mcTrinity:
Good day house..

please, does anybody know the maximum charging current of Magnum MS4348?

thanks

it's about 60 amps shore max but you can throttle it
to whatever current you want using the magnum remote.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
MY SUPER WONDERFUL CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE WITH MORNINGSTAR CORPORATION

I have two MorningStar 60a MPPT CCs which regulate the DC electricity that runs my entire house - the older of the two CCs intermittently throws a fault <DIP SWITCH CHANGED> due to some software error apparently but otherwise functions well and enters absorb and float normally.

Two years after I purchased this CC from an Amazon seller, I raised a support ticket with MorningStar Corp directly about the error I regularly saw logged on the CC - we worked through troubleshooting steps together and without any push or threat or force on my part, MorningStar already sent me a brand new MorningStar MPPT 60a as replacement CC entirely free of charge - bear in mind I did not purchase the CC directly from them o! They did not ask me for proof of purchase, they did not imply that I had somehow caused the fault, they simply determined that there was an issue with a product under their global 5 year warranty and immediately shipped a replacement out to me once I provided them the serial number of the product for their records

I was so humbled and grateful I told them to ship to my US address so that they would not have to bear the costs to ship to Nigeria - they were actually willing to ship it to me here.

This sets the standard for what a customer should expect from sellers and manufacturers when he buys from them and that way the customer can buy with confidence. MorningStar have made a customer for life with me.

See below juicy titbits from my engagement with MorningStar support.

niyi,
reading through your post i couldn't help but shake my head in disgust when i place my horrible experience
with protek energy side by side your sweet experience with morningstar. after making me climb up and down
my hot water tank for several days in a row they had to wash their hands off the same warranty they used
to peddle their product. interestingly i notice they now mostly advertise inverters, cc and solar panels these
days. no more mention of solar water heaters. but peeps should not be deceived. if they could shy away from
honouring their warranty on solar water heaters claiming flimsily that they were not the ones that did the
installation, they could as well do so for inverters and panels whenever issues arise. all they need to do is
claim that the customer installed their inverters wrongly and hence not their fault. end of warranty,
end of story!

niyi,
that's one of the things they claimed happened. at a point after installation
i decided to remove the assistant tank and connected the cold water inlet
directly to the tank. i did that because i noticed it always took like forever
to fill up whenever i drain the tank for whatever reason. but after the leaks
started and i called them to complain, they advised that I should put back
the assistant tank saying that the main water tank pressure was likely one
cause of the leakage. well, I re-installed the assistant tank and noticed a
slight improvement but that was it - the leakage was still there.

tholuxanny:
Kindly chat me up on this number, 07032687954. Let's see how it goes

check your watsapp bro

Juokorow:

Thanks again for perseverance over the botman! Two questions, please. Where you able to control the leaks with silicone or other methods. Given that my the house that I am currently finishing has been piped with Protek in mind, could you recommend an alternative? Thanks.

yeah i was able to reduce the leaks to manageable levels using the silicone but would still prefer a
complete replacement of the hot water tank if i had a choice.

i can't really think of any alternative right now but you can browse konga or jumia for options.

babaegun,
now you can see why the spambot was working overtime to ensure that
i don't get the message out. so strange you would think seun and protek
are working in league! anyway, things do happen but good enough i was
able to get the review out hook and crook!

pix as referred:

all,

after getting banned severally for the past couple of days i have finally decided
to go the attachment route. let's see if the botman can read attached files too

so, finally there you have it.

Juokorow:

We are keenly following your update. I am anxious to know they resolution of the leakage and any other issues and Protek’s customer service attitude. Thanks.

yeah, so the spambot thinks it can frustrate me. hehehe, it got something else coming!

solar water heater review continued. the botman banned me
again yesterday

the good
over one year free hot water without electricity so far. although there is an optional electric
heating element installed, i have never had any need to use it - yet.

the bad
a few months post commissioning, i started noticing small leakages coming from the water
heater. so i climbed the tower to investigate the source only to discover that the leakage was
coming from the inlet to the assistant tank (the small tank on top - check the picture). i
called my plumber and after deliberating on possible solutions, we decided to apply silicon to the
leaking connection. that seemed to solve the problem until the leakage re-appeared a few days
later but this time it was from the right end cover. on seeing this, i was perplexed and decided
to escalate this to the supplier - protek power and energy ltd.

i will now continue with my review from where i stopped yesterday.
hopefully, this around, botman will allow the posts to stay - with a
few tweaks to the wordings and removal of more special characters.
sigh.

Barezzi:
Lol Georged1 has been banned again
The devil is a liar, you must complete your review baba

lolz. yeah i guess the spam bot had to do it's thing yet again, and that while i was still
speaking. humph. it's seun's call really. he can choose to continue keeping his bot settings
on paranoid mode while restricting flow of information and stagnating growth or do the
right thing by loosening things up.
ever since the attack on nl a few years ago that brought his site down a for a few days,
the bot man has been on overdrive deleting posts and banning members for the
flimsiest of reasons.

all,
recall that i installed my solar water heater over a year ago and i've been using same
effectively since march 2017. i will now proceed to do a mini review of my experience:
the good, the bad and the downright shameful:

nameplate specs
product name - protek (white label)
type - non pressurized integrated solar water heater
capacity - 300l

installation
the installation presented a series of challenges when i had to decide on either a roof mounted
structure or erecting a separate water tower for the water heater. at the end i settled for the
later partly because of the weight and also ease of access for future maintenance issues. so,
after the decision was made, the rest was easy. retrofitting the existing bathrooms, toilets and
kitchen with new copper tubing was a breeze and my plumber was up to the task.
then came the commissioning part. coming from a background of electrical mains heated water
heaters with the likes of ariston, this was a new experience for me. i remember my first bath
with a solar heated hot water, it's a feeling out of this world.
max temp recorded from march to somewhere around june (before the onset of everyday rains)
was around 77 degrees celcius while the lowest was about 32 degrees celcius between july and
september (when the everyday rains set in).

abunafiu2:
Dear chief GeorgeD, you were about to give us a review of your solar water heater system.
kindly do sir

i tried uploading this review severally over the weekend but the spam bot keeps deleting my post
and banning me for 24 hrs. strange because i don't see anything that remotely resembles spamming
in my post. i know the bot has a loathing for special characters and i tried to minimize using those after
the first ban but it still had to do it's thing again the second time.

i will try again to upload the review. if it gets deleted again i might resort to posting a scanned copy.

abunafiu2:
Dear chief GeorgeD, you were about to give us a review of your solar water heater system.
kindly do sir

prof,
sorry i've been occupied with work. as this is highly overdue i will now go ahead and
give my review.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
This is a bit of a controversial topic.

External cooling is not generally required for the MorningStar because it has a robust heatsink installed, HOWEVER, external cooling ensures that the CC runs really cool under all operating conditions, ensuring optimal performance and long life of the internal electronics.

Unbeknownst to most people, the MorningStar MPPT CCs actually derate current at heatsink temperatures above 80°C - this kind of temperature is not uncommon in the tropics (read Nigeria) in poorly ventilated indoor installations hence MorningStar published a 16 page TechTip on the subject of temperature and cooling.

Using the TechTip manual, it is possible to perform the fairly complicated calculations to determine if one needs to incorporate external cooling in his scenario - in my case, when I have my blower fan in operation, the CC heatsink is only slightly warm to the touch but with the fan off, hot enough to burn one's hands. At the very minimum, additional cooling will help secure long life for the CC's internal electronics as they face a lot less thermal stress.

I will reproduce a few relevant pages from the TechTip manual below;

niyi,
in my own particular case, i've never really had the need to incorporate external cooling with
my tristar mppt cc. warm to the touch, yes. burning my hands, no. but maybe i've been particularly
lucky or maybe i've always had the good fortune of installing in airy environments.
going forward i hope to pay closer attention to my heatsink temperatures but in hindsight i can't
recall seeing anything above 50 celcius even at max amps throughput.

NiyiOmoIyunade:

Find a blower fan to provide additional cooling to the MorningStar's heatsink - experiment with a normal house standing fan for starters and report back what you see performance wise.

niyi,
an external fan for the morningstar?
that's certainly food for thought.

all,
its been more than a year now since I started using my solar water heater.
in the next couple of days I will be doing a review of the journey so far.
a few surprises and a lot of flaks too. it has been anything but a dull
experience.

davodyguy:
@GeorgdD

I just your set up 8 years ago. What happened to this set up equipment?

Technology has really evolved and im sure your CC and Inverter now have display screen rather than volt meter
www.nairaland.com/attachments/298210_DSC_0022a_jpg0b3c36eca1ede356c7dbfcddc43c9193 www.nairaland.com/attachments/298213_DSC_0023a_jpg1e47e991b869602a1aecd66e841bc613 www.nairaland.com/attachments/298214_DSC_0024a_jpg383e6d7974634ccd8af5c745bd9b40af

davodyguy,
lolz! these are throw back pix of the early years in my journey to energy freedom.
ah! the joys of the internet, a place where memories never die!

for starters, that pwm cc in the first picture served its time well without issues. after
being in the cooler for a couple of years, it is now producing much needed juice for a reputable
medical doctor in benin.
the 5kva prostar inverter in the second picture blew up without warning one fateful morning after
working all night. i had earlier shut down it down to cool off in the morning and when i went back
a few hours later to put it on i heard a loud bang and that was the end. the local dealer whom i
bought it from wasn't too excited when i took it back to him for repairs, citing lack of available
spares, support, etc. well, that shouldn't have come to me as a surprise - afterall, what do you
expect from a chinese made mid-range product?
ok, the batteries were zenith 200ah and lasted about 5yrs give and take. i was so impressed with
their performance that i decided to replace them with their 260ah senior cousins which i'm using
till date.
as for the 5kva binatone stabilizer, i guess it just couldn't cope with the huge power draw from
both the inverter and house loads that it caved in and went into early retirement...

i could go on but that would mean writing a whole book on my long journey into renewables...

Barezzi:
Plenty on google...

1. https://earthxbatteries.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/SLA-vs-Lithium-Ah-AN1506_New.pdf
2. https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2015/03/30/batteries-lithium-ion-vs-agm/

barezzi,
thanks for the links. believe me, i read every one of them.
the first link dwelt more on comparing starter batteries to lithium. at a capacity of 1:3 that may be
understandable. however, the victron write-up spoke more to my practical scenario of agm vs lithium
and seems to make more sense.
interestingly, i see that the writer also came up with a price point difference of 3.48 times the price
of agm even at 80% dod (lithium) vs 50% dod (la).
verdict: from a cost perspective, lead acid (la) still carries the day.

bigrovar:


Energy storage is at the mid way point of its transition from Lead Acid due to pressure to find a more sustainable means of generating energy. I honestly see lithium to be a stop gap technology that might soon be superseded as more research money is thrown at solving the energy storage problem. Lithium is still a rare earth material available in very few places on earth. Even if the technology stabilises I expect price would go down up to a point thanks to technology and then shoot up as the low price drive demand .. and that demand would eventually outstrip the supply of lithium. I strategy is to sit and wait and see how it all pans out. The high cost of Lithium now is what is funding many of the research into making it a stable commodity and the raise of electric cars will put more pressure into pushing down price of energy storage and lead to the creation of turnkey all in one solution. My next major upgrade will still be lead acid based probably see what the next 5 years will hold.

bigrovar,
it's really the big energy conundrum playing out all over again. i definitely think the future
belongs to some other storage medium besides lead-acid. but whether lithium is the answer is
what i've been trying to convince myself about. unfortunately, all the replies gotten so far fall
short of that basic answer. emotions? yes. sentiments? yes. hard facts backed by sound
financial analysis? zilch!

Barezzi:
@GeorgeD1,
If i remember correctly, the conversion is not 1:1 It's more like 3:1
A 300Ah Lead Acid (LA) battery bank is roughly equivalent to a 100Ah Lithium bank.

Your current LA capacity is roughly equivalent to a 260Ah Lithium bank... about N6m using your example.

Remember that your 780Ah bank has a usable capacity of 390Ah. A 300Ah Lithium equivalent should give you better value.

Correct me if i'm wrong @chris81964/dapsyra, you can grow your Lithium bank gradually. Start with 100Ah, and grow to 300Ah at anytime.
Unlike LA where one is limited to a max 3-month window to add new batteries.

barezzi,
this is getting quite interesting, isn't it? if 300ah for lead-acid equals 100ah for lithium it then
means we have to ultimately change the way we calculate our power fundamentals, i.e p=iv.
unfortunately i'm yet to see any documentation in support of this. i'd be happy if you could give
any references. at least that would be a good starting point.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
I think Oga GeorgeD tried to account for the differences in AH capacity requirements between Lithium vs. Lead Acid - he derated the Lithium AH requirement vs Lead Acid by 50% - only issue Oga Chris pointed out was that he chose SimpliPhi as his Lithium battery representative case which he deemed too expensive and non-representative of the average Lithium price.

It appears you want to derate the AH for Lead Acid vs Lithium comparison by a factor of 2/3rds and I assume this makes sense for a max daily 30% DoD scenario for a Lead Acid battery to achieve maximum cycle life. Oga GeorgeD appears to prefer a max daily 50% DoD assumption which is in line with what most people can practically afford to do.

The point I am making is that Lithium batteries are not invincible - care has to be taken in selecting an appropriate battery technology to use for any scenario especially so given their steep purchase price.

niyi,
you echoed my thoughts exactly. i like to think of myself as a very practical person (maybe it has a lot
to do with my kind of profession), so i work with hard facts and not just theories. my analysis for battery
bank sizing had a typical scenario for 50% dod which you aptly stated in your comments.
well done.

hello niyi, pranil, chris81964, dmerciful, et al,

so i've been doing some thinking around this whole lithium battery thing and i'm still
struggling to see how present day costs justify the whole excitement it seems to be
generating. take a typical scenario: a 3.5kwh 48v simpliphi power lithium ferro phosphate
(lfp) battery costs about 1,550,000 naira on a popular solar website (names withheld).
using our usual piv power calculation, this translates to 72.9ah at 48v. if i want to make up
a bank of 780ah like i have presently, i will need about 10 units of this lithium battery
making 72.9ah x 10 or 729ah at 48v or 35kwh. this will set me back a whopping 15.5million
naira! even if i decide to do the smart thing and aim for 100% dod, i can only reduce this
cost by half but that will still be unacceptable at 7.25million just for batteries.

now flip this around and lets do the maths for traditional lead-acid agm batteries.
again, i want to build a bank of 780ah batteries and i decide to visit yet another popular solar
website. i get trojan solar agm battery 12v 205ah for about 185k each. i would need at
least 16 units to reach my bank size goal. adding up at 48v this translates to a total 820ah.
which is 39.360kwh (playing up the lithium trick) and at a cost of 2.96million. at a glance
this is less than one-fifth of the cost for lithium with a significantly higher storage.

from a purely economic view point, it wouldn't make sense for me to ditch traditional lead-acid
in favour of lithium when i can get more for less. besides the phantom dod cycles, its lighter
weight plus the fact that you can bypass the usual bulk-absorb-float stages, what other
features does lithium has going in its favor to justify such humongous investment?

abunafiu,
prof, true talk. and not only batteries but cuts across the whole array of
solar accessories including charge controllers, inverters and panels.
inferior products will kill any industry faster than ebola kills its victims.

spyglaxx:
I hate inverters. I power everything directly from the battery. No energy to waste

hello spyglass,
those of us using inverters do so not necessarily because we 'love' inverters
but because of the convenience it provides.going the dc route may sound cool,
I.e no extra cost of inverter purchase, no power losses arising from stepping up
to a higher voltage, etc but when it comes to getting actual dc equipment to work
with your system, that is where the nightmare begins.besides that, the size of
wires you need for a dc only household would be like triple the size of wires
needed for ac.then you have to deal with availability of dc spares and the rest.
for ac however, once you get your inverter, every other thing falls into place.

dmerciful,
that is serious food for thought but at the end of the day I guess its a
choice we all have to make one way or another.