Solar PV battery options

Surely you mean "or 4 of 8". Anyway, I don't think that there is anything really wrong with doing it, but it's not something that I would do. There certainly isn't any issue regarding leakage or anything like that

Of course, when you stack them vertically, that when you discover that one or two wobble because of the most minor of bulges, and then you discover that to return one cell will cost a few hundred quitd- so you won't be doing that !!!

Surely the bus bars will keep them from moving?

slave1 and I didn't have to pay VAT as our batteries were shipped from Germany. Even if we had to pay VAT it would have been a good price. Without the VAT it was exceptional. Plan to get the build finished this weekend. I might go for a second set of 16 after seeing how the first set goes for a few months.

I got busbars, when I got my free Lead-Acid's, from a UPS crowd in Dublin. They were proper heavy duty ones, heavy and hole punched

Nice! Mind telling us how you got them very cheaply? Pretty much every scrapyard in the world has known for years that they are valuable and are selling them for top dollar on eBay.

Make sure you keep that Nissan Leaf cells based powerwall outside of your house though. Only LiFePo4 chemistry is safe inside your home.

Do you have a way of combining the data from your solar generation with the OWL so you can see how much you are generating, using, exporting and importing in the one place?

With my OWL? No. It's only got 1x CT clamp, so it can only measure one spot. I have my one setup on the GRID live in since before I got my solar installation in.....so now it gives odd readings as it only knows one part of the equation. For example, if the sun is up and the panels are generating 500w and the house is using 1200w, the OWL will say I'm using 700W as it only sees the grid import.

However, there are OWL versions which do have multiple CT clamps.

I also (arrived yesterday) bought for my Dad

Efergy Technologies Engage HUB 1.1 in-Home Energy Monitor : Amazon.co.uk: DIY & Tools

That does also support 3x CT clamps, though I only got one CT clamp. It's pretty good too. Has a web interface, as opposed to a seperate digital device.....so you have to use your phone or some other thing to read the values, but yeah.....decent enough. Probably slightly recommend the efergy, but again the OWL has served me well for many a year.

I've got one of the open energy monitors (I'm not affiliated, just giving my opinion 😀)

They're a little pricey compared to the OWL, and you might need 2 parts, the monitor and the base

But they can handle 4 CT clamps, so for me that was giving Home, heat pump, immersion and EV charger. Plus they have an AC supply so it gives accurate readings. It also logs the data locally, so you're not relying on some cloud service which the vendor might get bored of

I had to take it down about a year ago because we repainted and the wife didn't like the mess of wires coming from the fuse box. I'm hoping to get a socket installed nearby so I can put the whole thing into it's own enclosure and make it neat

Apologies if there's already a thread for this, but I'm wondering if anyone has any experience of Pylontech batteries? I was all set for building my own battery from Winston cells, but the Pylontech looks to be not much more expensive, and I like how modular the system is. If one battery fails I can take it out and it's easy to expand later when the magic money tree bears fruit 😁

I did see this video recently about a guy in the UK having some issues with getting one repaired under warranty

I think some of his points about the firmware not being updated weren't exactly valid, they're just going to send him whatever is on the shelf, not handcraft each battery

But his point about the battery going for repair made me pause. I don't have a problem with it being repaired, I can understand that with it being a valuable product they'd prefer to repair, but I'd be concered about the unit getting shipped off for months while I'm down a module and ~€800

Does anyone know if there's anyone in Ireland who does service & repair on Pylontech products? I've so far found one crowd in Dublin who sell them, but no idea if they do reapair or will be sending it off elsewhere

Hi Folks (I'm sorry

Got some very basic battery questions, sorry if it's been answered already here but there are a lot of posts to sift through:

I had been looking for a 2.5kw battery (for load optimization for my upcoming solar panels), a PylonTech seems to run about 1200 cost, my understanding is that I can get a few cells like this from AliExpress giving say 4 giving me 3.6kwh for 660€, a BMS, busbars connectors and enclosure and I'm good to go, correct?

It seems that there may be some value in getting a larger battery and charging it using a night rate, are people doing this, is it saving money?

Thanks

Just to answer your last question there....

It seems that there may be some value in getting a larger battery and charging it using a night rate, are people doing this, is it saving money?

Short answer is "yes". Longer answer is like many things to do with batteries...."It depends on your consumption".

If you do a thought experiment, and setup a fictional house with 20Kwhr battery, but you only use 10Kwhr/day. So you charge the battery on the 1st night, but of course the fact that you only use 10KwHr/day means that you won't completely deplete the battery before you get another opportunity to charge it again the following night. I'll ignore the fact that some of that 10Kwhr that you are using would be at night rate also, so you'd take that directly from the grid rather than the battery.

So in this experiment had you bought a 10Kwhr battery (for cheaper money), you could achieve the same savings daily, and ultimately payback your battery quicker. So consumption matters. You need to size the battery to your needs and not over engineer it.

That said, (leaving your question aside about the night rate) there is value in a bigger battery in summertime where you might store up energy on a sunny day and then use it in your home the following day where it's cloudy and your not generating much - but that's a different question, and probably not something to easily model.

You and me unkel are somewhat special cases. :-)

it's easy to cycle a 8Kwhr battery when you are using 30Kw+ / day. Damm thing was empty by 4pm there yesterday.....

If you have people at home 24/7 you would be able to do things like cooking/washing/etc during the solar gen so you might get away without battery if not, then when you get home and even if a 5kwh battery is full from solar, you will fly through it (unless you don't have an electric hob/oven) and just watch TV.