Namzy:
Just discovered this wonderful device called tds meter that I bought from AliExpress it measures TOTAL DISSOLVED SOLIDS in water. This is for those using fla batteries that needs to be topped up. Distilled water in ideal solutions has tds level of 0. However I learnt from a forum that anything from 5 and below is ideal. I have tested different water sources in my house, my tap water is tds level 8, Eva water is tds 36 but my event sachet water and delina glory water measured 4 and 3 or 2 respectively. I will use them for topping up. Meanwhile you can also use it to check whether the so called distilled water is really distilled you know our people. Pics from another forum and from my check of event and delina glory pure water. Some even use it to check for purity if drinking water but that's an area of controversy.

Nifty device as I've had one for years. I use it to ascertain distillate is of good quality. Filtered water has other issues asides TDS (there are other particulate matter in water apart from dissolved solids, which you do not want finding their way into your batteries). If you can't get distilled water to make or buy, use it as a device of last resort. Attached are pix of my TDS meter and water distiller (quality distilled water has become harder to lay hands on).

And as Niyi advised, condensate is the next best thing (I use it as my source water if I'm using the deioniser to make "pure water" for batteries). By the way, I'm amazed at the quality of your tap water. Mine is way higher in TDS.

olopan:
i'd like to take my time to appreciate the works in which you guys are having done here, its great, enlightening and educative ......... i just thought to post some of my installations in Ilorin@ an undisclosed bank.

Pretty impressive. Kudos!

I'm in Ilorin at the moment. Can we hook up sometime?

NiyiOmoIyunade:
Please see below the science behind your apparent 'good luck' in the product description

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY
Many desulfator products use an old technology inductor design to generate the pulse to desulfate a battery. [b]This old technology creates a harsh inductor peak that can be damaging to the battery plates.
Utilising our new capacity pulsing method a “soft” peak is generated so dissolving sulfates without damaging the battery plates. [/b]

So the increased plate shedding had been previously documented.

Namzy:

Have not seen this before any reviews? Meanwhile some people still believe desufators are snake oil but if u insist you can get the more popular powerpulse. I intend to buy it on black Friday to test ie if it's cheaper that day

I have controlled empirical proof that they work (I've used the Infinitum brand for years) but not in all cases and definitely not with batteries dead from wear and tear (i.e. aging).

Best added to the batteries from the outset and works well with sulphation from batteries left standing unattended (not cyclic abuse though the latter also experience something of a revival but not for long as plate shedding soon appears to become another problem).

The barebone device pictured in original post .... I have no idea what it does nor what it might be capable of (in terms of benefits and possibly havoc).

garbamaza:

39.5v = 5 bars

Looks like "float" voltage while charging. Have no fear, your batteries appear fine (rigorous testing won't allay much).

38.3V looks more like the resting potential. Even at that, it's kinda high for lead-acid chemistry cells, even with the regular additives.

pranil:
The system if finally online

After waiting for the Y inverter board to be replaced due to different firmware and my vacation the system went live on Saturday . Everything seems to be running fine. small tweaking is still going on
The main components

3 x 5 KVA Victron Quatrro
6 KVA fronius symo
250 /70 CC Victron Smart Solar
150/70 CC Victron Blue solar
Venus GX
BYD PRo 10 KWh 48 V
Zeihl 1001E islanding relay
Carlo Gavazzi 3 phase energy meter ( modbus)
Victron Lynx 1000 Amp busbar
Various panels making up 2926 Wp ( Solar world) , 3400 Wp ( Canadian Solar) , 2440 ( yahsun)
20 KVA caterpillar Generator

The system is running ESS ( grid parallel) with 350 watt import allowed no export allowed. That way all teh solatr produced is consumed by teh loads even if NEpa is present.

In absence of NEPA the Generator autostarts/ Stops if the battery is below 60 % ( during day) or below 80 % ( during night)

ESS in action - youtube link -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb5A0IgOV5w

Once again, I'm wowed beyond words. Kudos!

remizvxcq:
pranil, thanks
Presumably, the cable needed should be ve-direct port of CCGX to ve-direct port of the BMV
part ASS030530310 https://www.victronenergy.com/cables/ve.direct.cable
gbp21.47 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Victron-Energy-VE-Direct-cable-10m/dp/B01F9ESJVI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1537184625&sr=8-2&keywords=victron+ve.direct+cable+10m

Can anyone share the pin sequence for the ve-direct cable because I would like to try to hack a 4-pin audio cable that I got from an old PC?

It's more than just a matter of cable pin assignments. It's a serial to USB translation at specific baud rate so you'll need extra hardware for that. I'm about to make my own cable so I could give you feedback when successful (or not).

bigrovar:
I have the ccgx to be over rated. I had a chance to go with it when I was looking at logging and remote monitoring options. For the price it is nothing more than a portable victron connect. Logging real time logging and data collection and aggregation can only be gained if linked up with victron vrm service and the option for Internet connectivity are very very limited for the device. The biggest draw back is not being device agnostic. It is designed to integrate with victron product alone and would thus only work in victron ecosystem. It is for these reason that I settled to using a Pi and Emoncms for my logging and I have not regretted over 4 month down the line.

Works seemlessly with Fronius and a somewhat bumpy ride with SMA. Hoping to get a Primo or Symo someday. An ethusiast's dream.

mank1234:

What if one uses a diode to ensure that east facing array doesn't flow into west and vice versa, will one still need 2 CC

Yes, you will need 2 CC as maximum power point will vary for arrays facing different directions due to different insolation.

Even in a single array, MPP varies amongst panels, not to mention different arrays.

pranil:

very nicely and accurately put .

Pranil is back!
Your vacation hasn't gone unnoticed. Welcome back.

chris81964:
Impressive customer service. A few weeks ago I received an email, advertising the prices of solar panels.....
This morning they delivered the next order and a few hours later he came to visit. Quality people and quality products. Please call them for your LG and Jinko panels. +234 803 373 1860. I normally beg for invoices and I had someone not only deliver but come to thank me

Finally, we're getting somewhere.

Barezzi:
Words on marble! Lemme quote it for posterity.
I always advocate:
1. Size Solar Panels for daily consumption+system losses weather (24hrs)
2. Size batteries for night time consumption only (5pm to 7am) This should represent about 30% of battery bank capacity.
From you submission below, i have reviewed (2) above.

I fear for my current bank as only once have I crossed 10% use. It's a paltry 200AH 48V but so efficient are my nighttime devices that fans, TV and lights still can't punch past the 10% mark unless I have guests.
Shallow cycles have a demerit too, particularly with tall batteries.

By the way, I made a harmless post right after durodee's own. Got banned for probably 24 or more hours and got my post hidden (not deleted). Sounds like the work of some overzealous moderator.

Feshizzy:
Hello Wonderful People,
Happy Holidays,
Who has success stories as regarding topping up agm batteries with distilled water from time to time?
I do understand agm are said to be maintenance free but research says that's not entirely true and mentioned they could be topped up.

So I do want to understand, if it's been practiced and not just theoritical view.

.....
Regards.

In theory, never try that.

In practice, almost every solar enthusiast I know who's used AGM (and had dead batteries) would have either wondered about it or tried it. I've done both. Hit or miss, more misses than hits (let's say 15% success with limited extension of battery life and a very real risk of battery explosion). I witnessed poorly sealed caps pop off with such force as to displace a spanner.

At best, a risky experiment. I can't stop you from trying it but I can give one really good piece of advice: have 911 on speed dial.

kadorzy:
Hello great minds, hope you'll having a great weekend. Kindly oblige me a privilege to ask a quick one.
What is the implication of an oversized inverter on a battery bank?
For example; having a 10kva 96v for a maximum cumulative load not more than 1.5kw at any point in time.
Thanks y'all.

More often than not, just an increased self-consumption by the system.

pranil:


I have used this with great success. You just hold to battery and press down It fills each battery correctly. Takes the hassle out of checking each battery

https://www.amazon.com/Cycle-Battery-Water-Filler-Bottle/dp/B00NB808P0

Mighty Max to the rescue! I got one a few years back on recommendation from a friend who uses them. The can now essentially serves an entire RE community

Barezzi:
Saipro, You got me thinking...
When I started this solar journey several moons ago, the goal was to power my WHOLE house via solar.
Huge battery bank, several stacked inverters and a massive pv array to cater to present and future power needs.

My daily Essential loads consumption is also about 8kwh. It's the non-essential loads that rack up the numbers.
So much money spent to cater to non-essential loads
I can getaway with a smaller inverter by replacing several non-essential appliances with their dc equivalent.
(dc booster pump, dc submersible pump, dc water heater) but the Induction cooker, ACs, electric kettles?

I am always interested in any opportunity to automate and optimise my setup.

With a 3kW PV array, my daily consumption rivals yours buy on days I can afford those massive opportunistic loads.

Enlightenment came when I realised the primary aim of RE is energy conservation not energy production. Changed all but one of my bulbs to LED including floodlights. TVs are LED (one remains LCD) and fridge + freezer are A-rated. AC is not inverter type but consumes lesser than expected (an LG). And so on and so forth.

I'd love to have your bank and array though. That's what I call a largesse.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
Lolz. My max daily usage without ACs is ~8kwh. This covers daily ironing for 30 mins for me and my madam as we prepare to go to work, daily hot water dispenser for about an hour to make coffee, microwave for breakfast and some elements of dinner, always on mid size fridge and water dispenser (timer is on permanent ON in the presence of so much power), always on security lights and a few other household appliances that never go off.

With zero sun and even if I put off the PV array breaker, I have 5 days of backup with no load rationing .

With my total PV array at 7.6kwh, I am sure to generate at least 7 to 11kwh daily even on a bad day - I average between 23kwh to 32kwh on a good solar day if I run two inverter ACs and one non-inverter AC all through the day.

Essentially I have a virtual perpetual motion system going on there - grid use is now discretionary and Gen has rusted up where it sits yet I remain unconcerned

At less than half your PV array size, I can boast similar performance. My essential daily consumption though is less than 3kW, largely in part to a recently acquired Victron Phoenix inverter with idle consumption of about 10W (thanks to Pranil for showing me the way).

My point? Your array size is sufficient to run a block of offices during the day, disregarding your equally oversized battery bank. I hope those batteries don't croak from shelf life expiry long before you've used up half their useful capacity.

bigrovar:

I will also like to recommend Luminous Indian Tubular batteries. Honestly Tubular batteries have one advantage over the US flooded batteries. They are designed for tropical environments i.e higher humidity and temperature and unreliable charge supply. They can take massive amount of abuse, rarely ever gets warm, and experience minimum water loss. The 2 powering my system have refused to die which I find bothersome. Oga pranil even confirm to me backstage that the lead plates are actually made in the USA. It seems they took the best of tubular technology usually found in single cell high capacity batteries and applied it to a 6 cell battery form factor. Trojan recently collaborated with sukam to make trojan batteries for the Indian Market while French company Schneider Electric snapped up Luminous all together. The level of RnD that has gone into the Indian tubular battery especially their use in an environment like Nigeria with unreliable power supply and hot weather..in addition to often overlooked practical features like electrolyte level indicator flooters are just some of the reason I highly rate the tubular batteries. A company like luminous gets my nod for their presence in Nigeria and wide reach across the country. This makes warranty issues much easier to resolve.

I intended to include tubular at the mid-level but felt it would expand the scope of comparison beyond USB and Trojan. Having said that, I wholly agree with your submission.

PS: Can I have your WhatsApp number? We need to have some backstage chats

chris81964:

I have a Growatt SPF5000 and it runs my 1.5 hp water pump, refrigerator and freezer all at the same time with no problems

Growatt is a pretty good brand. Might not have the clout of Schneider, Magnum, Outback and co but routinely gets the job done too. Or so I've been told. Yet to try one.

nonoski:

Yes this seems to be the simplest solution.
But my tot has been why use the panels only for pumping of water for a few hours.
When the same panels + a few more can be effectively put to use and eliminate Generator entirely in the village house since it's hardly occupied (less than 35days the entire year)

Your batteries would be your Achille's heel

For the record, all batteries fail eventually including flooded lead acid chemistry cells.

My experience with US batteries has been a bit different with 2 sets on 2 sites not requiring watering in 12 & 15 months respectively despite heavy use (35 - 50% drain almost daily). Both were 24V setups, had a VIL inverter and used 6V XC L16 batteries each. ePsolar 60A iTracer with no temperature compensation, no equalization and absorb set to 28.8V, float at 26.4V. I have a similar setup running in my dad's place, thoroughly abused (routine 80% drain) yet they're alive and fairly strong after 3 years (I'd say they're down to about 50 - 70% capacity now).

I did my research before choosing USB L16 and global end user reports generally rate them better than their Trojan counterparts. Trojan 6V L16 batteries rock too but are less tolerant of abuse. The 12V versions for both of them require serious minding. I can as well attest to that.

Having said that, for the small home user, little else beats the Trojan T105-RE. They're literally indestructible. Something I can attest to again. It just so happens those of us who bought from these shores a few years back got lemons. Asides the few odd ones which failed, the others are living up to their reputation.

My recommendation for FLA:
- starter batteries should be Trojan T105 (the plain cheap ones). They'll serve while providing the learning experience.
- small systems should use Trojan T105-RE up to a max of 3 strings in any config (12V, 24V, 36V or 48V). Suitable alternatives would be any L16 (except the 6V RE USB and the 12V non-RE Trojan)
- larger systems should get either L16 USB (also sold as Penn, Deka and a few other brand names) or go for small industrial Trojans

pranil:

I have a different opinion. It may be cheaper and more efficient and definitely more reliable in the long run to directly run the PUMP from Panels ( DC models)

https://www.dayusolar.cn/product/4sp8-solar-dc-water-pump-for-8m3-h-flow-rate-with-max-head-220m/

or use a special pump inverter running from panels ( no battery) - AC models

https://www.mppsolar.com/v3/sp-series-3-phase/

https://www.grundfos.com/market-areas/water/solar-water-solutions/solar-water-solutions-systems.html

I think he mentioned unattended during the problem description. Your first suggestion seems to be the one prime for his needs.

Adding more equipment introduces more points of tending to, thus more entry points for failure.

PV panels -> DC pump -> water level in the tank triggers an automatic float switch -> happy nonoski.

Not sure it can get any simpler.

chris81964:

The original Yiyen inverters used to go poof.

That's interesting. Lucky you. We learn everyday. My original 1kVA nameless Chinese inverter (with negligible footprint consumption) would show a false charging light making the gleefully unaware user think it's actually charging itself (got into a few such arguments which I never really could win).

Barezzi:
Guys,
Is there any danger connecting the AC output of an Inverter to its AC input?

Usually, asides increased drain on the batteries (assuming not grid-tied), nothing should happen. Mid to premium builds would sense self-feed and either shutdown or display an error. Such has been my experience. Never seen an inverter damaged by such though.

From top down:
- 1st pic is of my current main bank, ushered into service 2 weeks ago; USB L16 200AH 12V batteries
- 2nd pic is for a standby bank for security lights, USB L16 360AH 6V batteries
- 3rd & 4th pics are of my recently decommissioned Trojan L16 205AH 12V batteries, currently being prepped for dry storage storage.

Not included are my Trojan T105 225AH 6V golf cart type batteries, also in dry storage and doing fine prior to decommissioning.

Reviews to soon follow.

Ativ:

I thins it’s time we revisited Trojans vs USBattery to guide those of us who don’t have enough resources to experiment.

I'll upload pix of my mixed battery banks when I return home

NiyiOmoIyunade:
I am a fan of using the thickest gauge cable you can possibly afford for best results but I will also be the last to say a particular cable size is insufficient when it clearly is sufficient for the application and many authorities that set building and electrical codes aver that it is sufficient.

It is much like a friend who ran 4MM wires to all sockets in his house to power his 2hp ACs which came from factory installed with 2.5mm wire or people who dedicate a 5kva relay stabilizer to power their 'large' chest freezer whose maximum possible surge watts is about 1.5kw and running watts under 300w - sure these will work without issues but they are both clear cases of overdesign.

....

If in doubt, then it is best to go for the next higher cable size like we have all reinforced several times.

Once again, you're right but ... distance matters (resistance is quoted per unit distance) and you never can trust the quality of your cables.

I have a 15kVA servo AVR and 4mm (calculations as per requirements specs showed 2.5mm) should be more than sufficient a gauge of cable to run power to and from it under 1m of distance.

I did the installation myself using best practices as guidelines. Lo and behold, my 10mm cables got quite warm at 6kVA loading (on the input side of the servo). And that's AC, not DC.

The point being, you really can't be too careful. And yes, time and time again, people have shown wanton use with big inverters. Rather than the 99% you quoted, I'd say more like 30%. AbuNafiu and Kiekie1 can bear witness to this. I'll merely assume you've had very civil and obedient clients thus far.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
If the battery interconnect cables get hot while charging or discharging then very definitely he needs to upgrade to a thicker gauge.

.... then 16mm is well within spec.

I have attached the NEC Ampacities guide below

http://www.usawire-cable.com/pdfs/nec%20ampacities.pdf

Your advice is on point yet unsafe in this scenario.

They'll get warm if he's using the C10 charge rate, even if 25mm² and the distance is as short as manageable. And molten battery terminals/posts are real. Ask the victims.

Malevonent:

Ok will double ch3ck th3 connections..they r all 16mm. Half yard each..my 5kva inverter was displaying 15% load...and had solar input of abt 330w 48v setup ..would the solar input be capable of introducing errors?...

You might want to upgrade to at least 35mm² cables for battery interconnects if they're 200AH or higher. The resistance (impedance) becomes nearly negligible at those gauge sizes. I generally don't use below 50mm² for ease of mind. I suggest you do the same

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

Welcome back prof. I expect no less from the enthusiast cum master. We're all eagerly awaiting the commissioning of the new system.