o boy you're going to have some fun just no sparks as by the look of what you got there it would be bad

Each of the new batteries almost replaces three of the old ones (280AH vs 3 100AH)

Among other things it means the system powering through a cloudy day (an extra 14.3kWhs - which was more than we use most fall/winter days.)

And yes, me will try to be careful not to arc/spark things.

hehehe with my project a mg Miget that was converted in to ev I'm about to put 4 tesla battery pack to us each are 24v at 250Ah

That doesn't sound like a lot of storage - limited miles for your ride?

Also be very careful if you will be using regenative breaking. Pumping a lot of power into already 'hot' batteries might be why there have been a few fires while they were stopped at a light.

Using the other battery that are in as a reference (Reilly low milage 12 miles) new one shoud put it at about 200 mile rounding low.

It runing in 96v as im using it for to and from work. Dusint have regenerate braking.

Oh boy more fun and games.

Everybody's gotta have a hobby.

Lithium iron phosphate batteries are good.

A hefty 70lbs each, a lead-acid of the same rating would have been around 200lbs (and you couldn't draw as much or have it last as long!)

As well as my earlier batteries have done I went with the same company for these (ECO-WORTHY)

Yea not to mention lead acid batteries don't like being discharged past 50%.

Been looking into lithium iron phosphate for a hypothetical uhaul conversion considering how rental prices are. possibly something like this https://bigbattery.com/ or roll my own. whatever i can afford. i've been stuck living at home due to rent costs and health.

I'd say look at the kits to get ideas and then roll your own as your needs might not be offered (and you end up with too much or not enough.)

Lots of utube videos on people making/setting them up (and even people building their own batteries from cells!)

I myself prefer breakers to fuses (don't need replacing if they blow and can be used as a switch to cut the circuit when needed/wanted.)

Ask if you have and questions - just remember that me ain't no expert!

Speaking of kits. Just found out that musk is helping this company. https://www.boxabl.com/ I'd say that's pretty tempting. 15k for a house? even if it is that small and a flat roof in an area that gets snow.

I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't an option to add tilt to the roof (pointed in the direction to then add solar to it!)

Did someone mention smoke? https://www.orarc.org/wp-content/up.....oke-Custom.jpg Just in case you need some.
Seriously, looks like a great project. I'll have to look up that type of battery, looks way more advanced that on the ones Southwest Windpower offered in the late 1990s. I used to help build some of the circuit boards for them.

Same company - ECO-WORTHY - just a bit bigger. Same 4 by 4 limit, but 4 full banks of these is 57kWhs vs 20kWhs I'm currently running.

As to the smoke?

Lucas electric wiring smoke fluid, usually used for Jaguar wiring harnesses. You'd mentioned you didn't want to let the magic smoke out of the system. Old joke for anyone dealing with British vehicles

Do you know why the Brits drink warm beer?




Lucas also makes refrigerators!

I hope you have been reading reviews and watching video reviews of the budget LiFePO4 batteries, such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7tt7ngfCAY

I did watch your link, not sure I'd totally trust his call on things. The 100AH ECO-WORTHY's I have been using seem to measure up, so I went with their big brother. They do not have the low-temp cut outs, but I'm not expecting them to freeze where I have them.

While I do have one of those cutting tools I don't plan to crack any of them open for a peek (cost too much to break that way!) Maybe if one of them dies I'll take a look.

Yah letting out the magic smoke is a bad idea. On the other hand, your dealing with lethal levels of electric, be carefull. Be quite pissed if you kill yourself and unable to finnish tails of the folly. *chuckles* Looking at eventualy doing like a 50kw system here eventualy, everything is electric, and bosslady is way against doing gas or other alternative methods. Hell, they would rather a couple propane cans, than to get a yard tank. Hell, still struggling to get them to understand that desiel is better for storage than regular gas.

Yeah, been shocked enough to not want to do it again. Since I made it work the first time I'd thought I might try to do it a little more 'right' this time around. Meaning some proper bus bars rather than the link-to-a-link-to-a-link games I did the first time.

As to your bosslady, yeah, it's hard to explain things to someone who has already made up their mind.

good luck with those angry pixies!

What angry pixies? Most fun so far was using a too-small cutter to cut 0 gauge wire (too small as in the 'bite' was more than big enough but the handles are shorter(less leverage) than I would have liked.

xp sorry a Canadian you-tuber i like refers to electricity as "angry pixies" and i thought you might have been referencing him xp and yea, handles never seem long enough when trying to snip metal!

Ah, hadn't heard electricity referred to as "angry pixies" - I'll have to have Neal use it somewhere.

As to the handles, I'm getting older and don't have the grip I use to ...

I'm still young xp and i struggle with them sometimes, though i've found if you can find/ afford them mechanical advantage snips are twoterful! (one better than wonderful)

These snips came with the crimpers, 0 gauge being the largest they claimed it would handle. (Which it does, but you need a very strong grip.)

Might upgrade them - or consider it force training my grip!

Are you doing a temperature monitoring on the batteries? And smoke detectors? Juuust in case?
Doing both in my IT room due to multiple oversize UPS units with Li batteries. Also got the fire marshal to sign off on an O2 deprivation extinguisher system since it is a sealed area. The cats hang out in my shop which is ventilated and sealed off from the server / UPS room.

Ah yes. I remember Lucas, prince of darkness!

Yes to smoke and the solar charger will watch the temps. (never saw my other batteries get above room temp because I wasn't pushing/pulling anywhere near their max currents.)

Since they have their own oxidizer my only real option is to never push them too hard. They claim they can do 140 amps all day long, and rated 250 amp continuous charge/discharge. As my inverter's full load draw is only 137 amps I figure things should be okay.

Main idea is to add coverage for a cloudy/rainy day (yes, more solar may be added as well.)

I've heard of something in development called aqueous batteries, which use seawater instead of lithium and is supposedly much better to use.

Something to look into.

Did a quick search for 'aqueous batteries' and found it not really anything to get too worked up about. Very old tech (stick two different metals into saltwater, an acid or even an orange/potato and there's current to be had.) But there are reasons why we don't use it in any scale.

`````````````

An aqueous battery is an electric battery that uses a water-based solution as an electrolyte. The aqueous batteries are known since 1860s, do not have the energy density and cycle life required by the grid storage and electric vehicles, ...

Advantages

When compared to the lithium-ion batteries, the aqueous ones have the following advantages:[2][4][5]

*safety and reliability is related to non-flammability (due to high water content; battery can still explode if overheated), high tolerance against mechanical mishandling, and resistance to overcharging (due to the oxygen cycle);
*low cost is based on cheap raw materials (sulphuric acid is very inexpensive compared to, say, lithium hexafluorophosphate), manufacturing that does not require oxygen-free environments, minimum of electronics due to inherent safety and reliability;
*fast reaction rate allows faster charging and discharging and provides consistency over the temperature range.

Disadvantages

In comparison to the lithium-ion batteries have the following drawbacks:[6][4]

*a narrow electrochemical window: water starts electrolysing at the potential of 1.23 volts. Although a clever choice of materials can stretch the window to 2.3 V, in practice only the lead-acid batteries reach 2 V, with the rest of the designs in production limited to the potential slightly above 1 V, thus greatly limiting the energy density (Li-ion cells typically deliver 3.3–3.9 V). Both volumetric and mass energy densities of the lithium-ion batteries are 2-3 times better;[7]
*water being an aggressive solvent causes solvation and dissociation of battery components and can cause corrosion, limiting the choice of materials and lifetime of the battery;
*cycle life is an order of magnitude lower.

````````````````

So your standard car battery is a better type of 'aqueous battery'. Like a lead-acid battery you'll have to keep a close eye on your water levels.

Searching Amazon brought up a couple of books on the subject, but they aren't selling anything called an 'aqueous battery'. And unless some company is mass producing the things, they aren't going to be hobbyist friendly cost-wise.

And I didn't go lead-acid because the expected 'life' of lead-acid I'd need to buy 3-5 more to match a LiFePO4 battery. Then there's the power; you can drain 98% of the power out of a LiFePO4 without damaging it, where the lead-acid doesn't like you trying to draw past 50% of its rated power. Most LiFePO4 batteries you can buy have a BMS (Battery Management System) that levels out the cells to help extend the battery's life, over/under voltage and over temp protection (as in it cuts the flow if you try to overcharge, over draw(makes the battery 'dead' before you actually damage it) or if the battery is just getting too hot to safely use.

They aren't prefect, since I'm using 12 volt batteries in a 48 volt system I can have some batteries ending up higher/lower than the rest of their set. To date I was just tearing the system apart every six months or so and matching all the 'high' batteries together and all the lows together. (I have picked up a couple "Battery Voltage Balancer,for 4×12V", but I haven't tried them yet.)

Sorry about the overly long reply, but someone looking to play these solar games might find it useful/helpful.

Thank you for doing so. The aqueous batteries I read about were intended for cars. I compliment your research.

Like far too many reports on 'new' tech, it's only new to those that have never checked the past.

That by the way is not a dig at you, I'm constantly getting hit with "you've got to check this out" or "this will solve/change everything", but more often than not the 'great thing' doesn't scale or is impractical for the actual use. If there was a better way to do something somebody would be doing it. Most often you can 'follow the money' and find why it isn't already in use. Yes, I have solar; but not every household can afford to throw as much money as I have at it (and I saved half to three quarters the cost by doing it myself) and I still need need those bad old gas/oil/coal plants covering for me when we have a string of cloudy days.

And I see SpaceX just lost their latest test craft, but they got further than last time so it's a 'win'. Maybe third time's the charm (and I really want to see them 'catch' that massive booster!)

https://www.orarc.org/?p=2348 A link for genuine LUCAS wiring harness smoke. Lucas, the best in smoke producing electronics.

Na, if there's gonna be smoke it'll be right from the harness - though at the price of bits I try to not let any smoke out ...