I had a similar situation with Homegrid, where upon commissioning the
system wouldn't even work, because one battery was lower than the
others. After doing the diagnostics (a 2nd trip) I got the system
operational minus a battery. Then on a third trip, after buying a PC
lap top, and getting their special dongle, I went back, and had to sit
on site for 3 hours charging the one weak battery with the rest shut
off. I didn't have to take it a part though. It seems to be working
now, and this is a stand alone off grid, sitting in a field.
Tech support was decent, I like that they have a built in heater, and
that its closer to actual 48 v nominal, (one less cell than others).
However, I have not speced any more since.
To be fair, I've had trouble with most of the LiPO4 offerings so far.
Simpliphi: complete 4 battery failure, customer out of commission for 2
months. Probably due to an XW over voltage.
Fortress: shutdowns n the middle of the day at 100% SOC due to a
firmware issue. Rotten meat in the freezer. Customer gave up and sold
the ranch.
Homegrid: as stated
EG4: complete failure of 2 battery system after a grid outage of 2
hours. System down for months before getting replacements.
Rubix: so far so good, but instructions not very clear. 24 v offering,
but no heater.
Midnite Powerflo: I'm about to install 2 systems next week in Puerto
Rico, so we'll see.
I'm still doing HUP lead acid for off grid, because I know what its
going to do. LiPO4 is just not quite ready for off grid, until all
these manus can get their firmware together, get heating systems built
in, and get the price lower.
Ray Walters
Remote Solar
On 2/11/2025 4:35 PM, Jason Szumlanski via RE-wrenches wrote:
Hi Wrenches,
I am regretting some HomeGrid Stack'd off-grid installations right
now. There is a major flaw in the way these function in an error
state. For those of you that don't know, these 48V batteries are
stacked with a single BMS on top, covering up to 8 batteries below.
Each battery module has a circuit breaker and dip switches to identify
the battery communication number and location in the stack. Each BMS
can be paralleled to additional stacks with communication cabling.
The issue is when one battery module goes into an error state. What
will happen is that battery stack's BMS will recognize the error, and
then shut down the whole stack. This cascades to the other stacks and
the system shuts down - fails to deliver 48V at the output terminals
on the BMS of any stack.
That is annoying, but what's even more problematic is you can't just
shut off the offending battery to bypass it. You need to physically
change all of the dip switches to bypass it and then reprogram the BMS
to re-recognize the new module count (after taking it out of
parallel). This is all very time consuming and requires the inverter
system to be shut down. Even if a battery is not in an error state,
you can't just turn it off. The whole system goes haywire.
Once you have it bypassed, you can hook up a RS-232 cable (Mac users
need not apply) and use their software to gather diagnostics. Customer
service will then want to do additional diagnostics with the battery
in the stock, but that is not reasonable in and off-grid system where
uptime is critical. One of the faulty modules I am dealing with was
diagnosed as one of 15 cells with low voltage. The "solution" is to
take it out of the stack and charge it to 100% with an external charger.
By the time I'm done with all of the diagnostic nonsense, I can almost
pay for a new battery with the lost labor. Isn't the whole idea for
this not to happen with balancing done automatically? It was suggested
to me that it didn't get charged to 100% often enough, and that is why
it happened. That isn't an acceptable reason for failure in an
off-grid system.
I hate to say this, but EG4 has a far better 5kWh solution in this
respect. Each module has it's own BMS. When one fails, you can simply
turn off the circuit breaker and everything else continues to work. In
fact, a fault in one BMS doesn't take out the whole stack or stacks of
battery modules.
Back to HomeGrid. When this happens, in my mind this is an automatic
RMA. They should be replacing these, no questions asked. Especially at
almost twice the price of EG4. They actually want me to disassemble
the case of the battery and charge it with an external charger (which
I don't have) directly from the terminals that are internal to the
battery case. Totally unacceptable. Whatever is inside that case is
their problem in my opinion.
I am not selling anymore HomeGrid until I get satisfactory resolution
to these issues. EG4 isn't perfect, but I have actually had pretty
good success installing some that I sold and quite a few that
consumers purchased directly. And at almost half the price, it's
easier to eat the cost of a battery here and there for customer
satisfaction.
Anyone have similar issues with HomeGrid?
Jason Szumlanski
Florida Solar Design Group
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