Upgrade batteries to LiFePO4 Battery and problems with Prosine Inverter

[dbrown18]

I purchased a CHINS LiFePO4 Battery 12V 300AH Lithium Battery to replace my lead acid batteries. All works fine until I connect the Prosine inverter.

When I connect the Prosine inverter the battery voltage drops to 0 volts. When I turn the disconnect switch to off the battery voltage rises to 4.2 volts. After a few hours the voltage it was back at 13.5 volts.

I contacted CHINS. This is their response, "Based on the information you provided, we don't think our batteries are suitable for your inverter.
I checked the manual and our battery is able to run if we calculate according to the peak power. The manual also does not say that it is suitable for lifepo4 battery."

Has anybody had success running the prosine inverter with a LiFePO4 Battery?

[CactusTwo]

A person I know from the UP had the same problem with his Prosine and he returned the Chins/Amperetime/Zooms/Redo battery (all the same company) and got refunded. I told him to go back to his flooded lead acids. I always precharge my inverter with a capacitor before hooking up my 600ah of Zooms batteries and have no problems whatsoever....he did not!

[CactusTwo]

Check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlrtmJRfSP8

[dbrown18]

Thanks for the info. I've watched a lot of Will's videos to get up to speed on solar and the conversion. Missed that one. That would explain why when I connected a 400 watt inverter to test the battery, it would spark when connecting the negative terminal.

Hopefully the battery is not damaged. Unfortunately I bought the battery 6 months ago, which is pat the return window.

[dbrown18]

With the info that I had to precharge my inverter I tried the battery again this morning. Came online and ran all day without any problems.

[astrnmrtom]

Sounds like it was the battery BMS was reacting to the inrush current as if it was a short. I ran into the same thing when I installed 4-Lifepo4 batteries in parallel with a couple different inverters. Got the spark, and the whole bank went dead. In that particular case, they didn't turn back on later, and to reset the BMS, I had to jump the dead bank off my starter batteries. NOTE: I use the word "jump," but the reset happens instantly, so it was just a matter of touching the jumper cables to the lifepo4 terminals.

I'm no expert, but I don't remember reading anything about certain brand inverters being incompatible with lifepo4 batteries. I'm guessing the person who responded to your inquiry either didn't understand the problem, or just gave a generic answer. I don't know if you were communicating with the battery manufacturer in China, but even minor translating issues can cause problems. A while back I had different issues with my lifepo4 batteries, and while the tech support in China was responsive, and seemed to speak (write) English quite well, I found it difficult to get them to understand the symptoms, which were admittedly complex, and unusual. I often had to explain everything several different ways until they understood. At first I was getting similar, somewhat generic answers, indicating it was my inverter that was the likely problem. It didn't help that I had tried a lot of different troubleshooting steps, and my explanations, were sometimes long. I figured what I was experiencing was too far outside of the common issues that a low level customer service person would be trained to deal with. Eventually it was all worked out, and no, it wasn't the inverter, it was the batteries.

I find it very interesting that with the popularity of lifepo4 batteries and their use with inverters, that a pre-charge step isn't common step in the inverter manuals. Shoot, if there's any risk of damaging the inverters when first connecting them, you'd think the inverter manufacturers would include a cheap resistor with the inverter, along with instructions on how to pre-charge.

I remember reading somewhere that you can use a light bulb such as an 1156 as a resistor to do it - for 12v batteries anyway.

Glad you got it figured out.

[QuantumRift]

Probaby the best bang for the buck and perfect for installation about anywhere: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepowe ... 12v-400ah/