FAQ: Warranty does not apply to user damages

Question:  Last weekend a complete failure of my battery bank happened. When I came to inspect what is wrong, all 8 of my cells were physically damaged, eg. swollen up. It is a clear proof that the BMS 123 failed to protect them properly. The system was working well, for over 3 months, and then this happened over one weekend. My warranty of 12 months has not expired yet, and I apply to my right of warranty, for the batteries to be replaced by your company, and the fault of the BMS to be fixed as well. In the attachment I included the pictures of the damage of my battery bank.

Answer:  We are really very sorry to hear about this failure of the battery bank. However there are many questions arising from your description of the situation: What caused the failure? Was it due to deep discharge and than a fast over charge? Was the system left unattended without supervision? What protective measures were applied and how were they taken in? How could a BMS (a monitoring component) cause this problem? Etc, etc: simply the cells could not “get damaged” by themselves. There is always sore reason behind the “so called sudden failure”. Check an example here.

About the warranty: please note that the warranty for the lithium cells applied only for the manufacturing related defects. There is no warranty for user failures and damaged resulting from the improper function of additional components. Customers cannot apply the warranty for this kind of battery damage. Please take in advance that it is not possible to automatically accept the warranty complaints based just on the fact that all components were purchased from GWL. GWL team has no possibility to influence installation and the final settings of the system. It is the customer responsibility.

About the proper function of the installation: we always suggest to install multiple protection measures to avoid any risks of user damage to the batteries. Get more details here.

Solution for you: we will be happy to assist you to restore your system back. Perhaps the cells were not damaged completely. See details on here for some tips. Be sure we will do our best to provide the support and assistance to you.