New Firmware update AC Coupled?

Hey all

I've noticed that there is a firmware update for my AC coupled system but I thought I was on latest firmware of 534 534 but can't find any information or change log for new software?

Anyone know?

An update has just appeared for my AC3 too, not sure whether to install it or ignore it as a bug maybe.

Hmm my firmware is already newer than the one listed on the knowledge base.... Not sure I want to touch this either. Not without knowing the version and what it does!

It is a mass release firmware to fix the battery reserve issue. I assume where some of us see 7% minium rather than 4% etc. KB article coming shortly.

No mention of a calibration required as presumably it's inverter firmware rather than battery. Does that sound right?

I also see that. Did you request to be part of the beta testing for the software, which is supposed to address the SOC drift issue? I did, but I have heard didley squat back from GE, which just adds to the ongoing disappointment I have with their (lack of professional) communications.

judgepd From what i can see on my screen, yes inverter only so no calibration. But the suns out for once so I am not doing it yet 😀 Later when the sun goes to sleep.....

ToothyChris this is a general mass release firmware. I just checked on their chat this morning. There will be a KB article shortly.

Just done the update, showing as D0.535-A0.535 now.

DO NOT TOUCH THIS SOFTWARE "UPGRADE".

My battery is at 100% and the system is still charging it. I should have known better than to trust GE! Lets see how long it takes the support desk to respond to my email.

How long has it been at 100%, the battery often continues charging for a while at 100% which I believe is normal?

I have seen this before (battery showing 100%, but still charging). I always assumed that it was due to rounding errors (i.e. battery is actually at 99.5% but gets rounded to 100% for display purposes).

Was the battery full before you did the upgrade?

"UPGRADED" yesterday, Hit 100% at 1600, it has not been below 95% since,

The battery charged from 2% to 44% then jumped to 100% at 1600. Nothing unusual there.

Use their chat tool on their main site rather than email. Emails feel like they go into a black hole......

Just to check though, how are you checking it is at 100%? App? Dashboard? 5 minute delay issue? Though I assume not if you battery has not dropped below 95%

535 firmware is the same as 534 but with reserve fixed.
So if you EPS you can now reserve some capacity for emergency use.

Live chat works.

Adam is working on a fix, he says it;s because I have two different versions DO298-AO535 ?

Thanks THALL for the tip.

Newman Ah so the problem is unique to you? Wow version 298. Sounds old.

Now on DO535-AO535 and looking better. The problem originated with GE. When you press that button you are trusting that the software will work. Hope I was the only one, I guess they have fixed the download now, good luck,

Newman
I always ask to do it manually. So easy and bullet proof.

GivEnergy support updated my AC inverter to DO535-AO535. My batteries ( 2 x 5.2kwh) are on 3007

However, they continue to discharge below the 20% reserve I had set down to 5%

Is there anything else I need to do to get this to work?

Having seen this thread I checked my AC3 this morning to find it already on 535 (was on 534) - but the last updated section is still blank, there's nothing in Notifications (except a Electricity Meter Com Fail for 10mins yesterday afternoon).....so how did it get done & by who?

Rtidey Has the inverter been rebooted since the upgrade?

Tried running the 534 to 535 update from the portal this afternoon and now rather wishing that I hadn't. Suffice to say that I have not had a working system since and it is looking as though the dongle may be buggered (in a perpetual state of fast flashing even after a push button reset to defaults and unplug re-plug). Been working with GE to find a solution and will update on any progress when online chat re-opens in the morning.

I haven't explicitly done a reboot. I thought that happened during the firmware upgrade process that GivEnergy did.

Maybe it does need a separate reboot. Do I ned to power it down and restart it or is there a better way?

Rtidey Web Portal, Inverter card, reboot button in top right hand corner next to remote control etc

Thanks. I have done restart and will see what happens tomorrow.

Wish they had an option to just download it, put on the dongle on a laptop. From within the logged in area, so not public
Then reinsert and let it do its thing. 10mins all done

Mine seemed fine after the update - until this morning after it fully charged during off-peak and now sits "idle" at 100% and won't discharge to the home. I performed a restart, but no difference. All settings remain as before the update. 🙄

Re my previous post, restarting the inverter made no difference. But, clicking on "reset to defaults" has done the trick (it seems) and is now discharging to home again.

I ran this update without issue. Took less than 10 minutes. Not seen any negative affects from it.

Spenda

Check the reserve level is at 4% if not needed, or a level below 100% if EPS needs a reserve set

Restore to default will set reserve to 4%

TheDragon (GivEnergy) yes it's still at 4%, although mine bottoms out at 5% (including after this firmware update).

Woodstock GE have identified that the update left two files on the dongle which should not have been there (ARMStore.bin and DSPStore.bin). At their request I deleted these two files leaving just MSN.txt in place. This replaced one set of inverter code lights with another but did not fix the problem. Tried pressing the button on the dongle to reset to defaults and setting up again from scratch but this made no difference to inverter lights displayed. Dongle cannot communicate with the internet (although I can access it wirelessly or directly from my PC) so GE cannot login to interrogate the inverter. GE are raising an engineer ticket and I am now waiting for a visit to be scheduled. Can't say that I would recommend running the 534 to 535 update as it has resulted in me being without a system for who knows how long!

Woodstock
So start with inverter on.
Remove dongle and put in a PC, mac will do
MSN.txt leave there.
Copy on armstore.bin and DSPstore.bin
Gracefully eject (important)

Put dongle back in the inverter, within a re seconds it should flash lots of colours. A good 10 mins.
Then stop and reboot

Never had an issue, done 3 this way

TheDragon (GivEnergy) I had ARMStore.bin and DSPStore.bin left on the dongle after the 534 to 535 update (initiated from the portal button) failed. GE told me this was causing a problem and to delete them, which I did! One Problem I have now is I cannot get the dongle to connect to my router. When I run a search from "STA Interface parameters" it finds all my neighbours' routers, air conditioning units etc. but not my router. Tried placing the router right next to the dongle but no luck. My router is working fine and shows on (and connects to) my PC no problem.

Well, after 28hrs without internet connection to my dongle (and trying everything under the sun) I finally got a solid blue light after I had given up and left it flashing for an hour and a half!!!!! The inverter "registered an ARM Communication Fail" which was cleared after three hours (don't know if this involved manual intervention from the GE end but good on them if it did as the alarm was cleared around 10.00PM!). The update to 535 option was available again and after setting it going (twice) and a shut down/restart of the inverter I had a system up and working on 535.

Now for the interesting bit...

The SOC was showing 2% when the system came back, which was clearly wrong as the battery was at 90% before all this started and the voltage was showing 52.6V. OK I thought, I will do a quick timed charge at 3kW to fill the battery, hit the upper voltage limit and see a sudden SOC jump from around 10% to 100% as everything realigns itself. Well the sudden displayed SOC jump came as anticipated but what I did not expect was the way the charging power ramped down over the hour before true 100% SOC was reached. Instead of believing the erroneously low SOC% and charging at full pace until the over voltage alarm was triggered, the system knew it was approaching 100% and adjusted the charging rate accordingly. Does this mean that the 535 update has addressed the problem of the system control believing the SOC figures until a high or low voltage alarm proves otherwise? The displayed SOC is still unreliable but at least it looks as though the system is now able to detect the approach of upper (and hopefully lower) charge limits and thus has some idea of the actual state of charge of the battery. Whether it was intentional or not, it looks as though 535 may have half fixed the SOC problem.

Having had 535 installed for a few hours now I have noticed that the slope of the displayed SOC% line on the dashboard graph looks to be about twice as steep as it should be. It is displaying as if the battery is charging/discharging at twice the rate it actually is (or as if the system thinks the battery capacity is half what it actually is).
Anyone else seeing this?

Slope of graph OK, charging at full rate until 85% SOC / 56.45V then charge rate reduces. Charging at 20% when SOC Jumped from 92% /57.31V to 100%.

Newman Interesting that you are also getting the charge rate reducing as battery approaches full. Since reaching full charge last night the SOC% line displayed on my dashboard shows a drop to 35% SOC and rise again to 100% SOC. The actual was more like 100% down to 70% and back up to 100%. Waiting for a more prolonged discharge to see if the displayed SOC% goes negative! 😀

Anyone on 535, set reserve level, above that of the current SoC.
Does it begin charging at 10% ?

Trying to see when this odd, but sensible behaviour was added.

Ie its maintaining the reserve level rather than just stopping discharge at the reserve.

Well, good news and bad news.

Good news. Battery discharge stopped at a displayed SOC of 5%. It then went into a cycle of alternating voltage recovery and tiny discharges, with the displayed SOC bouncing between 5 and 6 percent.

Bad news. The displayed SOC of 5% was reached after discharging only 1.2kWh from full! I have (had?) a 100% 8.2kWh battery so something is seriously wrong.

The charging behaviour approaching full is encouraging in that it implies the system is using something other than (or in addition to) the SOC % figure to know what level of charge the battery is at.

The discharging behaviour approaching reserve/cut-off (both currently set at 4%) is discouraging in that it implies that the system doesn't have a clue what level of charge the battery is at!

At least that explains the steep slopes of the SOC % curve on the dashboard power graph. The system now thinks that I have a 1.2kWh battery (and as far as current useable capacity is concerned it is correct). I feel a calibration run coming on.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) Last night, with my displayed SOC bouncing between 5 and 6 percent, I tried setting the reserve level to 50%. This stopped all discharge and the displayed SOC stabilised at 6%, staying there until PV charging kicked in this morning.

Did hope that resetting the reserve level might jolt the system into realising that the true SOC was around 85% but no such luck. Looks like the reserve processing logic is only using (and is believing) the displayed SOC % value. It would appear that if a reserve SOC % is set that is higher than the current displayed SOC % then the system will maintain the current displayed SOC % and (in ECO mode at least) only charge above this level when excess solar PV is available.

Will find out if the system maintains a 50% displayed SOC from around 16:00 this afternoon when the battery has fully charged and then discharged 0.6kWh of what it currently thinks is its 1.2kWh capacity!

Very poor day of solar PV today and displayed SOC only reached 44%. I reset the reserve level to 40% before battery started discharging and it seems to be observing this as the displayed SOC is now bouncing between 41% and 42% and the house is drawing from the grid (sun has gone) rather than the battery. Looks like 535 has stopped the system ignoring a user set reserve level although quite why it bounces between 5% and 6% when 4% is set and between 41% and 42% when 40% is set remains a mystery. Will request a calibration run tomorrow and hopefully get my lost battery capacity back. Very frustrating over the weekend knowing that the battery had 85% charge that I could not access!

GE kicked off a calibration run for me today and it ran through to completion. I am slightly concerned that the battery voltage only reached 55.34V and the amount of energy taken on board was only 8.1kWh (my 100% DOD 8.2kWh battery has previously taken between 9.5kWh and 10.0kWh on a calibration run). Think I will live with the reduced capacity until the SOC problem fix is released (assuming it comes in December as promised) and see what effect that has. Would I have pressed the button to install 535 had I known the problems it would cause? Probably not.