viceroy

This is AC side. I would never dream of using this on the battery side. The Surfix cable looks like it would fit my needs, but you say 34 amps surge. Surely then the 6mm is required? as an aside, since you mentioned it, my battery side is fused at 100 amps. As discussed in another thread, if my system was pulling over 100 amps, I'd be worried, thus I would rather a fuse go than allow that much current into the inverters.

All I wanted was the batteries & upgraded delivered. The upgraded stand wasn't up to spec so I asked for my old one back, and came back that. Luckily everything is disconnected except for the 3 batteries on the bottom shelf...they were just connected to each other, so no damage other than them being a nuisance.

Oh. My. God. I cannot believe how stupid people can be. I told the battery stand supplier to take away their "bendy" stand and to return my 100ah battery stand as I could reuse it in the garage. My wife just got home, and sent me this picture. I left instruction with my maid that they were to just take their stand, drop mine off and not to touch anything. They ignored that instruction, and proceeded to load up a smaller shelf with the batteries. I am beyond shocked!

Aaah, sounds like a plan

I have a crimping tool with dies from 6mm2 up to 70mm2 so thats not a problem. I would have a problem cutting 50mm2 cable. with my cable cutter it's pretty much on its limit at 35mm2. The interconnects I have already on the batteries are already 50mm2, so I figure, at the very least from each string to the bussbars should be 50mm2. From there to the fuse box could remain 35mm2 or if I raise the shelves as I'm planning on doing with the new battery shelf, the distance from bussbars to fuses will be half what it is now.

Lots of good reading on this. I'm going to leave my 35mm2 cable between the fuse box and inverters, but I do still want to up the cable size to 50mm2 from fuse box to battery to match the battery interconnects. And obviously, going to shorten cables where I can once the new battery shelf is finalised. I think when I spec it, I'll raise it off the floor by about 300mm. That way I can shorten the battery cables. Speaking of the battery shelf. I have left messages for the installer to call me urgently regarding this. Flipping annoying that he has not gotten back to me, but I guess he won't get paid the final amount until he sorts this out.

Cool, I'll keep it to the C20 rate when I reconnect everything.

I based my fuse information from the Axpert install manual. Basically what it says is: So my understanding from the above is for each inverter, you need a 100A breaker, alternatively, you could also use a single 200A breaker before splitting the cables off to each inverter. Since 25mm2 cable can safely handle a current of about 125A, it should be safe to use with 100A breakers/fuses. So theoretically, using 25mm2 from the breakers to the inverters should be safe as the breakers will go before the cable? Personally, I would actually be pretty worried if my system was pulling more than 100A from the batteries at any one time. I did note Chris's negative wire, but I'll rather wait till I have the bussbar till I reconnect everything

Unfortunately it seems to be the norm with these guys. I pulled this from their website, and while the install is neat, the battery shelves used here are also bending under the weight.

So I installed my new BMV700 and the display lights up and shows all sorts of useful data. I have followed this guide for base settings which will be adjusted over time. However I now have a question on the battery bank capacity. The Omni Power batteries I have are advertised as being 260Ah, but I've recently discovered that this is at 20C. At 10C the rating is 200Ah. So in the BMV, do I put 400Ah or 520Ah as the capacity? My gut feeling says 400Ah to be conservative. What say all of you?

That's exactly what I had to do after the batteries were put in place and wired together. I don't know what it is with these installers, but both times now they've wired the batteries like so. Does my head in why they do this!!! The red cable on either side of the bank are the same length, and connected together. before connecting to the inverters through the fuse box. I will be replacing these with proper bussbars soon. I will be shortening cables further once I have the conduits in place too. So basically, from the batteries to the fusebox, 35mm2 is the min required. 1x 200A fuse or 2x 100A fuses are required. And then 25mm2 from the fuse box to the inverters. I already have 50mm2 interconnecting the batteries, and will upgrade the cable from the batteries to the fuses to 50mm2 as well, but the 35mm2 from the fuses to the inverters is way above required, so that can stay. I have 2x 100Amp fuses in the box as well as 2x 100amp breakers, which is sufficient too I believe. Then this morning I disconnected the batteries and removed them from the frame. I have made it clear to the installer that despite their claims the stand will hold, that they must either provide a stand which will not bend under the weight of the batteries or they must return my 120ah stand (I did a straight swap of the smaller stand for the larger) and I'll repurpose it somewhere else in the garage, and I'll have a properly engineered stand made up for me.

Cables are 35mm2.These are the exact same cables I have been using for pretty much the last year. Only difference now is obviously the batteries, and I've shortened all the cables for the new setup.

Wooden struts have been placed under the shelf as temporary bracing.

The cables are to spec.

So I made some progress today. Inverters have been put up, and connected to the batteries and Pv. I've also wired up the BMV700 and thats working too. The battery shelf still needs to be reinforced/ replaced with a stronger one. Please ignore the geyser. It's never been turned on, and we have no intention of turning it on any time soon, so heat (WRT the geyser) and water leaks are not a concern. Once I've pulled across the AC feeds, and tested the basic system, I'll put in place conduits to make it pretty. In the meantime however, the garage is a hot place to be, I havent taken a temp reading yet (misplaced my IR thermometer) but I reckon its around 35C. As such I've lowered the float and charge voltages to 53.0V and 55.4V respectively on the inverters. Maximum charging current is 50A. On the side of the battery is states 52A initial charging current. Are these values correct for the temps and the batteries? I'm going to be pricing an extractor fan which will be mounted in the wall to the right of the batteries to expel hot air to the outside. I also want to play around the JDP's software as well as it seems to do a lot of what I want in terms showing SOC, monitoring, and using SOC to change settings on the inverters.

I've briefly read through the thread, and the cost of repair is around R5k. I know because I had the same error and the diagnosis was the same. blown mainboard.

I'll use the 700 for now, and possibly upgrade to the 702 when funds allow. I said exactly that to the guy who assembled it and started putting batteries on it. I will raise it again when I speak to his boss later today at the final inspection. If it really comes to it I'll add reinforcing at the centre point of the shelf.

After the old batteries went belly up in December, we've been running totally on grid while we waited on insurance and for the batteries to arrive. This has actually given us a good new base to work from. Before we converted the geyser to solar and installed the gas stove, we'd average about 22kWh/day. We're now sitting on about 10kWh/day, but I do turn off the fridges after 10pm and turn them back on again at 5am I'd still like to lower this, and I think I need to get more serious with the family on usage. Today the Omni Power 260ah batteries arrived and are being connected up in their new home. These batteries are monsters compared to the previous 120ah batteries. Total battery capacity is 24,960Wh whereas before I had 17,280Wh I'm going to be changing things up a little this time round. The inverters have been moved to a new wall in the garage, one that does not get warm because of the sun. I'll be installing a Victron BMV-700 to monitor the batteries, and I'll be integrating this with JDP's software. I'll hopefully finish moving everything over and installing this weekend.

Aah, yeah, sorry, that's about 8mm with the insulation. It's the same gauge as what comes from Eskom, so I think 16mm2.

I'm in the process of moving my Inverters, and want to relook at the AC cables I have. Currently I have 8mm solid core copper cable (I hope that's the correct teminology) Looks like the image below. The cable is perfectly suitable, but an utter pain in the ass to manipulate, and is bulky considering I have 2 inverters with inputs and outputs, which means man-handling 12 cables. Are there other options available locally which are suitable for my needs? I'd prefer something more flexible, and ideally with all three cables housed in the same sheath. Please let me know whats available locally and where I can purchase. Much appreciated.

Hey guys, Last week I gave First National Batteries a call, and they don't accept small amounts of batteries. They referred me to a place in Benoni which offer R9.50 per kg and they happily accepted my 12 scrapped batteries. Owner name Vigen, cell 0769186115, address 11 Tom Jones Street, Benoni,

ok, let me see if I can change the order. Wish I'd looked up the 6V batteries earlier. I just recall first time I looked at them, they were way out of my budget.

And what is the maintenance like?

Which leads me to a question. I'm on a limited budget with the replacement batteries My existing bank was 48V 360Ah (12x 12V 120Ah in 3 strings of 4) which was under spec'd for what I wanted but it worked. I can replace this with 48V 520Ah (8x 12V 260Ah in 2 strings of 4) which is still less than I'd like but is 44% better than I had. I could also go with 48V 420Ah (8x 6V 420Ah in a single string of 8) which is a happy medium, only 1 string, but I've been told the Trojan L16HC batteries require quite a bit of maintenance. I've ordered the 12v 260ah gel batteries, but if the 6V wet batteries are better in all respects (I'm worried about the maintenance) then I could change for that. Advice please.

Thanks for all the comments guys. Lets just say when the new batteries arrive, the installation will be supervised by me at every point. This weekend I pulled the batteries out of the shelves, as I want to move some things around in the garage and they were in the way. The suspected culprit battery (see pic) was by far the worst looking with the top pushed right open, and the sides swollen out has a standing voltage of 3.9V...truly dead. The next worst battery was 7.8V, then another were sitting just under 10.6V, so pretty much mullered, and the remainders were all sitting around 12.8V. I had planned on keeping the ones still sitting at 12.8, but looking at how badly swollen some of them are, I think I'll put them out of their misery and try get some salvage.