F 69 fault on grid tied XW+ multi unit system

moosemountain · February 21

I have a system that was off grid for many years and is now grid tied. It's all Schneider Electric gear. I had a 2008 xw6048 off grid for years and upgraded to a closed loop system using 4 Discover Battery LFP modules. Schneider had a firmware update to make the xw6048 think it was an xw+6848 which I needed to do to make it work in a closed loop configuration with the batteries. I found an XW+6848 to add to the system before they were all gone. All had been going okay except 3 of my 4 Discover Battery units died under warranty and Discover and Schneider just pointed fingers at each other. They had this integration half baked and it didn't quite work and still doesn't. I had a business that installed solar and I have 8 or 10 similar systems out there with different batteries.

Then the grid arrived here and I started a long process to connect. I'll skip some of the gory details and get to my current problem. The electrical inspector seemed to keep thinking of new requirements between inspections. The latest, and understandable, one was a remote power off switch outside for the battery powered gear inside. i was happy to remember that the Schneider gear had that onboard and set it up. it's a harsh slam on the brake shutdown of everything on the Xanbus network which requires manual restart and power cycling of all components. It also fired on it's own when I was out of town and I had to talk my partner through resetting things over the phone by memory. I only intended to get past my final inspection and disable it. So final inspection day came earlier this week and I flipped the outside switch and everything crashed as intended. Passed the inspection. As I started turning everything back on the converted XW6048 came up with an F66 fault settling into an F69 fault. I've tried new cables on Xanbus and AC sync and with nothing connected to it. No joy after every dance move I can think off. I finally called Schneider tech support and struggled through a conversation close to English and was told could be a failed comm board. No part number offered and no parts from them.

I'm prepared to believe that is a comm board and I know I'm capable of replacing it but just poured a drink and thought I'd poke here to see if anyone has run into this and can add to my fun. Thanks in advance.

Dave Angelini · February 23

This is a pretty weird one, in many ways! If you have the sync and config faults you have to verify that
when you powered down the 2 very different inverters still have the same settings. Even though the old greybox xw thinks it is a xw+, does it still?

simplyfy with only one XW for troubleshooting. Standard warning about combox having security flaws and being discontinued 5 years back. Replaced combox with Insight.

moosemountain · February 26

I have a Combox but it is just hanging on the wall not connected since I got an Insight a month or so ago. I've tried every trick I can think of to bring the failed one back to communicating. With the two disconnected from each other, or any other way, it won't start up and talk to anything. It looks like it tries to and immediately pops up the fault. It still responds to button pushes such as turning off and on but won't clear the fault. I opened it up last night and wiggled comm connectors but no joy. There are multiple led's that come on on the boards but still the fault. I wrote Inverter Service Center in TN this morning about getting a comm board but haven't gotten a response. I actually ordered two Pros which are on their way but I have several past clients with the same gear so having backups around seems like a good idea since backward compatibility seems to have about a 10 year lifespan with this system.

moosemountain · February 28

Update: I've ordered two XW Pros to reset my system. Since I have several previous clients with XW's and XW+'s in the area I'm going to make these old ones available as backup replacements. I've been searching all over for a comm board for this failed XW but no luck so far. I was wondering if anybody has a parts unit laying around that might sell me a used board to try. I'm guessing the comm board in the + is the same.

F 69 fault on grid tied XW+ multi unit system

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