₦airaland Forum

ojeysky:
Is there someone who claim to take out 6kw? If there is then the person was at over 95% capacity. However I have seen people on this thread mention about 110 at a voltage around 3v person, that was a clear indication it was 120AH as I earlier explained to you. It's normal for new cells to have about 5 to 10AH more than their name plate on first few cycles, it however doesn't remove the reality of the actual capacity.

I needed not have replied, you have answered the question.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
Does this mean the people taking out 6kw are doing 100% DoD or the cells are underrated capacity wise per label sticker?

Lithium batteries are usually slightly underrated by about 5AH. I believe that is why some of the marketers/makers can claim that you can do 100% DoD. So, though this is labelled 120AH, it might be up to 125AH or a little more. Like some people have suggested here you can probably not discharge most batteries to true 100% DoD without irreversible damage except LTO I think.

ojeysky:
For starters, what was the actual capacity label on the cells??

120AH

Saipro:
Could we have insight of the inner workings or even pictures of the cells used?

I will see what I can do. I could have taken all those pictures the day I installed the BMS because I brought out the entire thing. As I said, it was really well built. I wish I can get a good welder or iron bender to construct such nice cage for my other DIY.

adrusa:
Good to hear your experience with PylonTech. However, PylonTech is not "lithium battery", it is a battery system based on lithium chemistry. If you need "esoteric skills" to get information out of your proprietary battery system as you suggested for your PylonTech, that is PylonTech problem, not a lithium battery problem and the manufacturer has failed. I have made a mental note of avoiding PylonTech if it is as bad and as complex as you suggested. I suggest you rip out the PylonTech BMS and replace it with something you will have absolute control over. That is what I did for my Felicity lithium; I replaced its BMS with ANT BMS.

Felicity lithium battery is devoid of all that complexity. DIY lithium batteries when properly done are even simpler. The esoteric skills you need to talk to your batteries using some popular BMSes are pairing your phone to a bluetooth device or connecting a usb cable to your computer and running an application.

Or maybe it is a problem of being too techy and demanding. Most people will use their devices as the manufacturers intended. They will buy a TV, scan channels, connect their DSTV decoder and spend the next 10 years only changing channels and increasing and reducing volume. People like you and me will look for remote codes to add functions to our TV, root it, SSH into it and generally mess around with it. A normal person will probably buy the PylonTech battery, get it installed and spend the next 10 years only checking the led to assess state of charge. No serial or RS485 or connecting to any terminal or computer.

Technophiles make everything look complicated. When I buy an android phone, I install a custom recovery, root it and then start searching the fora for custom ROMs. When I'm tired of monkeying with it, I return it to stock before I hand it over to my wife who enjoys the phone without bothering about rooting or custom ROMs.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
I can speak to the complexity of Lithium vs lead acid.

There is so much one needs to get right else a huge investment would go down the drain.

I use a popular and well reviewed battery - PylonTech. You are told you can add new batteries to the bank at will. In reality it is not so straight.

I got my first set of 8 in November 2019 and it was easy peasy until I added the 2nd set of 8 in June 2020. The bottom most battery refused to catch up with the others in charge and discharge and kept throwing over voltage and over temperature alarms. I would have lost that battery had I not gained admin access to the BMS and recalibrated values to allow the module recover and catchup with the others. The cells in that module were not perfectly matched as the others and kept drifting.

Now I added 4 new bricks this October and the BMS software version is higher than the old bricks - the result - combined BMS throttled my maximum charge current to about 300A - 15kw instead of the design 500A/26kw. I am now current limited to 15kw by the battery even though I have a 20kw PV array. I have yet to figure that one out as the BMS tells the Victron chargers what to do per time and if you insert a new value, it just gets overwritten 30 seconds or so later.

The next big myth is discharge rates - you will be told you can run at 1C with no issues - this is true but only within a SoC range e.g 20% to 100% - once you drain battery below 20%, you may find the BMS cutting large loads to protect the circuitry and cells - ditto for charge rates - try filling a 48v 1000Ah battery at 1C and you see cell temperatures jump up fast - this is not good for long term health so in my case I capped my charge current at 0.3C - getting from 20% to 100% within 3 hours on a 48v 1000Ah bank is good enough performance for me.

Really there are many things to consider and get right especially for large systems. I routinely see my BMV 500A shunt running hot when passing like 18kw of energy. I see up to 50degC on shunt and 40degC on bus bars so I am in the market now for 1000A shunt and even thicker bars than I already have. Even my 600A continuous rated Blue Sea Systems DC isolator runs hot when passing 18kw of energy. With the energy density of Lithium, a short or failure in the system could be catastrophic indeed.

On the plus side you get early warning of issues especially if the BMS talks to you. This is one strong advantage over lead acid. Because I can see every detail about every cell with the Texas instruments chip BMS bundled with the Pylons, you can take early corrective action. Again this info is not available plain text, a solid knowledge of cable pinouts, serial/RS485/CANBUS communications and many other esoteric skills are needed to interact with the BMS and adjust operating parameters if required

Good to hear your experience with PylonTech. However, PylonTech is not "lithium battery", it is a battery system based on lithium chemistry. If you need "esoteric skills" to get information out of your proprietary battery system as you suggested for your PylonTech, that is PylonTech problem, not a lithium battery problem and the manufacturer has failed. I have made a mental note of avoiding PylonTech if it is as bad and as complex as you suggested. I suggest you rip out the PylonTech BMS and replace it with something you will have absolute control over. That is what I did for my Felicity lithium; I replaced its BMS with ANT BMS.

Felicity lithium battery is devoid of all that complexity. DIY lithium batteries when properly done are even simpler. The esoteric skills you need to talk to your batteries using some popular BMSes are pairing your phone to a bluetooth device or connecting a usb cable to your computer and running an application.

dapsyra:
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Buyers' beware. Not a regular lithium setup. Clearly not for anyone starting a lithium journey. Looks like a custom setup made for a japanese robot. Look very well before you take the plunge.
https://jspower.en.taiwantrade.com/product/battery-for-assist-robot-670510.html#
https://forum.esk8.news/t/battery-clearing-house-sv-ba10-13s-20ah-battery/22100/249

GeorgeD1:
lolz bro! i guess you may need to read my post all over again because you totally missed the point.
nobody started any war (contrary to your assertions) and if engaging in intellectual discourse is considered a "war"
(in your opinion) then i guess it's a good "war". meanwhile, i'm sure the newbies are seriously taking note and they
surely are the real beneficiaries from all the back and forth exchanges.
having said that, i repeat my stand that both lithium and lead acid have their place (in case you might not be so
inclined to go over my past submissions), so no one battery chemistry is better than the other.
what works, works and what doesn't work doesn't work. most peeps today still use lead acid because it works for
them. i mean, think about it, why change a winning team? the fact that some people dabbled into it ill-informed
and got their fingers burnt doesn't mean we should condemn lead acid and begin to play up the lithium card as
the magical solution for our storage problems. any attempt to gloss over the negatives will mean folks might likely
repeat whatever mistakes they made with lead acid that pushed them into looking for salvation in a new battery
chemistry. and the chase goes on and on with many getting disillusioned with renewables in the end.
once again, my take: let's put things in their proper perspective so that would-be enthusiasts will have a fair idea
what they are getting themselves into. i'm sure that's not too much to ask for?

Batteries are all about chemistry and the assertion that "no one battery chemistry is better than the other" is the ultimate untruth in chemical power storage. I don't think I need to add anything to that. Enjoy bros.

GeorgeD1:
well done bro. you took the words right out of my mouth. nobody is fighting anybody on here. just pure
intellectual discourse.
my concern mainly though is we should all try to put things in their proper perspective.
(and i must say you certainly have done a better job than myself in putting your own personal usage experience
to bear on the various battery chemistry types in question)
unknown to us, a lot of newbies and would-be solar enthusiasts do visit this thread and make decisions based
on what they read. it would really be unfair to them if we paint an unnecessarily glossy image of lithium only
for them to dabble into it before realizing things were not nearly as rosy as they thought.

This so-called "war" was started by your attempt to run down lithium. We were only correcting your wrong assertions about it. We all started with Lead Acid and I still have a lead acid bank that I run side by side with lithium. Lithium is the better option if cash is not a problem. That is not even open for debate except for people who do not follow progress of renewable energy. Lithium is all the rage at the moment. Just check international solar fora if in doubt. Anyone who can maintain lead acid can certainly maintain lithium. All that is required is to set proper charging parameters, just like it is required for lead acid.

The idea of "get what works for you" is even not there. If lead acid can work for you, lithium will work for you better, if you have the cash to put down. Finally, let me answer one issue you raised. Why are telecoms companies still running lead acid? Because telecom companies use batteries as UPS, not to run their services. Their batteries are expected to be floating most of the time, and not deeply used to any degree. That is why "used" telecoms batteries are highly prized; they are regarded as having received little to no use. And if you really don't run on battery and you only use it as UPS to prevent shutdowns when you are changing power sources, there is no reason to put so much resources in batteries meant for deep discharges like lithium. And lithium does a lot worse when kept constantly floating. Lithium actually prefers partial charge. That is why there are apps to prevent your phone and laptop batteries from charging to 100% to prolong their life. If you need batteries that will be kept floating for months and months, go lead acid, lithium is not suitable for such usage pattern.

For newbies, we cannot overstate it, if you have the cash go lithium right from the gate. That is where many people will be in 5-10 years time. All those urging you to do lead acid, would have moved. And like they say, misers pay twice. Some of us started our solar journeys with cheapos solar panels (e.g. no name brand), charge controller (e.g. phocus pwm), inverter (eg. no name chinese inverters) before we realised the benefits of paying top money for good, tested and trusted brands like Victron, Outback etc. If you have the means, go big, go lithium, the only thing to fear about lithium is fair itself. I have tasted both words substantially. There is nothing anyone can tell me about lead acid batteries that I have not experienced. From huge trailer batteries (my very first batteries) to Trojan premium flooded batteries (my current lead acid bank).

If you don't have the means, good lead acid will still serve you, just not as good as lithium.

By the way, I was banned for my last lengthy post. I have no idea why. My first time of experiencing the dreaded Nairaland erratic banning bots. I hope I wont be banned for this.

DUNKA:
Goodday any further feedback on this battery? How is it acting now? Thanks

For what it is, it is doing well.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
All the Lithium vs Lead Acid discussions, interesting ideas and takes coming up.

I think some of people's experiences are driven by bias in how they obtained their measurements.

I have heard it said repeatedly that voltage will sag beyond useable levels before you get Lead Acid beyond 50% DoD - this is not true at all. A premium inverter like Victron, the lowest Low Voltage Disconnect is around 37v in a 48v nominal system. You can drain your Lead Acid to 100% DoD if you so wish just that it will have a much shorter service life.

If you had an indian type inverter with LVD at 11.5v per 12v nominal, it would appear the battery has given all useable energy early whereas the real bottleneck is the inverter cutoff.

In practice, to safely deep discharge Lead Acid, you must understand how amps rise as voltage drops for thesame amount of power and size your cables, busbars, breakers and fuses appropriately.

I went for LFP because of superior safety and stability. I went for a premium pylontech as I am entirely offgrid and needed a product that could deliver under heavy duty daily use.

For my chemistry, 3.2v per cell is about the safe discharge limit before destructive chemical processes and imbalances begin in the cells. This is about 80% DoD. I routinely did 75% DoD for almost a year until I added the last set of 4 bricks.

This precise cutoff is also helped by having an inverter capable of invoking a disconnect based on SoC. In the Victron world, the PylonTech battery can broadcast its precise SoC to the Victron GX who then communicates to the MultiPlus or Quattro's inbuilt battery monitor. So even as my batteries age, I can assure I always cutoff at 25% SoC/75% DoD and a little above 3.2v per cell.

This is far more reliable than voltage based cutoffs especially in situations where you do not/cannot put in a full charge into the battery. Once I discovered Victron's shutdown on SoC feature, I visited all sites I support (even the lead acid ones) and performed the settings change for free. For lead acid, I can ignore voltage based cutoff and simply set a true 50 to 55% DoD limit.

These value added features not easily recreated el cheapo are the justification for a premium inverter with comms and a premium battery that can speak to the inverter and charge controllers directly.

We all have experience with lead acid batteries. This is probably where we are almost all (experience) experts. But, some of us are even more experienced with lead acid than others. If you don't have adequate monitoring and just allow your inverter to switch off when it gets to its factory set LVD, your expertise is limited. You need a proper capacity gauge like Victron BMV or Outback FNDC to monitor the proper capacity of your batteries and from that background, I insist that unless your load is small, you are unlikely to ever drain your lead acid battery pass the 30-50% mark. I will like to hear from anyone with a proper monitor who is able to discharge his lead acid pass 30% at 0.5-1C.

Most inverters set the LVD at a reasonable level of about 11v. Under tough weather I used to take my lead acid bank to 10v, but that is basically to run some lights and FAN in the night, I can not run anything that uses much power including my TV. Even with that, I will only drive my SOC to about 40-50% for about an hour or so before the inverter shuts off as the battery sags under 10v. And if your batteries ever get to this volt, don't ever let it sit there for long. They will become irreparably damaged.

The only excuse for a war between LFP and lead acid is emotion and maybe commercial interests. LFP is way better. That is the consensus of all solar enthusiasts. The only major disadvantage is short term cost, because on long-term, the cost is even better than for lead acid.

Those with huge lead acid banks who rarely drain beyond 70-90% will vouch for lead acid and organise thanksgiving for it. But how many of us were ever able to be in that category safe for @GeorgeD1 and @NiyiOmoIyunade?

I have a friend who bought into the Monbat hype. He paid close to a million (at the time) for 400AH of it at 48V and he set his LVD to 48v or DoD of not more than 20% (80% SOC). After about 2 years he started complaining that he is not happy with the bank's performance. Today he has complemented his Monbat with 220AH of LFP for peace of mind. And no one should say anything about his battery management skills. He is a pro and he has all that is needed to manage his batteries properly.

If you can afford it, go lithium, and thank me later. If you can not, buy lead acid and start saving for lithium. I don't sell either of them, but I have worked extensively with both.

kiekie1:
Quite Vivid & Lucid .. Weldone Sir !

If one must go lithium way, it's best to deeply study it's chemistry before dabbling into it to avoid fire or stories that touch as we've some substandard prototypes with incoherent~falsified datasheet coming into the market these days tho

More FUD!

LIFEPO4 is one of the safest battery chemistries. By a long stretch. I have seen lead acid exploded in cars before.

funshyboi:
Good evening guys,

I’m a little bit worried about my LifePo4 battery that last 5 hours when I Do charge it with electricity. But when I use solar panel it doesn’t last up to 2hours.

Even The controller shows It that That the panel stops charging battery at 95% Instead of it to be at 100%

kiekie1 eleojo23 wilmaria14 GeorgeD1 ceaser your vast experience and suggestions are needed.

What kind of charge controller do you have and have you set the parameters properly especially, length of absorption, end amps, absorption voltage etc.

GeorgeD1:
i really get amused when i see these postulations on paper how 50% dod of lead acid should be equal to
80% dod of lithium. even now we are seeing weirder assumptions of 30% being equal to 80% lead acid!
i guess its fine when we do these abstract projections but we all know that in the real world things do
turn out differently.
having said that, i think the main attraction for lithium remains its expected longevity due to the possible
many cycles as compared to lead acid. however, if my recent experience with my zenith batteries is anything
to go by, it means lead acid when properly managed can also give many years of use without conking out
(by the way, my guy who bought the used zeniths from me has had nothing but praise for their
outstanding performance). quite remarkable given they already served me for 7 years plus as at the time i
replaced them and sold them off.
then, enter the hoppeckes, the exides, the sonnenscheins which promise up to 15 years of quality backup
for their lead acid batteries and the attraction for lithium further takes a dive.
while the lithium jingle continues unabated, my candid advice to newbies is to be wary of bogus promises
from sellers intent on offloading their lithium wares on them. they will come up with several clever marketing
tactics all intended to make a sale.
if you're just starting off on the renewables journey, you will do well to stick with tried and tested products of
which lead acid batteries is one example. you really don't need to dabble into lithium where you have to
contend with a whole gamut of bos devices including bms, bmv, cell balancers, special chargers with lithium
profile, inverters which have to be tinkered with in order to work with lithium, etc.
the world is already complex as it is, you don't need to complicate things further just because you want to
provide reliable uninterrupted power for your household.
go with what works out of the box. a word is enough...

This is what is called FUD, Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt and it is used by many to fight new technologies they either don't like or understand.
Yes, Lead acid batteries have been tested, but not trusted. Its glaring failures is the reason why the world has constantly being trying to find better alternative since the turn of the centuries and Lithium in its various iterations have been shown to be better in all ways than Lead acid.

For me, while longevity is an important attraction for Lithium, what I like most about it is its ability to hold up its voltage until it is almost completely drained. It is the reason why it is possible to take the advertised AH out of a lithium battery while that is difficult for lead acid. Of course there are so many other advantages, but I will recommend that anyone interested should read up about them.

As to BMS, BMV, Special Chargers etc, most batteries including lead acid requires all of these except a BMS. And the reason why lead acid don't require BMS is because the owners serve as the BMS. With a good BMS, your battery is protected from OVERVOLTAGE, OVERDISCHARGE, OVERCHARGE and even sometimes Short Circuit. With lead acid, the owners will have to do these by babysitting the battery. Every battery require adjustable charger. That some peope use chargers with stock parameters is because the chargers are cheaper and the owners do not know better. If you can not adjust the voltage and current of your charger to match the specifications of your battery, you will soon destroy the battery, lead acid more quickly than lithium as the BMS will always protect your lithium.

Anyone starting off, who has the capacity to get lithium should get it without hesitation, it is your best bet. You will not have to change it in 8 months to 2 years like most lead acid battery. And no one should be deceived by the hype of 10 year old lead acid batteries. In some rare cases that can happen, if the battery bank is large and rarely deeply discharged. For most people with a small bank that sees regular deep discharges, if your lead acid batteries last 4 years, you have done well. And don't be deceived by those 15 years design life. You can only get that from most if the batteries are mostly floating as it happens in some settings especially for telecoms.

And FYI, I currently have two battery banks. A 540AH lead acid that I have had for about 5 years and a 340AH LFP of about a year duration. If I have the means I have now and know what I know now about LFP more than 10 years ago when I started my solar journey, I would have started out with lithium.

babniyen:
Good morning house, I am being offered considering a 100ah 24v Lithium battery as a replacement for my 24v 200ah Lead acid. I want to know if it will standup to the same service levels.. Thanks

As I have said here many times, unless your load is very small, your lead acid is likely to die before you get to 50% DoD due to voltage sag and inverter cut-off. So, don't be deceived by the 200AH of lead acid battery, it is a mirage, you can never get 200Ah out of that battery in real life. LFP on the other hand will give you its name plate AH and then a little more since they are usually mildly underrated.

Trippledots:
I'm looking at 24v / 300ah-400ah. Depending on total cost price.

48V 200-300AH

BlackArab:

you need some schooling brother.

Yet, you refused to school me?

ojeysky:
What kind of energy friendly electric kettle or hotplate are folks here using?

Good question. Electric kettles are so power hungry. I had to ban one that my Ma'am was using.

earthrealm:
2 or 3 trusted people is enuff for the group buy. Is the shipper on nairaland?
Care to share his name?

I'm interested in joining a group buy.

So, what is this useful for other than 419?

ojeysky:
I actually tried this the first day but men having the capacity to discharge faster was the pro, round the clock I could only get to 250AH discharge by morning and I could not risk not getting the sunlight juice the next morning.
Nevertheless I will certainly dedicate a day when I will be fully home to do this, am curious to know as well

I will suggest you let it happen naturally when you have extended outage. But, be prepared to juice it back with generator if necessary.

ojeysky:
Section highlighted is actually a problem, so imagine you have set your charge rate to 80A with a BMS that has a max of 50A and initially that will be divided across the battery banks but after the other banks in parallel are done, the whole 80A goes to that single bank that is not yet fully charge. Also computing SOC across banks and voltage difference determination would also be more complicated when you have multiple ANT BMS in parallel especially if you don't have an external device at the edge(like BMV) to take that log.
This is why i prefer to put my cells in parallel into a single bank with a single BMS controlling things, instead of doing the parallel at bank level I go the cell level route. Though i will ofcourse advice to do that for max of 3 cells (its 2 in my case).

Bolded! That is not how battery charging works. Irrespective of how much current is available, batteries will take just what it needs based on its state of charge. Unless you have a dumb charger that does not respond to battery's internal resistance and voltage. As at time that battery was taking in 6A, my solar setup can supply up to 90A.

@ Ojeysky and others.

This is the point I was making about battery banks in parallels. Each of the battery behaves as if it is the only battery in the bank for charging and discharging. As you can see from this picture, one of my batteries is a laggard for reasons I'm yet to understand. It charges and discharges slowly relative to the other two. But once the other two complete their charging, the laggard in the middle start charging at a faster rate while the other ones are either at 0 or very low rate.

durumibaka:
please can anyone enlighten me on Noiseless generator?. thanks.

There is nothing like "noiseless generator". It is a marketing term employed by solar sellers and installers to "deceive" the unwary. There is "sound-proof" generators that are neither sound-proof nor noiseless. They are just less noisy than their non-sound proof ones. So, many times "noiseless generators" are just solar/inverter setups. While a typical solar setup makes so very little noise compared to power generators, it is not entirely noiseless; the fans on inverter and charge controllers make varying degree of noise depending on make and age. But, you are guaranteed not to disturb your neighbors with noise from solar setups.

litaninja:
Getting it via USB hooked to a raspberry pi, implemented a fantastic github project
hxxps://github.com/ned-kelly/docker-voltronic-homeassistant
Runs into my HASSio install via MQTT with other automations via node-red.


There's another ESP32 based one i came accross somewhere, cant seem to remember the link sha

Thanks. I realized what you were using after I asked. I have tried in the past to get that working with no success. However, solpiplog is doing the same thing. My grouse with solpiplog is that I can not find an x86_64 binary of the latest release and I also like keeping things in the docker.

litaninja:
New RPi 4 came in the mail.
My MPPSolar Monitoring is progressing to permanent site. Now trying to sort out the grafana dashboard part.

Nice. How did you get these data from your MPPSolar?

essegis:
Thanks but I've done the connection. Completely online now. My issue is with the programming / timer setting. I can't seem to get around it.

The one operational now has just been put on permanent "on" position. Even to get there was small wahala. No shaking sha, I go figure am out.

OK. You need to first set the time. Press the clock and use H and M to select hours and minutes. Use D to select the day. Now when you press the programme button P, you get to select the ON time, and day/days, press P again, you get to set OFF time and day/days. That will complete programme 1. I think you can set up to 16 or so different ON/OFF schedules depending on your model.

essegis:
My brothers, after many years of buying Chinco I'm sure there is someone here that understands & speaks Chinese English.

If you can help a brother, make una help me translate the attached manual please. Timer has been installed but not yet programmed.

Thanks in advance.

The three ports is the relay. It opens and connect whatever load you want to control. One is the common (C), one is Normally Open (NO) and the other is Normally Close (NC). You need to use only one leg to break the circuit, I usually use the L leg.
The two ports are for powering the Timer. L and N goes in there.

litaninja:
Lol. Nice.
On the one hand, I'd agree with those that say it looks like a lot of work for switching / voltage monitoring. But on the other hand, this kind of setup is usally a one-time deal, setup and leave it to run for a life time....unlike Raspberry or node-red that will require updates, SD card replacements...etc.
To each his own sha.

This "set and forget" part is why some of us prefer the node-red route. As it happens, things are not always equal. There are days you need to temporarily override your automation. For me, that is a single button from my phone, at home or anywhere in the world.