₦airaland Forum

NiyiOmoIyunade:
I will kickstart this since no one has commented so far.

I have used US Battery personally and for clients - everything goes well in year one, with very little watering or maintenance required. Then all of a sudden the batteries (one or two in the bank) start to run hot and drop voltage and everything goes downhill from there despite all measures taken to fix - this typically happens about one and a half years into usage. The reference case is the L16 range

For Trojans, it has been a mixed bag, they also suffer sudden failure which I can only explain as a bad batch being brought into Nigeria and foisted on us. Securing a warranty replacement from the source is nearly impossible at least in my own experience since the replacements were out of stock and stayed that way for a very long time. I have also read the sub par experiences of Ogas Chris, Saipro, Abunafiu on this forum as they experienced issues with their Trojans and made valiant efforts to revive them - hopefully they will chime in with their experiences.

It is interesting that Trojans are priced at a premium relative to US Batteries in the US but here in Naija the prices are about the same no thanks to our local sellers.

Much to my surprise, a similar FLA battery (Luminous) has performed pretty stellar when I used them as replacements for the failed Trojans and USBs - these have suffered some serious abuse yet continue to perform wonderfully - I am waiting for the 3 year mark to pass before I conclude on their longevity and ruggedness in service.

I have some theories why Trojan batteries sold in Nigeria often times don't live up to expectation especially when compared to performances from Indian Tubular batteries.

1 - Most of those batteries are poorly maintained in store. Flooded acid battery is very sensitive especially when kept in store. Due to it's high rate of self discharged. Because this fla are kept in storage for a long time, they lose lots of charge and suffer from surlphation due to long time in state of discharge.

2 - Most FLA are shipped dry without electrolyte to reduce cost of shipping and then filled with electrolyte once in Nigeria. The quality of electrolyte added to them in Nigeria is suspect. Often times the electrolyte do not confirm with the right manufacturer recommended gravity and this will in turn affect the performance of the batteries in their service life

3 - Tubular batteries are actually built for the indian market. They are designed to work in a tropical environement, withstand high discharge and above. My Mercury tubular battery procured sometimes in 2015 is still going strong without showing any sign aging, The good performance from the mercury has created a problem for me where I am unable to expand my storage capacity.. I can not mix new and old batteries and economics will not allow me to sideline the old one since they are still waxing strong. In all 3 years of having the batteries I have not experience them getting hot even when equalising at close to 16v per battery they stay mildly warm at most.

pranil:
Hurray After a lot of elbow grease over Saturday Sunday we are half way through

Blue everywhere. nice neat job. Kudos.

Disco01:
Please how long can a 200ah battery carry a load of 200watts?

Theoretically about 12 hours.. In reality about 10 11 hours. It all depends on the state of battery (is it new or old) and hours rating (20 hours or 10 hours)

olopan:
please i will lile to get in touch with you ....please give me a link to do that and i sent you a message PM. THANKS

Try what oga pranil posted or wait for a new venus image that supports the Rpi+. The issue is the venus uses an old boot loader which is not compatible with new hardware included in the new Pi particularly network drivers. Pranil linked post gives a work around the problem but might be better to wait. The venus community are very active and a new image should be released very very soon.

I was tempted to use VRM too for remote logging and monitoring what held be back was the proprietariness of the VRM service (not venus) in the end I settled for emonpi with emoncms. That gave me greater control over every aspect of logging and monitoring. You can see my dashboard in my signature.

pranil:
I second that.

Apart from SMA, I have not come across a company so knowledgeable and helpful on different application scenarios and wide har4dware compatibility

There is no comparison to their open source approach in the RE business

I have put so much faith now in Victron that I pulled out my entire system and in the process upgrading to 5 KW Quattro x 3 phase setup .

The generator and NEPA will changeover through Victron so something goes wrong my house will be in darkness

I have also acquired a Fronius SYMO 6 KW and Victron 250/70 CC ( in addition to my 150/70 and 150/45) to handle the large loads during daytime


After consuming 87 litres in Last one year for my 20 KVA gen and spending more on starter batteries and chargers and maintenance for the gen than diesel saved I have decided the gen should be run regularly to keep things in balance till the time Lithium becomes really affordable and I can truly dispose the gen

Absolutely. It easier to see unicorns than a solar company embrace open source technology the way Victron has. From working directly with open source communities and ensuring that major software component of their offering has a free and open source alternative to publishing white papers about their various protocols and hardware accessories the same can not be said about other solar product. I know what a friend who reaches out offline is facing trying to get his iTracer controller to work with the open energy monitoring system emonpi. It was easy for me to DIY their connector cable thanks to their white paper which indicates which which is transmit, receive and ground all based on color coding. Their remote monitoring software and hardware have been completely open sourced and downloadable free of charge, their api is also open to be used with 3rd party tools which is what I took advantage of in setting up my own remote monioring dashboard.

jtcglobalventur:
Good morning to everyone in the house, please i need you assistance to solve some problem with an inverter. The inverter is a 48v,3.5kva, with fangpusun mppt charge controller 60a/48v and solar panel of 300watts. it works morning till around 2.00am ,everday. The client need the unit to run 24/7 without stop. Thanks to everyone in the house.

Yiu won't like my response but I will say non the less. If you do not know the problem with this setup.. Then you have no business installing solar for a client. Nigeria is already filled to the brim with quarks posing as solar installers. It ends up hurting and doing damage to solar adoptation. All hope is not lost sha. Set back and learn the trade.. Its not even that hard.. That you can install solar panel on a roof or you are a good electrician don't make you an installer. If this question came from a Do IT Yourselfer then I would understand but not for someone holding himself out as an installer and having a client.

makavele:
in Niyi's voice: finicky victron, lol

I am yet to see a solar company as innovative has victron. For me they are up there when it comes to innovations.

babaegun:
Hello Kiekie

Please enlighten me a bit. What do you use all these dead batteries for ? Been wondering.

lead acid is 99% cyclicable so there is money to be made from buying old dead batteries and selling them to recycle companies home and abroad.

Namzy:
Please sir ans this why purchase a hybrid ipowerplus and still use a charge controller. Is that not waste of funds? Or am I missing something? I am still researching before I make my decision and I recently changed my mind from icell to ipowerplus 2kva and I don't intend buying a charge controller. Pls do ans this question I plan on using tubular battery 220ah or 200ah x 2

The answer is simple. I had the 2 charge controllers before getting the axpert inverter. The controller has more features and better charge algorithm and performance than the axpert. Lastly I am a convert of the Unix philosophy a tool that does one thing and does it well. Axpert is best an inverter which is what I use it for.

[quote author=bigrovar post=69612387]Decided its time to let go of this my trusted inverter. It was sent to be bench because I decided to go the transformerless inverter route and got the ipower plus. I decided to keep the latter mostly because of its communication capabilities. This inverter has been in the box for a while but I have to kill sentiment and let it go.
https://bobby.com.ng/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/felicity.jpg



You can read up on my review of the inverter here


http://bobby.com.ng/2017/06/28/felicity-inverter-a-short-review/

Price is 95k

Specs
3.5kva
24v
Max charge amp 35A
Selectable charge profile (for volts and amps)
Ability to disable charging.

/quote]

NiyiOmoIyunade:
Oga BigRovar

Please how do you disable charging on this unit? I know one can set the charge amps to very low - as low as 5-10amps but I never knew you could disable it entirely? Could it be setting number '0' on the voltage profile selection?

2 ways of disabling charging on the unit. Via the Battery type selector choose "not used" you can also do it via the charging current settings. Choose 0%. Those two options disables charging from the unit completely. (used the Victron battery monitor to verify that indeed charging was disabled when those options are selected)

If you are on a pre paid meter and you have sufficient solar pv. It is better to disable inverter charging to better utilise your solar and reduce electricity bills.

Decided its time to let go of this my trusted inverter. It was sent to be bench because I decided to go the transformerless inverter route and got the ipower plus. I decided to keep the latter mostly because of its communication capabilities. This inverter has been in the box for a while but I have to kill sentiment and let it go.
https://bobby.com.ng/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/felicity.jpg



You can read up on my review of the inverter here


http://bobby.com.ng/2017/06/28/felicity-inverter-a-short-review/

Price is 95k

Specs
3.5kva
24v
Max charge amp 35A
Selectable charge profile (for volts and amps)
Ability to disable charging.

@pranil

On the axpert inverters particularly the ipowerplus model. I finally figured out a way to log the inverter output/inputs without buying the $60 AICC software. It basically hs to do with probing the /dev/hidraw0 interface directly and formatting the output to json and uploading it to emoncms. The problem I am now having is the current shunt measurement seem to limited to power load above 100w. anything below 100w is recorded as 0 watt output and 0 system load. I see this even on the inverter display.. I need to be pulling about 120w before the inverter registers the output. This is a problem for me because my night load is often times below 80w (especially when the house goes to bed) and during that period inverter records 0 output.. defeating the whole essence of logging in the first place.

Do you experience this same issue with AICC? I am using the 3kva 24v model

The hype around reliability of Toyota stems from 3 models of toyotas: The Hilux, Corolla and Hiace. Other not so reliable models of Toyota benefited from this 3 brands.

The corolla 2003 - 2006 and Camry 99-2001 cars are legendary in Nigeria and Abroad. They engine and transmission have a knack to run on forever without issues and their suspension are hard to kill. They are generalyl simple cars that are very easy to maintain. They also do not suffer from over engineering, something that can not be said of European and American cars of similar time frame. .. The Hilux is so reliable that it has become the defacto logistics and figting vehicles of insurgent around the world.. Very few vehicles can operate in the very harsh punishing conditions of the sahel but Hilux shrines through. It fame came about After Chad defeated a powerful Libyan army with all its latest tanks and amour using the speed and mobility offered by a Toyota Hilux armed with a 50mm anti aircraft gun. The speed and mobility of the toyota allowed a small rebel Chadian army to encircle many Libyan troops forcing a Libyan surrender. This war became known in history has the Toyota war of 1987. Now you understand why the hype.

Of recent though, it has becoming obvious that newer toyotas are failing to live up to the hype and the company seems to be living on past glory. The 2008-2013 model of corollas are not as strong and reliable as their predecessors and they have started to suffer from the same over engineering which plaques European cars.. more and more modules are left in the hands of computers which can make them a bit more complicated to fix outside of official dealership.

SolnergyPower:
Sir, with your permission, I do like to lift the content of one of the articles in website to our website and we'll adequately reference you.

Your article URL is http://bobby.com.ng/2017/06/28/felicity-inverter-a-short-review/

Our website is http://JezPower.com

Thank you.

sorry for the late reply. the content on my blog are under the creative commons share and share alike. Feel free as long as your reference the source.

makavele:
Full sun and clear skies?
It's been raining back to back here for days;
and when it's not raining, its cloudy, dark and hazy
and i have been burning diesel like no man's business
3kw producing just 500w at end of day

The opposite has been the case here in Abuja (I know I just jinxed the weather).. Its been mostly clear blue skies with patches of cloud here and there.. you can see the logs from my weakest array.. which 3 days ago recorded my highest recorded peak of the year. over 800w for a 880w array. http://energy.bobby.com.ng/dashboard/view?id=7

I know I am going to jinx things but July has been surprisingly good for solar at least here in Abuja. My 1.8kw array hit 1.6kw on a not so sunny day. The good thing about the rainy season in this parts is the clear skies and relatively lower temperature. I find it very hard to hit peak on a normal day due to my array being over sized for my 24v 200ah battery bank.. By the time the sun is close to peak radiance (sometimes around 11.30am) my battery are in absorption, and the controller are already cutting back. It doesn't help that battery gets discharged to 35% depth of discharge. . Today was laundry hence the high peak.

blackweaver:
Something like that. Not quite as light as xfce, but like I said, think gnome 2.x.
Maybe i'm old fashioned, but i've never taken to gnome3.x or kde 5.x. I prefer the previous UIs. In fact I actually preferred kde 3.x to 4.x, but just when I was getting to at least adjust to it they released kde 5. I know people say kde5 is better and stuff but I just don't feel the UI

Agreed, and yet.. they are many things to do in the life than to dedicated 3-4gb of ram to run just an operating system... even on my 32GB workstation.. I cringe when OS crosses the 2gb ram (that is with other applications loaded) not to talk of operating system and UI alone chopping 4GB!!!..

Gnome is essentially a redhat playground project hence they don't care to improve on performance. Kde on the otherhand is still user driven which is why most of the improvement on their latest release focuses on optimisation, leaner, faster, smoother.

Barezzi:
My guy, even at gun point, I can never use an outback flexmax cc I fear I've been scarred from that nasty experience.

Are you sure? Gun pass gun o

Dam5reey:
I think Luminous has the equalisation function, Since they produce Tabular batteries there is an option to switch battery type to Tabular..

It has Tubular function but lacks equalisation even though when I wrote them they claim it does equalisation once a month they won't say which day and how the once a month is calculated. Advice is to get a controller than has equalisation function.

olatade:
My inverter set-up for now. I'll be upraging it with solar panels next week. I just hope it is a reliable set-up tho

be sure to get a solar charge controller which is capable of doing equalisation. The tubular battery is a good one but if not used with the right charger would die before it's time.

babaegun:
I thought you have moved from SD Card to the SATA Module using the Raspberry pi 3 X820 Expansion Board Supports 4TB 2.5-inch SATA HDMI Port USB 3.0. to solve the write limit of the SD Cards.

That was the idea. Turns out the power supply I use for the Pi does not live up to it's name plate and as a result can not power the Sata expansion board and the Pi at the same time. So I have to shelve that plan for now and resort to using the Pi in safe write mode.

I think the solution you implemented now, which is polling for the downtime on the network before a reboot is initiated is better. It meas a reboot will only occur when the network is down and it may not happen even in 2 or 3 days sometimes. More importantly, if you can trace the root cause/services that stops and automatically restart it with a daemon will completely eliminate the reboot and provide you with a more stable and healthy system. Cheers man.

I finally found a way to successfully restart pppd and wvdial (the 3g modem dialer on Linux) to be restarted once the modem is hungup. The daemon monitors the the connection process and restarts it when connection is disconnected. I did a force disconnection 3 times yesterday and got a successful re-connection. I still need to get a better powersupply though, sometimes the Rpi cut power to the modem completely and on such occation, nothing to do but to remove and reattach it. Solutions are to either use a powered usb hub or better still get a better power supply solution.

babaegun:
@bigbrovar,

Had the same issue with my raspberry pi uploading to emoncms website too. At first, it was difficult tracing why it happens but i was able to pinpoint it to services stopping abruptly. I noticed as soon as you do a reboot, it starts uploading again. So what I did was to setup an autoreboot in crontab to automatically reboot the Raspberry Pi at at least 5 times daily and this solved the problem. I have since reduce the reboot time to once a day (12pm daily) and have not experienced any downtime since.

Actually trying to see if I can avoid having to reboot every once in a while.. This is due to the write limit of SD cards. The RPi operating system is configured in read only mode and process that requires file writing like logs are mounted to Ram. Reboot causes the OS to write to disk..

Another reason is once I reboot I loose buffered logged files. Even without Internet logged files are kept in system ram until there is an Internet connection when there are not retroactively uploaded with appropriate time stamps. Rebooting would mean me losing every monitored data captured and stored between losing the Internet and before the reboot took place. I am making some progress and I am confidence that the issue would be resolved.. Eventually.

earthrealm:
llooking for a similar solution for my cctv internet, i intend to power the internet with a glo 4g sim in a mobile phone-hotspot, but hv experienced this sudden outage that requires a phone reboot to resolve and restore network. the rebooting and restoring hotsopt isnt possible on most phones/apps, what do you reommend i use?

how easy is this raspberry pi?, i gat 3/10 IT programming skillz , DO U THINK i can handle it?

RaspberryPi essentially requires a bit of Linux skills. You can get by sha because they are tons of guides online if you are ready and willing to learn.

rajo4real:
@Bigrovar,

Your solar offgrid setup has been showing funny results this evening.

Where are tiu getting such performance this late evening?

kindly shed more lights bro...

Short Too Long didn't read answer:


That happens when the Raspberry Pi sending the data to the internet has lost internet connection. Once my emoncms service on energy.bobby.com.ng stops receiving data from the house, it would display the last data it received until internet is restored.

I think I fixed the internet issues

[b]Long Answer
[/b]My brother I have been battling with network issues. The system is configured to thus. The Axpert Inverter, Victron Battery monitor, and the 2 Fangtron (Fangpusun victron clones) are all connected to the Raspberry Pi 3, The Pi then queries all connected devices for their output and captured information is stored to 1 - a local database on the Pi, and 2 send to my virtual private server (located somewhere in Europe) which is where http://energy.bobby.com.ng is located.

e sending queried data to energy.bobby.com.ng requires internet connection because data is sent every 10 seconds unfortunately this has been the weakest link in the setup. For internet, I use a generic usb internet dongle which runs a glo sim and is connected to one of the USB port of the raspberry pi. The usb internet dongle is dialled for internet connection..

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dewpp41X0AEhwRZ.jpg
however the connection has become unstable and dies after some hours.. at least once in 8 hours, if I am lucky 12 hours. I have been working to find a solution.. something that will get the internet to redial after it has failed.

My suspicion for why the internet is failing are 1 power supply issues, the Rpi requires a constant supply of 5v 2.5A to run properly especially if u are running many usb devices in my case all the USB are maxed out. The DC voltage regulator I use for the Pi which converts 30v to 5v 5A seems not to be living up to its name plate and is unable to supply adequate power to the Rpi which causes the usb modem to fail for lack of power.

Second reason might be typical network issues..

Either way I needed a ensure the network is restarted once it has died.. took me a while to fix this but I think I have found a fix.
setup a daemon service which monitors the network process file and pings my server. if after 300 seconds it can't ping or the network process has stopped, it initiates a restart. I implemented new process watch this morning so let us see if it works.

When my dashboard at energy.bobby.com.ng as stopped receiving data from the raspiberry pi in my house, it displays the last data until it receives free data.

The good thing is, when the Pi can losses internet connection, all the data queried from the solar devices are buffered offline and are uploaded once internet is established, so realtime data is always rethroactively uploaded to energy.bobby.com.ng once internet is esterblished.

damola1:
I use a outback vfx3024e inverter for sensitive equipment like server etc

I normally don’t charge with generator but no light in last 4 days so had to use gen to charge it.

Problem now is: out of the 4 times I have tried to change into the generator, twice the server trip off. Defeating the whole essence of the inverter

How can I fix this please ?

This is the major issue I have with inverters Generally when powering servers and network equipments. Most require at least 10 milliseconds switch over time or you get an interruption and unsafe shutdown. Interestingly inverter which seems to solve this issue are the Indian brands and Voltronic. Both allows you to set UPS mode where switch over is 10 ms or less. Hence we use the sukam for some of our data room servers and deployed ipower plus for majority of our servers. The alternative is to put a UPS a small Apc smart ups would do. This would allow you to abstract the servers from switch over time. The UPS would also allow u to have safe shutdown when battery are low.

Gargoylesmiles:
They really did a good work polishing the surface and the move to Gnome wasn't a bad one after all.

all that shiny comes at a cost. and with gnome 3 that cost is huge. Since the upgrade gnome 3 has taking the reputation of being a huge memory hug and worn it like a barge. I will never run a gnome 3 distro on a 4gb ram laptop unless I intend to use it for nothing other than browsing the web. It is not unusual for gnome 3 to use close to 1.6gb ram on bootup. I just doesn't make sense and to make it worse, nothing is being done to address the problem.

Gargoylesmiles:
I dont think you will have any issue if its already configured and works with MTN. Just change the parameters to suit Glo. Are you working with a Raspberry pi shield modem (with SIM 905 etc) and Glo SIM or trying to connect directly with a Glo modem? I am interested in such projects.

Nothing fancy. Just some generic Hsdpa 3g modem I got from some random guy on the street. I needed to figure RPi to monitor my offgrid solar setup and help provide remote logging and system monitoring. The modem was meant to provide connection to the Internet.. After some challenges including having to write custom udev rules for modeswitch for that particular modem and for persistent linking of the modem and charge controller rs232 to ttl usb cables to a particular tty com port using symlinks. Everything worksb like a charm. The resultant output is displayed in my signature below.

blackweaver:
Wvdial! Wow! It's a long time I've used that, takes me back to my days of using a starcomms modem. Haven't used it for years. Have gotten lazy and just stick with a mifi modem

Same here o.. Network manager has made us all lazy with its auto configure that sadly just works
Anyway I figured it out. Just need to fill some glo specific parameters meters and it is working like a charm. I had to add it to /etc/rc.local for it to start on boot and add a 60 sec delay for the modem to be initialized by the Pi and modem switched. Trust Linux works like a charm every damn time.

Reprobate:
hmmm, who do I believe now??.
earlier, some1 said it doesn't matter...that's its only the runtime that it would reduce..i feel its not healthy for the battery, but need science to back it up.
when fully charged, at 50.4v, my 2kw steam iron draws the fla batt voltage to 48.4v, I want 2 know if there is any harm in continuing with this practise

No one. Read it up yourself. Battery capacity is relative to their discharge rate. Some are sized for 20 hours discharge optimum others for 10 hours discharge. A 200ah battery at 20 hours theoretically means to actually get 200ah you have to discharge it at the rate of 10Ah at which point it would last 20 hours.. A higher discharge means an exponentially shorter battery time and ah. Although 10ah is the safe limit of a 200ah battery at c20. It is advisable to stay well below the limit.. Because most batteries in the market have inflated ah ratings a battery rated 200ah might actually be 180ah if you are lucky.. Some premium brands are also affected by this issue although a bit less hence staying well below c20 discharge rate ensures keeps u within real capacity of the battery. Also in life as in engineering and physics things generally last longer when you use them below officially recommended capacity limits. I generally discharge my battery at C40 / C30 only time the battery gets heavy discharge is between 7pm and 11apm (a 4 hours window) even then they are still discharged below C20 ratings.

So to keep it simple. The less you discharge your battery the more the more you get out of them and they more they last. But you don't have to believe anything I have just said. You can always read it up yourself.

Saipro:
For most "Roy" installations I've seen, installers would use a horrible pair of 4 - 6mm to run double digit amps over 20 - 50 metresblunders, amongst other . Very poor system design can often be blamed. I do agree culprit Roy has poor charging algorithms, no voltage correction and worst of all, no temperature compensation.

Roy is bad no point calling a spade a gardening tool.

Saipro:
LVD becomes essential when you frequently have guests or you've got teenagers in the house. Next to ignorance, teenagers are my dread. I consider them the natural enemy of RE.

@ bold. you are right and I admitted as much. the Victron battery monitor is one device whose implementation of low voltage relay action I could live with.

Saipro:
Seen a lot of discussion on the Roy Solar PWM CC over the past two pages. Is the grouse with the brand or with use of the PWM CC (the lines are blurred during the course of discussions)?

My point: for smaller systems (translated as being under 1kW of PV array) with short distance between the array and CC, PWM might be the cost effective way to go (considering Nigeria's climate).

I have 2 PWM CC in my itinerary (Xantrex C60 and Midnite Kid), of which one is in use at the moment for powering my DC security lights and their performance is nothing if not ideal.

Of course, these statements rely heavily on the VoC of the panels and nominal voltage of the system being optimally matched.

for simple setup like security lights, PWM is no doubt more than capable. however for any thing above 600w you should start considering mppt especially for a 24v system, PWM might still serve for 12v setups when used with a 24v panel.. but it is a no no for a 24v system considering most PV modules in these parts are actually designed for grid-tied systems hence the relatively low vmp/voc most 24v offgrid solar panels comes with voc as high as 37 allowing for enough headroom for you to charge a 24v battery even if using pwm. The catch is that truely offgrid panels are expensive so its either you get cheap panels / expensive controller, or expensive panel or cheaper controller... bad things happens when you go cheap both ways.