LIFEPO4 Battery discussion thread

cavedog said:
I have the alva gas heater with gas and 3 bars. I just have one so when I work nightshift I was looking for something to use in the office/gaming room that isn't too bad on batteries.
I also have one of those fan heaters but damn that thing chows electricity. Last winter I was still on grid and cried because the R2.5k electricity bill was hectic.
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Heated clothing might be your best bet.
 
cavedog said:
So for people in Gauteng on solar. What heaters if any do you use?

My room has an inverter aircon that can heat also but still uses about 1kWh on max and probably around 600-800w when its on low setting.

What is the best heater price wise and power draw? I was looking at this one. 400w per bar. Small and compact. Reasonably priced.

View attachment 1913447
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That is your best option imho. IR instant heat FTW! Heat the object not the air.
 
cavedog said:
If it has bluetooth you can set all the parameters etc via the app. If not the you can use pacebms windows app with a usb to rs232 cable.


You can adjust the balancing voltages and when it kicks in at what deviation.



If you want better stats you can get a usb to rs232 cable and let solar assistant connect to the bms directly.
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Thanks will give it a go. Know just to find a cable somewhere.
 
x7razor said:
Thanks will give it a go. Know just to find a cable somewhere.
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Wasn't it supplied?

I got 3 cables, if I remember well. The blue one for the battery to inverter comms, a USB to RJ45 and one with a serial connector i think. I will look in the box to see what I received.

For now, I will give it time to sort itself out. It seems to be at the moment with the 10A charge I have. My guess it another 2 weeks or so based on how bad it was on the 30th of May vs this weekend.

Seems the balancing has claimed back about 2% of the SOC before the OVP hits based on the SmartEss logs. It was happening at 95% SOC, and now it's happening at 97% SOC (not 99 as I had mentioned earlier).

So, at this rate, it looks like another 2 weeks for the balancer to trim down the cell with the higher SOC than the others.
 
x7razor said:
Solar Assistant works by using the printer port for comms. The supplied usb cable also works with SA if you plug it into the bms port but not much info like cell voltages.

View attachment 1913380
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x7razor said:
Thanks will give it a go. Know just to find a cable somewhere.
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SolarAssistant

solar-assistant.io solar-assistant.io

So this is what it looks like if solar assistant pulls the info from the pacebms. Not so much more info but enough. I bought that cable because I didn't get comms working between battery and inverter in fact I actually don't want it to communicate because my inverter the lowest discharge is 10% soc and I don't want that so I just use voltage mode.

That cable also allows you to change some bms settings though if you plug it into your laptop or pc which is nice to have. R500 for the cable is a bit expensive I think.

Screenshot 2026-06-08 131043.png
 
denmendez65 said:
Wasn't it supplied?

I got 3 cables, if I remember well. The blue one for the battery to inverter comms, a USB to RJ45 and one with a serial connector i think. I will look in the box to see what I received.

For now, I will give it time to sort itself out. It seems to be at the moment with the 10A charge I have. My guess it another 2 weeks or so based on how bad it was on the 30th of May vs this weekend.

Seems the balancing has claimed back about 2% of the SOC before the OVP hits based on the SmartEss logs. It was happening at 95% SOC, and now it's happening at 97% SOC (not 99 as I had mentioned earlier).

So, at this rate, it looks like another 2 weeks for the balancer to trim down the cell with the higher SOC than the others.
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I hit 98% SOC for the first time since error 64. This is from the logs from SmartEss. The week of the 30th of June was hitting 95%, it says. Then this last week, including the weekend, was 97%.

I checked today, and it hit 98% for the first time. 55.9V was the pack voltage before it got killed off. So @wingnut771, you were right that it wasn't hitting 56.8V.

It is definitely improving, though. I see that for the week of the 30th of June, it was getting killed off at 53,9V due to error 64.

I wasn't monitoring this info before. It was worthwhile to go through the history.
 
denmendez65 said:
I hit 98% SOC for the first time since error 64. This is from the logs from SmartEss. The week of the 30th of June was hitting 95%, it says. Then this last week, including the weekend, was 97%.

I checked today, and it hit 98% for the first time. 55.9V was the pack voltage before it got killed off. So @wingnut771, you were right that it wasn't hitting 56.8V.

It is definitely improving, though. I see that for the week of the 30th of June, it was getting killed off at 53,9V due to error 64.

I wasn't monitoring this info before. It was worthwhile to go through the history.
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56.8V is overkill anyway, you can lower it to 56V.
 
DTBA said:
thats bloody nice thats R500 cable. Get your self the software. https://powerforum.co.za/files/file/224-pacebms-softwares/
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WhatsApp Image 2026-06-08 at 19.13.48.jpeg

Was fortunately quick to get into the settings. Just used my friend Gemini. If I had to watch videos etc I would have given up 🤣.

@cavedog the balancing was set already to start at 3.4V. So, it seems I am balancing for quite a while everyday already, maybe some 1 hour or so. Would explain why I keep seeing improvement in the SOC each week.

The guys at Omnivolt seem to have set it up decently.
 
denmendez65 said:
View attachment 1913600

Was fortunately quick to get into the settings. Just used my friend Gemini. If I had to watch videos etc I would have given up 🤣.

@cavedog the balancing was set already to start at 3.4V. So, it seems I am balancing for quite a while everyday already, maybe some 1 hour or so. Would explain why I keep seeing improvement in the SOC each week.

The guys at Omnivolt seem to have set it up decently.
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pack full charge voltage 55.20v
pack OV alarm to 56v
 
OV alarm tells the inverter the charge voltage. if you run coms.

Full charge voltage will reset the battery to 100% state of charge if the voltage is above 55.20 volts while current is under 2 amps
 
denmendez65 said:
View attachment 1913600

Was fortunately quick to get into the settings. Just used my friend Gemini. If I had to watch videos etc I would have given up 🤣.

@cavedog the balancing was set already to start at 3.4V. So, it seems I am balancing for quite a while everyday already, maybe some 1 hour or so. Would explain why I keep seeing improvement in the SOC each week.

The guys at Omnivolt seem to have set it up decently.
Click to expand...
Increase it to 3.45V. 3.4V is too early.
 
DTBA said:
OV alarm tells the inverter the charge voltage. if you run coms.

Full charge voltage will reset the battery to 100% state of charge if the voltage is above 55.20 volts while current is under 2 amps
Click to expand...
Would explain the thing where the inverter reports say 98% like today and once the charge is killed I see it resets the SOC to 100.
 
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