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  • Author Author: KalebTheMaker
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Solar Battery Bank Monitor Project

KalebTheMaker

Hi all,

I'm Starting another project here. I would like to be able to monitor the state of each of my batteries. They are Kilovault HLX 3600's and I have 12 of them. There are three banks of four in series/parallel. Each battery has Bluetooth, and I can access all the data I would ever want via Bluetooth. But I have to log into each one of them from my phone while being in Bluetooth range. 

The problem:

I need to be able to tell if the batteries are out of balance or not. That is the main thing. It would be really nice to be able to see the State of Charge for each battery, and even cooler to be able to see the SOC and voltage of each cell in the battery. Also nice to see charge and discharge amps. 

The best-case scenario would to be able to collect that data in real-time and store it in a time-series database. An acceptable case would be monitoring the voltage on each battery with some external system and collecting that into a time-series database. 

I have attempted to sniff the Bluetooth traffic, but I'm really not sure what I am doing right or wrong, it's almost like I can't see any traffic. I picked up the Bluefruit LE sniffer from Adafruit and had Wireshark collect data, but I didn't see any packets that I expected to see from some of the BT sniffing examples I could find. Maybe it's not LE? I'm not sure. What I was hoping to be able to do is send a BTLE signal and have it spill its guts, collect that data and put it in the TSD. After a day and a half of mucking with that, I had zero success. 

Another option would be the CANBUS connections on the batteries. There is no documentation from Kilovault on the protocol or anything. I connected the battery to a CANBUS transceiver that was connected to an Arduino, and setup it up from an example to show me any packets. The first time I did this, I saw something, but now when I do it, I don't see anything at all. There is a scenario where I could connect the batteries via CANBUS to my Victron system and it could pull all of the data, but the battery vendor will not tell me anything about the CANBUS capabilities or how to set that up. If I could figure that one out, there would be a TON of people who have similar setup's to mine that would use it. 

Does anyone have any experience with Bluetooth sniffing, or CANBUS that could help point me in the right direction?

The last scenario would be using a voltage divider and measuring the voltage on each battery from an analog pin on a microcontroller. That at least would tell me (in a resting state) if any of the batteries are out of balance or not. I could use a table to give me a *very* rough estimate of the state of charge based on the voltage. Currently, this seems the most likely path because of the lack of success with BTLE and CANBUS. 

Any thoughts on this last scenario? I'm just thinking of a couple of resistors (7.5k/30k) in a voltage divider, then read that via an analog pin on an ESP32 or something. 

Thanks,

-KalebTheMaker

  • in reply to KalebTheMaker

    That's unfortunate.  Hopefully you can get some resolution.  Maybe there will be some class action but not sure how big their market was.  

    My son was designing solar installations for Solar World US when they went out of business in 2018.  I had gotten my rooftop system components from them and they had some advanced notice of their closing and they transferred my warranty to a third party.  I actually had to use it about a year after installation because I had an intermittent problem with bypass diodes in one of the panels which was causing the inverter to shutdown.  The performance warranty on the panels is 25 years so it will be interesting to see if I ever have to try to use it again.  

    I didn't add batteries due the cost at the time but with the recent extended outage this winter due to an ice storm I've been considering it.  I have a small installation with a 4.2 KW dual string inverter but I just reached 36 MWhr of production and I've been pretty happy with it.  On average I have been able to completely offset my electricity usage over a 7 year period.

  • in reply to KalebTheMaker

    "...I will contact their attorney to see what my options are..."

    Hopefully not $300/min just for the correspondence Money mouth

  • in reply to ralphjy

    This is true, and I just found out two days ago. GigaWatt is not honoring warranties from Kilovault or AltEStore. They quite literally sent me an email with Kilovaults attorneys contact info, and an email address I could schedule support (for anything but the batteries) for $300/hr. I will contact their attorney to see what my options are. I should have 6 years left on my Kilovault Warranty. 

  • in reply to KalebTheMaker

    Hi Kaleb,

    I've been following this thread since the Kilovault batteries and BMS looked interesting.  I was surprised in searching for info that Kilovault had gone out of business earlier this year.  Is that true?  I saw this discussion on on diysolarforum.com that a company named GigaWatt had purchased the brand and website of altEstore but that Kilovault was defunct.  Is your warranty any good?

    Ralph

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    Interesting, I looked at the docs that you sent and it looks primarily UART. There is also an android app for this module, and I wonder if it would connect. Im charging up my android tablet now to sideload it and see what it gives me. 

    I think if the CANBUS option could be figured out, it would benefit a lot of people. Kilovault is known in the community for being extremely tight with documentation, and there are a ton of people who have no integration like I do. 

    The *funny* part of that, is when I was negotiating with AltEStore, my sales rep promised me that the integration would work.