After having built and installed the software (1.5.2 and 1.5.3 beta) as explained on this website :

• the service seems to run fine
• nbfc.exe does not work in enabled mode and displays the error "Could not acquire EC lock"
  NBFC ran just fine on the same computer with Ubuntu 17.10.

Step 1 : start the service & check that the service is running
$ sudo systemctl start nbfc
$ sudo systemctl status nbfc
● nbfc.service - NoteBook FanControl service
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/nbfc.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2018-04-30 16:35:48 CEST; 11min ago

Step 2 : read only mode works
$ nbfc.exe start -r
$ nbfc.exe status
Service enabled : True
Read-only : True
Selected config name : Asus Zenbook UX310UA
Temperature : 34

Fan display name : Fan #1
Auto control enabled : True
Critical mode enabled : False
Current fan speed : 0.00
Target fan speed : 0.00
Fan speed steps : 8

Step 3 : enabled mode does not work
$ nbfc.exe start -e
EC initialization failed: Could not acquire EC lock
$ nbfc.exe config -a "Asus Zenbook UX310UA"
EC initialization failed: Could not acquire EC lock

Additional info
mono-complete 4.6.2.7+dfsg-1ubuntu1 amd64
Linux 4.15.0-20-generic #21-Ubuntu SMP Tue Apr 24 06:16:15 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux