Hello, Ben, and All,

I just installed two Epoch V2 Elites 460Ah batteries on our sailboat and am having major problems with them.  The firmware update and initial charging with the charger provided by Epoch went well.  When I configured them for parallel operation, only one of the batteries showed up on the app, and when powered on, would shut off in a few seconds.

I did some troubleshooting with direction from Geoffrey at Epoch, and he determined that one of the RJ45 network ports was bad, and he initiated a warranty return on that one battery.  It has been 9 days since, and I have not heard from the warranty people.  Geoff says they are thousands of miles away, and out of his hands.  This unresponsiveness is in stark contrast to the excellent assistance provided by Geoff, and it is very frustrating.

The Cat 6 cable they provide is only sized for batteries placed side by side, so I had to buy a new one.  After that didn't work, Geoff suggested buying a Cat 8 cable, and sent me a link to the ones the guys in the Epoch lab use.  Since Lab Nerds always have to good stuff, I bought the cable.  And along with switching Master and Slave, the parallel configuration worked, at least as far as the app was concerned.  This led Geoff to the conclusion that a port was bad.

Anyway, I installed the one remaining "good" battery into our system.  We had been using a 100Ah Lifeline as our house battery while we installed the new system that goes with the new batteries.  When I switched to the Epoch as the house, turn off the chargers, there was no power at all on our DC system.  With a charger turned on, we have normal power.  The Epoch app looks normal, but it shows 0.0A when the system is drawing around 5A.  Geoff does not acknowledge a problem with this battery, but i think it is also defective.  When I switch back to the lifeline AGM, turn off the charger, the system continues to operate normally.

I will trace out the system to look for any stupid mistakes, but if there was one, neither battery would work.  The Epoch simply does not provide any power, even though both the meter, and my own DVOM show 13.4V.

I will also put a spare 12V pump across the Epoch to see what happens.

I am getting close to wanting to send both batteries back to them, and buy the Victrons, even though that will leave us eating canned beans for a year to pay for them.  I doubt that Epoch would give me that refund, and at this point, I suspect they will decline to warranty the one, never mind both of them.  I regret buying these batteries.  This snag trashed our winter cruising plans.  Not a big deal in the scheme of things, but this electrical system upgrade has been expensive and an incredible amount of work.

If anyone has any advice, or ideas on the possible problem, I would appreciate any and all input.

Thanks.

Rich