Hi guys I made the transition from my base in abuja to lagos, as such I had to decommission for solar installation over there and sold it (for scraps) to neighbours. I intend to start from stretch a new installation. I have already gotten 9 x 355w Yingli Solar Panels and A Victron Smart MPPT 150/100 Charge controller, I would be reusing my Axpert 3KVA 24v Inverter from the previous project. My problem now is batteries. I am at a loss which battery to go for..

My traditional choice are Tubular Batteries (Flooded) but they can only take limited number of currents.. and with a setup able to output over 100A my fear is even with opportunity loads, I would still be over charging those batteries almost on a daily.

AGM seems to be the way to go and Yes everyone says Quanta truth is Quanta's own datasheet https://www.quanta.in/images/pdf/Quanta-SF-Brochure.pdf does not cover itself in glory It states a between a 500 - 700 cycles at 50% depth of discharge this is about 2 years max of useful battery life.. economically I don't find it viable. I know people who have been using their battery for more than 2 years and still rave about it. But when a manufacturer says their product will last 2 years if used ideally.. I pay attention.

I am also considering ThunderVolts 6v 400AH from solar deport, unfortunately there is hardly any official spec sheet on the battery, no manufacturer's details, no recommended charge voltage no nothing. Some asked about the spec sheet and got no reply. If anyone has used it before place share your experience

Fullriver is within my purview but most of the fullriver sold in Nigeria within the 200AH range are the HGL Model which are not designed for deep cycle application the DC model designed for deep cycle (hence the name) is only available in 260AH at a price point above my budget.

Monbat too has same issue, the model sold in Nigeria are not designed for deep cycle application (I can be wrong)

If anyone has suggestions on good AGM batteries please share.

earthrealm:


i started my solar journey with 45amps morning star mppt cc, but alas, i didnt understand fully, the difference btw Voc and Vmp, and hooked up 4 x 250w in series, during 1 of the periods i was trying to tweak my setup...the CC died after 1 month or so, spent almost 19 months total in service.
yeah the chinese products are cheap for a reason....i hv started to realize that. ....plan to gradually do away with them, .a reduced harvest of say 300 to 500w daily over time....will pay for itself overtime,

Chinese product have played a huge role in lowering the entry barrier for using solar.. They have helped in crashing the price other wise this thread would have less than 10 users who can afford to buy premium Western brands. Eventually when you leg is strong in solar you can gradually start to go for western products. I started with epever controllers before moving to fangpusun.. Fangpusun allowed me trial victron controllers so much that I fell in love with the real thing and intend to get one a victron smart solar 150/100 for my pending upgrade.

ojeysky:


Yeah it's cool, but I prefer the solpiplog: https://github.com/njfaria/SolPipLog

problem I have with that is the fact that it requires a GUI to function. You cant use it with a headless setup.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
Well said Oga GeorgeD

For this very reason I have 3 MorningStar MPPT 60a units and as I take my array to 15kw I have been struggling whether to purchase a Fangpusun as the 4th unit or stick with MorningStar. Very likely I will stick with MorningStar even though it costs twice the price of a similar Fangpusun unit.

My experience when I snagged up a Victron Quattro 8Kva was similar, I moved from a place of wondering whether my 6kw Red VilPower Star would randomly pack up one day (has a very failure prone control board) to a place of quiet confidence and assurance with Victron.

why not a victron though.. I think they compare with morning star on performance and durability (if not more for the latter due to their focus on marine) but they also have the best IT integration of any of the solar product out there. Cost wise, they cost way cheaper compared to a morningstar and have certified service center in lagos.

for more info on what you can do with the axpert inverter series FOC https://github.com/ned-kelly/docker-voltronic-homeassistant

ojeysky:


Cool, this seem to be the ICC paid version though but at least it's nice and you get value for money .

I am still trying to get my dash up for free

I was able to pull data from my own unit "free" using some C library I saw online which uses /dev/hidraw0 driver for Linux to pull data from the unit. works pretty well after I rigged the code to work with emoncms

nonoski:
What ever you do
Neva ever buy a Luminous Battery
Neva

Thank me later

I heard the same thing from my installer friend. He told me there changed their manufacturing process (I think they outsourced it or, took it in house from an outsourced company) and their are throwing out bad batches ... luminous has cast in the market

AyarmBoye:
I did but the prices makes dem look like dey are new..... Like d prices and Dat one new ones are the same

I you are based in abuja I will be selling a set of 8 perfectly working panel (with online monitoring graph to proof).. I am moving to lagos and rather sell them than transport them to lag.

How much? In correct number posted

Ahyjo:
Good afternoon. Pls experts in the house should weigh in on this:
Hoppecke or Quanta or Monbat

From your experience, which is the best amongst the three batteries? Thank you.

Quanta mostly because of support. I rate a decent product with great support over a great product with so so support. Quanta has been known to always honor their warranty and have official presence in all major cities first class cities in Nigeria. This means if you have issues with them you are not at the mercy of a marketer but dealing with the real company (not someone who bought their franchise) directly. Hoppecke would come in second just because it is the greatest of them all being a grade A solar product from Germany. I can not however say about their support in Nigeria.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
The answer depends on the type of battery you have and a few other variables - Flooded batteries don't like too fast of a charge and G[b]el batteries too although they are better than Flooded in that regard[/b]. With AGM batteries you can push in 25 to 30% of rated capacity with no issues.

You need to provide more info - battery capacity, inverter charging current, usual level of discharge, size of PV array e.t.c

If your purchase decision is not already locked, do a Fangpusun instead, based on my field experience, you should get better mileage here.

Not really o. Gel are generally the worst when it comes to charge and discharge rate. While most flooded can be charged at 10 to 13% of their capacity at c20.. Gel are advised to stay around 5% in fact gel are suppose to be slow charged and if over charged can be easily damaged with bubbles developing. Over charging does little to flooded battery at least in the short term. Most of the extra amps can be converted to heat which can resort to electrolyte boiling and water lose (which can easily be replaced) for gel over charge can straight away cause irreparable damage.

Deicide:
Amazon shipping cost, Hmm

Yeah, so in my case I used a proxy. Some from my office would be visiting the country from the US so I shipped the items to him. For anyone trying to dabble into SBC aliexpress is a great resource especially for the raspberrypi. I think the RPi4 is a great uppgrades. The increased ram options, true native ethernet and 5GB capable usb3 x 2 usbA makes it just perfect. You just have to wait for community support and you are good to go. The pi4 offers great options for running a home NAS

blackweaver:


Never tried them. Where did you buy from?

Mostly from amazon. The Helios4 Nas was preordered via kickstarter the 3rd batch. I would be buying the raspberry Pi4 very soon mostly from amazon or aliexpress.

Anyone here into single board computers? For me this is where the fun is ever since Linux essentially "conquered" the desktop and became easy to use. :p
. Anywhere I am quite bullish about the potentials of single board computers especially for specific applications and use cases. They low power consumption is a huge plus for someone like me who runs offgrid.

My goal is to build a home lab made up of sbc and I ha e the following in mind.

For NAS I got the Helios4 Open source nas project. It runs the Armada soc which is optimized for io and applications that requires high through put. Some models of synology runs same soc. The Helios4 nas kit can take 4 sata3 drives using dedicated native sata lanes. I intend to use it as my home nas with 4 x 8gb Western digital Reds. Not sure yet which OS to run but arch Linux debian and armbian are all strong contenders

For home theater system I got the odroid n2 which would be used as a media center to run Kodi. This sbc is currently the most powerful General purpose sbc out there and well equipped to run media.

Of cause tbe raspberry pi 4 would also cameo in the setup. It would be used mostly as compute nodes running various services and servers like kubernetes docker we services etc.
The only x86 chip in the setup is the pc engine apuc4 to run pfsense.

Barezzi:
My latest upgrade!
Seems my tinkering days are almost over

5 Kva Victron Quattro Inverter
250/100 Victron SmartSolar CC
150/85 Victron Smartsolar CC
Venus GX
Zeihl UFR1001E Anti-Islanding relay
Carlo Gavazzi ET112 energy meter
Victron energy BMV712 Battery monitor
5.2kw Solarworld panels
1.8kw Canadian panels

The system is running ESS Assistant with 50 watt grid import allowed, no export.

I've got 3 DBs;
Main DB powered by the grid only
Base DB on AC1 output (Essential loads)
Aux DB on AC2 output (also controlled by battery soc)

System is running smoothly, tweaking still ongoing

Before the second coming, I shall definitely switch to lithiums.

A few pictures... Disregard the messy wiring, there's still beauty in chaos

Guy done taya to dey thinker. A beg reach me back stage, this calls for celebration.

dapsyra:
Not all Lithium batteries catch fire. Some Lithium chemistries are quite safe even under extreme abuse.

I am sure we all have mobile phone with Lithium batteries. How many of such phones have been ignited by the battery?

Lithium batteries are quite safe when operated within the specifications given by the manufacturer. For the battery to catch fire, you have to abuse it by operating it outside the limits set by the manufacturer.

The gas cooker in your house will catch fire if abused.
The generator will also catch fire if abused
Your car will catch fire if abused

The risk of fire has not stopped us from buying and using the items listed above. We have only learnt to operate them safely. If you do same for Lithium batteries, you have nothing to fear.

The problem is few people intentionality willfully abuse their system. For majority abuse happens when you use the wrong components. Wrong charger wrong BMS or even the wrong Lithium packs. Which again is why I said Lithium works best in a closed loop system where all is considered where the coupling integration is all done for the user with safety and anti abuse measures built in. This is what tesla brings to the table.. A Turnkey solution. And it is what you get with your smartphone everything is well designed to the point u don't even know what battery tech powers it. Most phones u can't even see the battery or remove it.

The skill level of installing lithium in a traditional good ol clubber together assembled offgrid setup is very high the number of things that have to be just right is alot and margin of failure very very thin. The cost is so much that you just have to get it right the first time or millions go down the drain (if you are lucky)

pranil:


T[b]he lithium raw material in a Li-ion battery is only a fraction of one cent per watt, or less than 1 percent of the battery cost. [/b]A $10,000 battery for a plug-in hybrid contains less than $100 worth of lithium. Shortages when producing millions of large batteries for vehicles and stationary applications could increase the price, but for now this is not the case.

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_lithium

The prices are bound to drop as the production ramps up and more players enter market - The cost of Lithium battery comes from clean production processes and not the raw materials
Attached is a nice video explaining the challenges .

That is the reason the semiconductor/ chip suppliers were ahead of the race ( Samsung, LG, Pansonic, Sony) but Chinese companies are catching up ( BYD... etc)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2819K8_m7c

AThe Bloomberg survey gives a nice overlook since 2012 -

https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/


P.s -Gambia is planning a 8 MWh battery bank to work with 20 MW PV power plant to offset the diesel production currently powering the country - Imagine trying to achieve that with lead acid and the environmental impact of such large quantities of lead

Thanks for posting this. This is great news and makes me a bit more optimistic about Lithium although it does little to change my current stand that Lithium works best when procuredas an integrated all in one plug and play package. This is where it shines. We have a 150k dollars solar project at work and i am recommending we use lithium because at that scale and the money involved it is a no brainer. But for the average solar DIY Turnkey plug and play solutions are totally out of reach for now. And the time value of money and the huge thin margin of failure involved in assemblying lithium battery packs made up of different independent components clubbered together together to work as a unit is something I am not ready to dabble in. I don't have that much money to waste. The day we have a knock on wood lithium battery based solution plug and play and within reach then count me in. For now lithium would be solution for enterprise, large scale project, and specialised applications like mobile and auto where the economy of scale makes it a no brainer

Everything that has been said about proponent of Lithium all goes to reaffirm my believe about the tech and why I still maintain that for DIY and mainstream solar user Lithium is not there yet. It is still too expensive, complicated and potentially dangerous. Yes advance in portable and mobile tech would not have been possible without lithium which is exactly where lithium shines best. Close loop applications where it is designed as a one piece solution with charging battery monitoring all built in and the whole system is offered as a one piece machine. This is what you get with a laptop and electric car and mobile phone. The lithium battery is part of a whole. It is what tesla offers and it is why tesla power pack sells. The thing about such systems is that they are very very expensive more expensive than even buying battery packs in isolation and then assembling it into a power backup solution.. In fact in middle income countries like Australia such systems are so expensive that they are ownship cost is spread over 4 to 10 years where the owner pay small small.

Now this does not mean u can not diy lithium it just means the level of skill and time required is very high and margin of error very very thing.. One bad move and if u are lucky your bank will fail other wise you are playing with fire.

Someone talked about finding the right BMS digging through the Chinese Market or getting an American brand then the right charger and right balancer this things are not easy and sometimes by the time u realise you have the wrong component it is already too late.. For lithium given the cost often time such mistakes can be very expensive. Same thing can not be said for lead which can be quite forgiven. You can assemble an offgrid bank easily and cheaply buying off the shelf components. Worse that can happen is your battery don't get improper charge and even this can be remedied if you notice quickly.

Lastly the notion that lithium will get cheaper as production ramps up is not backed by reality. Lithium is made from rare earth materials which are not easily available. This is why it is expensive in the first place. There are few places in the world with large deposit of lithium and as it becomes indemand the price would go down as producing becomes efficient up to a point then it will go up as demand begin to out stripe supply and we would be back to cartel system we see with oil where lithium countries try to control price to make more money.

Lithium has its applications no doubt especially with mobile tech ie laptop, phones, auto.. It is still a long way from being defacto standard for home use. And when I say long I am looking at 5 to 8 years. And the future of lithium lies in all in one closed loop systems not the voltron system we see with lead acid.

The only person who currently uses a lithium system for his offgrid on here got some of the best lithium battery cell and from a classified project.. That alone should tell you something.

wirinet:


Yes a 48v 400ah lead acid battery should out perform a 48v 50Ah lithium battery, but it's a bit more complicated.

A 48v 400ah battery set up consists of the equivalent of 8 200ah deep cycle lead acid batteries. At the cost of an average of N120,000, that's N960,000.
You know lead acid battery capacity is rated at C/20. Drawing 2kw from lead acid battery is C/4.8, so the capacity of the 48v 400ah battery would reduce to about to about 300ah (maybe less). It even gets worse. It is not recommended to draw above 50% DOD from lead acid batteries, 60% max, so you maximum usable capacity from the battery is 180Ah at the cost of N960,000. Don't forget the average cycle of lead acid is between 300 to 600 cycles when used carefully.

A 48 50Ah lithium phosphate battery system is the equivalent of one 200ah battery, the average cost of which is about N500,000. A lithium phosphate battery can be discharged 90% DOD, without significant loss of battery life. That means a 48v 50ah lithium battery can supply 45ah without any problem. Note that lithium phosphate batteries are rated at an average of 2000 cycles.

The 48v 400ah lead acid battery outperforms the 48v 50ah lithium battery by a factor of 4 to 1 on capacity.

The lithium iron battery outperforms the lead acid on cycles (life time) by a factor of 4:1 also. So when we look at the combination of capacity vs life time, the two battery set ups are the same.

Having said that, the 48v 50a lithium set up is too small to run a 2000w continuous load. So the best set up for this load would be 4 x 48v 50Ah lithium phosphate battery set up. This would give you similar capacity to the 48v 400ah lead battery and last 4 times as long (might last much longer) at the cost of just a little over double the cost.
The main problem with lead acid batteries is having to replace the batteries ever 1 or 2 years.

Let us take this off the realm of theory and talk practical. My first solar batteries were 2 Flooded acid non premium tubular batteries with worse rate of discharge and even worse charge rate compared to an AGM. I had 2 for a 2br apartment attached (first to a 480w solar array, and upgraded over the space of 14 months to a 1.84kw array).. Those batteries ran for over 3 years (In fact one got bad due to earlier electrolyte spillage which was the second battery was still waxing strong) Those batteries served me for 3 years (Including 1 year completely offgrid) The powered fridge, freezers, washing machines and the whole shebang of running a house hold of 4, laptop over 4 charging, 2 tvs, 4 fan etc. 3 good years that is about 900 cycles from a 5kwh battery system I goes for 200k today's money.

Lithium is sexy and cool and it seems to be the future, but right now, lithium still has many quirks to address before it becomes mainstream. It is still too delicate, damn expensive and bleeping complicated to use. The biggest concern I have with lithium is the tech is fast evolving, any thing you buy now is bound to be obsolete very soon. Lastly Lithium works best when it is used as a complete turnkey all in one intergrated solution not the Frankenstein mix mash setup common with Lead acid batteries where Battery is different from inverter which is different from controller. A all in one integrated package like the tesla is where Lithium shines the best.. and such solutions are so damn expensive that even in OECD counties like US and Australia such systems are deployed on a pay small small bases with payment scheme sometimes running to over 10 years.

.

Namzy:
Does anybody know how to equalize with fangpusun properly? I'm asking because when the set automatic equalization reaches it just equalize (absorption and float light on) for about 20 mins before switching back to float. I'm not sure that s enough time for equalization

One of the weak points of fangpusun is equalisation is automatically timed and decided by the cc charge algorithms which sometimes is too conservative. What you can do is to restart the charging process by turning of the pv input and pvoutput forcing it to restart the charging process. You might also considering forcing it by increasing the absorption voltage if you will not be at home in which case auto equalization will become useless to you. You can also increase the frequency to maybe every 10 days?

Saipro:

Tried getting to the settings mode but I can't get in. Stops on the screen right after the device selection. If I choose a higher VictronConnect app, it shortly afterwards tried to update the device but fails.

I think you were merely lucky. v1.19 definitely snowballs the device. Will keep trying my skills. Will see if I can peek into the update file and modify it appropriately such that I can downgrade (tricking it to think it's an upgrade).

Me labout 3 years ago. I tried all that trick and still have the 150/45 fangpusun under a able somewhere in retirement. Hoping to one day put it under the axe and use the internals while secretly waiting for the hardware hacker community to take up the challenge.. maybe someday. I hope u succeed way I did not.

olatade:



is it compatible with tubular batteries?

used it with tubular battaries for 3 years. No issues

NiyiOmoIyunade:
In my opinion, the Fangpusun Bluesolar clone has no equal in performance and price and available configuration options when compared to similar CCs in its class.

I benchmarked it's solar output performance vs MorningStar and it did very very well even though I hate to admit it The MorningStar will only beat it because one can set longer absorb times e.t.c but the Fangpusun bluesolar appears to follow it's own default algorithm for length of absorb based on voltage at start of charge and time spent in bulk (custom settings may be made but does not appear to obey them)

I believe for this budget installation, you are looking for the 12v/24v version rated 100v/50a at the PV end. Ogas JUO or DMerciful can supply you this at a good price.

My 3rd year on the fangpusun clone and not a single problem.. Note that I ran through 3 epsolar models of cc before finally settling on the bluesolar clones. The only time I had issues was when I installed a firmware update from victron and promptly had the clones killed. Fangpusun is the company promptly sent me a replacement after I explained the issue with them. I have been so impressed by the fangpusun devices that I am considering going the original victron as a show or appreciation for designing such a fantastic program.

chris81964:


If you use 5 sun hours in your calculation and you lack access to the grid in Lagos or Port Harcourt you will be in a world of pain. I use 3 hours for a customer with no grid access and 4 to 4.5 for those with the grid.

Probably true. My figures are from my experience in abuja. Using hard data collected over a 3 year period some of which can be verified from my signature. My panels it should be noted are barely tier 2 and with a battery capacity of 5kwh.. Are grossly over sized.

mctfopt:


9AM to 3PM sunshine is not so much of a stretch in most part of the country.

not at peak though.. generations usually peak between 11 - 1 and subsequently drops off. The standard practice is to use the 77% rule which will account for heat, wiring and charge controller related loses. do your calc with 77% of the capacity of the solar panel hence 300 x 0.77 = 231
231 * 5 = 1,155 using 5 hours is also a safe bet. Such calculation as this should err on the safe side and as such should focus on a minimum average

Barezzi:
Can you expatiate on what you tryna do?

I'm not sure you can do this, and it's not a good parameter to use for control.
You can produce instantaneous power of 1.5Kw, but only 200w reach the batteries.

Consider using the battery Voltage or SOC for your control system.

Bro. How area. Abeg ping me backstage i lost your number during a phone swap.

duwdu:


The component I'm monitoring and have shown is just my PCM60x CC so far and it is a Voltronic/MPPSolar product. It is coupled with a VIL Star-Light Power Inverter. Like I said, I'm yet to deploy my Axpert/Voltronic based PIP5048GK.

The com cable supplied with the CC (and also one of the cables that come with the PIP) is ethernet/RJ45-to-RS232. Based on what I learnt from MPP Solar and on other forums (chiefly secondlifestorage - yeah, I once saw one bigrovar post on there, hehehe) I then got a RS232-to-USB converter from Amazon. It has worked like a charm to seamlessly interface the CC with my PC/Pi via USB. I don't have the particular link handy, but the trick is to get one with a Prolific chip. Appropriate Prolific drivers are auto installed on Linux. For Windoze, they're available on Prolific's website.

(BTW, I also tried the RJ45-to-USB cable sold for EPSolar/Ever products but that did not work for me.)

........
P34c3
.....
...

Thanks for the update.

duwdu:


I've been a fan of your dashboard for several months from last year already, actually; it's so functional and pretty and was partly where I took my inspiration from, so thanks. My post was geared more towards novices to visualization resources such as yours truly.

And aside from vizualization and data logging interfaces provided by my current budget and so far robust components by MPP Solar, I had also last year tried my hands on building dashboards based on Grafana/Chronograf and the like (attached,) but later slacked off; so I'm learning.

That being said, I'd still love to build something similar to your dashboard if you'll please share your processes/code with me? My new frontline PIP5048 is also Axpert/Voltronic based, although I'm yet to fully deploy it.

........
P34c3
.....
...

If I am not mistaken the system you are monitoring is the axpert inverter? which communication media are you using? The supplied usb connection cable? I asked because that cable driver is an issue and I was only able to get it to work by treating it as a hardware input device and the hack was not that easy. How did you do the connection in your case?

duwdu:
The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is an incredible, nifty machine and is truly affordable. These will have to partially explain why many arrays of developers favour it so much as a platform of choice for apps and IoT stuff, majorly of the open-source types.

In this case, attached are four screen shots of the SolarSnoop/PCM60X Monitor app on the Pi, by a developer and in use with my charge controller. It's freely available on GitHub. It uses a browser interface and is thus available to be interacted with within the range of a WiFi network, or from anywhere on the Internet, on a browser.

I set up this my own particular install of the PCM60X Monitor to auto-refresh every minute, which interval is good enough for me.

Hope some of us who are not already using equivalent or better solutions to monitor/visualize their RE set ups, will be encouraged to find similar ones for own use.

........
P34c3
.....
...

welcome to the club bro. The system I setup some times in july last year is still running and has been logging away without issues. Even when I am out of the country, I can still always take a peep and see what is happening. Using the solar equipment with open communication port and documentations (Looking at Victron and to some extent some tracer and epsolar devices) is also very important if you are considering going this route.

4llerbuntu:
You guys must be smiling with this crazy sunlight/heat right now.

Last time I spoke to Juo about the heat.. his response was "what heat?" I can not even begin to imagine how people are coping.. My friends keeps reminding me that the weather is not getting cooler

JUO:
I think the flooded battery was overhyped. For me I will not have anything to do with any flooded battery or wet cell. I understand your pain Abu

Yes o, especially in Nigeria where there are often imported dry and then filled with "distilled" water by the merchant and subsequently sit idle in the wearhouse/shop until they are sold (in many instance at a longer than recommended partial state of charge leading to surlphation). Even at the best of conditions I have come to realise flooded batteries are not the best for offgrid use. Their low charge and discharge rate means you are unable to take advantage of the less than 5 hours peak sun time... unlike AGM which has ability to fast charge and can take close to 30% of it's rated capacity i.e a 100AH AGM can be charged at 30A while the flooded equivalent most not be charged at more than 13% or 13A to avoid damage. The periodic equalization and distilled water topping adds and extra layer of maintenance that becomes a chore especially if you have them in numbers exceeding 2.. Not many inverters supports equalization.

Flooded does have its advantages, their are cheap, quite robust and can be easily diagnosed for problems.. they can also take some level of beating. Unfortunately from my experience, their advantages is seriously out weighed by their disadvantages