Is anyone running BMS 3.3?

I can see how some people may get the impression that Dan is a crusader for Enginer. In the early days when I had just joined the Enginer Forum I was under the impression that Dan was a paid employee for Jack and was working as part of Jack's service department. Sometime later he informed me that he is just another installer.

 

The PEV BMS has shunting current of 300-500ma. MiniBMS has shunting current of 500-700ma. MiniBMS will balance the pack faster than PEV BMS. The only advantage I see the PEV BMS is that it has celllogs so you can see each cells voltage and it's plug and play. MiniBMS has better balancing capacity, visual balancing indicators and 1 piece design. Installation wise, PEV BMS is better. Performance wise, MiniBMS is better. Can't go wrong with either of them. They both will manage the batteries perfectly and not destroy them like the original one.

 

My local installer in Australia Nilco2 is now using their own third party BMS instead of the BMS16D. I expect that Enginer installers will abandon the BMS16D in droves and go for a third party BMS.

 

I've had just few days of useful operation since charger repair and BMS 3.3 upgrade. Having previously been cratered by charger failure, the battery pack seemed to take a few charge / balance cycles before it "settled down". However, the system is running smoother now, no red light today.

So far, the (reported) cell range/stdv are quieter and seem to converge to maybe 1/2-2/3 of the previous values I was getting with the older BMS vsersion.

This feels encouraging - hopefully it is genuine and continues. Its awful hot here in the Phoenix area right now so I'm a little anxious about anything/everything overheating.

Fingers crossed & wary eye on the system,
Matt

 

Getting a charge of 5.16 KWH is a great result. It seems that 5.6 KWH is the most you can put in according to your killawatt meter.

Since Dan Lander does not recommend using the BMS16D at all regardless of which version you are using I would keep checking the SD data every week, just like Dan Lander has asked his customers to do. It is a lot to ask from a customer but if you don't you could end up with a damaged battery pack.

 

Is version 3.3 top balancing??? to get 5.16KWH into a 4 kWh kit would assume a very low depth of discharge or a very inefficient charger (somewhere in the 75%). With my 8kWh kit which is very well balanced, I can only get to about 7.5kWh of charge from my kill-a-watt meter even after the converter shut down due to pack voltage getting too low. This is with the charger shutting down cause my pack as reach 56V with no cells hitting HVC.

 

I believe version 3.3 does both top and bottom balancing. You should be able to see the plus sign next to the cell being charged on your BMS16D display unit.

 

Sounds very promissing Stockton. Is it an entirely new BMS or a standard BMS16D with a firmware upgrade? In that case I would like to send my v3.2 off for an upgrade.

 

3.3 is a software change, not a hardware change. If you have a 3.1or 3.2 charger you can send it to Enginer to get the update.

 

Hi Floyd,

Like it's predecessors the BMS16D V3.3 could cause an imbalanced battery over the period of two months or longer. Just like what happened to your friend and your own battery pack. Without fields results after three months at the least from the 50 test mules out in the field I would not chance it. I would keep using V3.2 without balancing. After all it was the balancing that most likely caused the imbalance to start with. Dan Lander recommends not using any version of the BMS16D. I would take Dan's advice.

 

I would have waited a while for some more results anyway but thanks for the warning John! I'll keep using v3.2 without balancing for the time being.
Both version 3.0 and 3.1 really messed up the balance of my cells but they are finally back in pretty good shape now. Ik hope v3.3 will be better, only time will tell.

 

I have just sent off my bms16 v3.1 and display unit for replacement or re-flash I presume I will get the V3.3 back. Before sending it off I got a BMSBattery balancer and wired it in. I must say it has in the short time it has been in circuit really worked well I can actually finish my commute before the dreaded red light now. I might delay putting the BMS16 back if I read of any problems on here but otherwise I will put it back in and see + let you know how it worked.

 

I got my v3.3 promptly and decided to put it straight in as I missed the monitoring, unfortunatley it seems to work less reliably than the 3.1 I sent off. The battery is better balanced the problem now is it keeps displaying com error and will report 0 miles in the bar graph even when the battery has just been charged it has also brought up the red light and cut out the inverter with plenty of charge left. I found I can cure most of these issues by unplugging the monitor box and reconnecting but not always. I am seriously considering putting the BMSBattery balancer back and getting a voltmeter. One thing i did notice was that the V3.3 when connected put additional charge into the battery even though the BMSBattery BMS had just finished charging. Maybe the engineer setup charges to a slightly higher voltage yet the range was better with the other.
PS sorry about the long post

 

This is the only reason why I am getting V3.3. Just for the monitoring and logging functions. However Version 4 ..................

 

I had my BMS16 flashed to v3.3 and soon after that C13 of the Rt Pack went bad. I had to send the pack back to Enginer. If you do that count on a long turn around time, 6 weeks or so. I finally got a right pack back , but not my original. I then manually balanced the packs. For now things are working fine. For how long ? who knows?
Now I wonder if the BMS was the culprit!

 

I had problems with C13 too and it was caused by BMS16D. I'm getting the BMS updated to 3.3 too.

 

I am starting to get problems with cell 15 overcharging and I have the 3.3 I will try to manually balance and if I get anymore problems I will go back to the cheap but extremley acurate BMSbattery bms and wire in a voltmeter. I have bought the voltmeter from ebay already, a little blue backlit LCD display from ebay. If anyone is interested I will get the links and maybe post a picture.