Talk to Thomas Honey. He is the Fortress rep, nice guy, and
knowledgeable wrench. He has stepped in on my issue.
Ray
On 11/16/2022 10:58 PM, Howie Michaelson via RE-wrenches wrote:
Good Evening,
I have a frustrating charging issue involving 2 Fortress eVault Maxs
connected to a Sol-Ark 15k. Commissioned the system last week,
replacing a legacy off-grid Dual Stack SunnyIsland 5048s and 2-volt
Rolls battery system. Initially, we connected one of the eVaults to
the Sol-Ark, programmed it to Fortress' and Sol-Ark's specs, setup
closed loop, and things seemed fine. The battery charged at around 95
amps off the 20kW Kohler. The next day we connected the 2nd eVault,
went through the procedures as Fortress suggested, made the necessary
settings changes in the Sol-Ark, and that is when the issue started.
Ever since we connected the 2nd eVault, we have not been able to get
the charge rate much above a combined total of 35 amps. Fortress has
pretty much said that it can't be anything on their end (although the
communication with them has been very much limited and frustrating).
They say that nothing on their side would limit the charge rate to
that low, especially if the batteries were in a lower state of
charge. We've talked to at least 3 different Sol-Ark technicians more
than once. We have changed the setting between closed loop, % SOC,
and Battery Voltage multiple times. We've tried dropping back to a
single battery, both the first one we had connected and the second one
(changing the battery setup and the Sol-Ark parameters, but have only
seen at times a moderate increase in maximum charge rate (up to about
40 amps total).
This small increase happened after a Fortress technician suggested
that we turn on both the generator and the grid charging toggles (the
generator is connected to the grid port on the Sol-Ark as per
Sol-Ark's recommendation. Sol-Ark has run out of suggestions at the
moment, and are having us cycle the batteries tonight and they will
start another charge cycle in the morning to see if having a lower SOC
along with the firmware reload will change anyhing (I don't think it
will - it didn't the last several times.
Has anybody seen this type of behavior before? I don't think it is a
settings issue, as several technicians have gone through them, I have
gone over them many times using the Fortress/Sol-Ark integration white
papers. Hoping to get higher level tech involved ASAP, since I don't
feel like the lower level techs know enough to provide useful ideas.
Thanks,
Howie
*Howie Michaelson
**Sun Catcher*
*****/NABCEP Certified Solar PV Installer™
/**
**Solar Electric Systems Sales & Service
802-272-0004*
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