[RE-wrenches] Fortress

Thu Feb 15 07:53:02 PST 2024

Dave, All,
Their website is up. And historical data is available amongst lots of
things not viewable on the phone app or the inverter front panel.
Here's a screenshot in the data tab - www.envy.fortresspower.io :

[image: image.png]

I too have several head scratchers with the Fortress system. It primarily
is a result of the lack of continuity between Envy manual/display, phone
app, and this PC dashboard. All three have slightly different labelling and
functional descriptions of individual parameter settings and how they
interact. Definitely not intuitive for some of the most important settings.
Much less the lack of descriptive commonality between platforms.

I have one system crash where the batteries were supposedly at 32% SOC, but
the evault was @ 0%. And indeed it was at zero, taking several hours with
an external charger to revive it. Gotten no answer yet from support as to
why this might have happened. The new www.envy.fortresspower.io dashboard
data let me discover there was no calibration voltage of 54.4v reached in
the prior six weeks. Who knows if that's why.

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 10:05 AM Dave Tedeyan via RE-wrenches <
re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:

> I also have been having some issues with reported SOC through the Guardian
> with Fortress. Fortress is generally responsive, although no one has
> specifically addressed my concern yet. What I have seen with two recent
> eFlex installations (replacing an existing battery bank on an off-grid
> system) is that the reported SOC in the Guardian app for some batteries is
> way lower than it should be. For example, one system is at 92%, 92%, 92%,
> 62%. Yet the lights on the batteries all indicate that they are in the
> 75-100% range. The other system is reporting 23%, 63%, 62%, 25%, 48%, and
> again, all the LED's on the batteries are in sync. This has led one
> customer to keep disconnecting the batteries and trying to charge just one
> of them up and then fiddling with it until they are all back within a good
> voltage range, when I am nearly certain that they are all the same voltage
> even though they are reporting different SOC on the Guardian app only.
>
> I am looking forward to when they have the website up and I can look at
> historical data to see whether this battery is actually doing more work. I
> suspect it is not, but then maybe I can get Fortress to look more closely
> at it. And for all these batteries, the cables are exactly the same length
> and going to a bus bar.
>
> Has anyone else noticed this discrepancy between the guardian app and
> (what I think is) reality with the SOC?
>
> Cheers,
> Dave
>
> On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 8:52 AM Jay via RE-wrenches <
> re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi william
>>
>> Could you share the equipment used and what issues you had?
>>
>> Thx
>> Jay
>>
>> On Feb 14, 2024, at 3:13 PM, William Miller via RE-wrenches <
>> re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>> Peter:
>>
>>
>>
>> I have only purchased one set of Fortress batteries.  There have been
>> issues, I am sure many of them self-induced.  Fortress has been overall
>> very responsive.  There have been a few days where I could not get through
>> to technical support but with persistence I always manage.  Fortress has
>> offered truck–roll compensation at a reasonable rate as well.
>>
>>
>>
>> William Miller
>>
>>
>>
>> Miller Solar
>>
>> 17395 Oak Road, Atascadero, CA 93422
>>
>> 805-438-5600
>>
>> www.millersolar.com
>>
>> CA Lic. 773985
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] *On
>> Behalf Of *Peter Giroux via RE-wrenches
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 14, 2024 6:47 AM
>> *To:* 'RE-wrenches'
>> *Cc:* pgiroux at mindspring.com
>> *Subject:* [RE-wrenches] Fortress
>>
>>
>>
>> Good morning my fellow wrenchers. While I see the comments on SunPower
>> and the challenges, are any of you having similar issues with Fortress?
>> Their bms boards from the early classics have not held up and even after
>> replacement there are still issues ( parallel batteries and stand alone not
>> showing accurate #’s,  ). While support has been, well supportive, the
>> issues persist. Any thoughts or fixes you have come up with?? I just had a
>> customer unplug the coms cable from their sol-ark and bring their readings
>> to volts VS %% and it is starting to work a bit better. Any and all help or
>> ideas appreciated.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thx
>> peter Giroux
>>
>> American Solar
>>
>> Norcross Ga
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>
> --
> [image: Logo] <https://www.sungineersolar.com/>
> Dave Tedeyan, P.E.
> Owner | Sungineer Solar
> p: he | him | his
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> c: (607) 270-0370
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-- 

*Kirk Herander / **kirkh at vermont.solar <kirkh at vermont.solar>*

*Owner|Principal, VT Solar, LLC*

*Celebrating our 33st Anniversary 1991-2024!!*

dba Vermont Solar Engineering

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