oddysee

Hi guys, no I actually got permission rights & all of my Solar Assistant sites have my company logo displayed & its with Permission from Pierre the main owner & developer. 
I run & support numerous sites & his product is really a product that in my opinion is superior to many. He started off small & his product is reaching far places globally. I am very happy to support such a local grown product. 
I think especially in the US his product will gain a lot of traction. Having looked at the Solar man and Sunsynk logger, they are light years behind, only good for notifications, nothing else.  His latest feature now incorporates the Loadshedding schedules for your location. 

Took a lot of time to drill & thread tap M5 for the balance leads. 
 
 
 
 

So she is all dressed up but in my lab for testing...Geyser load of 3.5kW & she is laughing.

Getting these puppies ready for their first cycle. All to balanced & ready to be assembled. This is the first set of 16 EVE 280ah cells that are ready. There is another set of 16 waiting to go as well but I am a few cells short of top Balancing. The plan is to have a whopping 30kWh pack of 2p16s. 

These messages are coming from the JBD BMS to the Sunsynk inverter. 

2 X 15kWh EVE 280ah cells (32 cells total) will be used in this battery build. Been testing the cells for a period of over 3 weeks now & cells are almost all top balanced. BMSs arrived today. Battery will be built by Monday. 

The Valsa non intrusive Ballast block system used here again. Foam pads that create a soft non intrusive protection for the 35kg weights to not damage the water proofing on the roof. Most importantly these can be removed if work is required for the roof. 

A couple of firsts for me here in this installation. Firstly the Bi-facial PV modules. So the front & back of the panel can catch light & produce energy. Secondly well not a first for me to build an LFP pack but a first to integrate direct battery Comms to the Sunsynk. I can only take credit for the battery build. However, @BritishRacingGreenis the master behind the 300A JBD BMS CANbus Communications integration with the Sunsynk. 
This is definitely a game changer because this was always the missing link with people wanting to go down the route of DIY battery building. Well, we have done it. We will unravel this installation over a few days. 
Enjoy the binge 🤣

Just one correction to the topic: This is a LiFePO4 battery, not a lithium ion battery 🙂
Lithium Ion is what your phone and your laptop has. Usually less than a thousand cycles before end of life (depending on how hard you work it). LiPo (Lithium Polymer) is what you get in Vape pens and Drones and toys and so on. LiFePO4 is used in some vehicles (it is considered not to have a good enough energy density) but mostly for stationary power applications, aka solar power.

Done. 

Done. 

Dear all. 
Firstly I would like to wish you all a safe and happy holiday break. I appreciate every single member and their contribution to making this a great, peaceful and happy platform to enrich each other with knowledge and advise. This was the goal when I started in 2013 with myself as 1 member.
As the aviation industry is a very uncertain career I started the powerforum store about 2 years ago. I don't and will never request any member of this forum to be obligated to purchase from the store. There are many other commercial suppliers that offer just as great service.
Since the beginning in 2013 , every member that has joined has been checked and manually been clicked on to be accepted to the community. There are so many spam individuals out there that want access to post unsavory topics. 
Some of these individuals sometimes get through as they have a perfectly looking Gmail email addresses and locations.
I have tried many different types of automatic spam filters but none are as good as checking with the human eye.
Okay to the point 🤣 : if any members notice a scam or spam member posting I ask you to make use of the report button. Please see the attached image. I require two members to report the post to be automatically hidden for moderation.
The members who have reported the post are also logged. So don't go reporting and hiding a freindly debate. ;D !
This will help me greatly as I constantly have my phone in my pocket checking for scammers to protect our community.
I would like to say thank you again for making this community great and also we nearly at 20 000 members!
Have a safe and restful holiday break.
Thank you all.
Sincerely
Jason Back
 
 

Quality. The Victron unit has a 5 year warranty and generally last more than 10. It has excellent support from the manufacturer. Firmware updates are available and free. The VRM telemetry site is arguably the best available in the business today. Though the cost appears high, it's actually cheaper than many competitors.
For the Voltronic unit, the warranty is 2 years, they generally last about 5, support from the manufacturer is non-existent (though admittedly the local agents are not too bad), 3rd party telemetry is your only option (aka ICC), and if there is a bug in the firmware... good luck. The only other competition in the same price class is even worse.
Battery wise, I rank them like this, at the risk of angering some people 🙂 I leave out batteries that might not be available in this country, eg the excellent Discover AES battery.
1. BYD. They are available in the country but I don't often see them used. I assume it's the price. The new Premium battery is excellent. It's a 16s battery and has excellent maximum charge and discharge currents.
2. Pylontech. I put them this high up because of good support, good warranty, they did well in the Ausie battery benchmarks, and it's an honest battery. They tell you upfront that their EOL is at 60% and the discharge rate is C/2. Not as good in this regard as the BYD, but not bad either. Support-wise I would probably put them ahead of BYD even, but I think BYD has a small technical lead on them.
3. FreedomWON. Local maker, looks good, uses an excellent BMS (Orion BMS). Good charge and discharge current levels. Does good voltage control and doesn't need any workarounds in the software (the above two do in some cases).
4. SolarMD. Excellent battery, though somewhat pricey. Not many installers offer it as an option, I suspect because becoming a distributor is not as simple as with the others. I heard through the grapevine you need to register as reseller and it costs a small fee. Good charge and discharge currents (1C).
5. BlueNova. Uses Winston cells, which is excellent but adds some costs. Has their own BMS. Earlier batteries had some issues in that respect, later ones are much better. Battery capacity is determined based on a C/10 discharge rate, which in my opinion is cheating a little, but can be dismissed as "marketing boosting the numbers". It may be more realistic as to how people will really use them in a residential setting, but it also means that when comparing with other batteries (the least of which uses C/2) you are not doing apples for apples. So do keep in mind when you do comparisons.
Edited to add:
6. Revov. Second-life batteries. A bit of a mixed bag, some people report success, and some don't.
7. LithiumBatteriesSA. A bit of a newcomer to the arena, but popular with DIYers. Watch this space, I suspect a new battery might be coming. Generally uses the Daly BMS. Lower end BMSes don't have comms. I'd probably take one of these over a Revov once it stabilises a bit.

For batteries, I can recommend Freedom Won, Solar MD and Pylontech.
Pylontech is nice because it's modular and you can easily add more later.
Solar MD also allows adding more quite easily but they are wall mounted or their own proprietary rack mount form factor (so must use their rack)
Freedom Won is floor standing and look quite pretty, you can also add more but only of the same capacity so if you start big you can't add just a little bit more later.