I am not so convinced but would be interested to hear recommendations for properly testing its functionality.
- Magnum equipment: Since there is low-battery-cutout protection, why would this feature not have activated and prevented the batteries from draining so low?
- Batteries: I am not very familiar with modes of failure, but our distributor suggested that an internal short could be a possibility - what might have triggered this?

Clearly I am fishing for potential leads here, so any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!
--
Corey Shalanski
Joule Energy
New Orleans, LA
ᐧ

______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
List sponsored by Redwood Alliance

List Address: RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org<mailto:RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org>

Change listserver email address & settings:
http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org

List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html

List rules & etiquette:
www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm

Check out or update participant bios:
www.members.re-wrenches.org



_______________________________________________
List sponsored by Redwood Alliance

List Address: RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org<mailto:RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org>

Change listserver email address & settings:
http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org

List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html

List rules & etiquette:
www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm<http://www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm>

Check out or update participant bios:
www.members.re-wrenches.org<http://www.members.re-wrenches.org>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20141217/41b49a1d/attachment-0002.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ATT00001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 14092 bytes
Desc: ATT00001.jpg
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20141217/41b49a1d/attachment-0005.jpg>


More information about the RE-wrenches mailing list