nembudziya

Thanks Jason for making this forum. It's a treasure trove of priceless info and advice for newbies and pro's alike!

I was on a budget when I bought these for my uncle's house. So far, my uncle and aunt are happy with their batteries, but I cannot give any objective review beyond what they told me over the phone. You can take that for what its worth. If you can help it, I would suggest taking @Igubu's advice as that will save you money in the long-term. I know money can be tight but waiting on the purchase and saving for a little longer may score you good quality batteries that will give you many happy years of reliable service

This would be fun to see, I'm looking forward to this project. All the best!

Hey @Rooney Hat thanks for chiming in. I got help from someone on this forum and I'm currently using the settings indicated in a previous post (quoted above)

When this thread started several moons ago who ever thought it would result in such enriching discussions. Thanks to @Igubu @JaseZA @Rooney Hat @YellowTapemeasure and everyone else that's been contributing so much knowledge, sharing their experience, and providing wisdom. Together we'll beat the power woes!

I don't know but I suspect it might be something to do with the BMS board that they use. I was warned by a certain supplier to steer clear of a certain brand (I wish I could remember the name of the brand) because the BMS would only support parallel connections. Using the same logic (flawed as it might be) I could see a possibility for BMSes that would only support series connections 🤷‍♂️ Whatever the correct answer is, I suspect the BMS would be the key determinant. The Vision manual claims that the BMS allows both series and parallel connections up to a maximum of 6S6P (that's a lot of power)

@Igubu I think @HubbleLithium has an active presence on this forum. Hopefully they'll see this and chip in with some info and pics of the S-100

I was waiting for this experiment 🧪 🥼 Props to you @JaseZA for answering the question for the rest of us

Hello everyone just thought to post an update on the 3kVa/24V backup system that I've been working on. Last week the power utility informed us that they would be working on our power line and we would be switched off the grid from 7am on Monday (24 May 2021) to Tuesday (25 May 2021) at 4pm. They switched us off at about 11:40am on Monday and power was only restored for a few minutes this afternoon (Thursday 27 May 2021). During that time, with regulated usage of our fridge and freezer, we were able to run our lights, power laptops and charge phones from 11:40am on Monday up to approximately 3pm on Wednesday. By regulated usage of our fridge and freezer I mean we ran them for about 4 hours on battery power on Monday and 5 hours on Tuesday (3 in the morning, 2 in the late afternoon). As for the inverter settings, the cutoff voltage is 24V and following the advise of someone on this forum we used the following battery settings: Battery type: USER Settings 26: 27.6V Setting 27: 26.8V Hopefully I'll be able to add PV power soon and that should save us the frustrations of dealing with poor service from the utility.

The installer came today and seems this was just about right. He recommended using the AGM setting on the inverter and I wasn't sure if that was right but he's the "expert" so I was kinda stuck. Any thoughts? Vision SP 12-200 LiFeP04 User Manual.pdf

Just had this very discussion with my brother earlier today. I'm happy to see that I'm learning a lot from these streets 😃

Hello @lyndiesel You're right, there'll be no comms between the battery and the inverter. The more experienced members of this forum might be able to share some workarounds that you might want to explore since electronics is your forte

So finally the batteries are here. There were several delays in shipping the consignment but fortunately they arrived in good shape. The installation will be done on Sunday, then we'll be testing them soon. In the meantime, I've been thinking about balancing them. Do you guys reckon I can just parallel connect them until Sunday? For some context, I'm a newbie (you probably know this if you've been following this thread) without any fancy equipment at my disposal. So I have no special LiFePO4 charger lying around to assist with top balancing. So I was thinking that parallel connecting them might help with balancing them out before the inverter can charge them after installation. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

I wonder who would take offence with such great information that's meant to help them. People can ignore sound advice at their own peril and I guess they have a right to learn whatever mistakes they might have avoided on their own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I personally appreciate the value that your posts bring and the longer they are, the clearer they become to newbies like me. Hopefully, there are more that can resonate with my sentiments 🙂

@Igubu dropping 'em value bombs as always 🏆

Haha thanks for your response. I hope they'll give you a super long service life. I'll use mine as a power backup until I can connect PV input. @Tim003 I'm sure your earlier question has been partially answered

Hey @WJP thanks for your helpful posts. This is quite encouraging. If you don't mind sharing: How long have you had them installed? What's your average load in kW that's being powered by these batteries? What's been your target DoD? It's always great to hear from someone that's put them through their paces. I'm sure @Igubuand the others would love to hear as well (be prepared to do battery surgery as we request you to go under the hood 😂)

I bought them from Manhattan Computer Solutions and had them shipped to my cousin's place in JHB because I couldn't have them shipped to my place (long story).

Hi @Tim003 I wasn't able to ship them from my cousin's place before the Easter break. I was let down by a shipping agent so I arranged for alternative shipping today. Hopefully they'll be here in the next few days.

Well @delafrique after much consideration I took the plunge and ordered two of these last week and had them shipped to a cousin's place. Hopefully I'll get them here and installed before the Easter holiday then I'll start testing. I'll keep you all posted on the progress but bear in mind that I am a solar noob so I will most likely fail to give much of good advice 🙃

Hey @Igubu check your DM, I couldn't post the contact info here in public

Thanks a lot @JaseZA and @Igubu That really does sound like something frustratingly fun but I'll stay in my lane for now 😂

Hey @Igubu I totally missed that in your response. Sounds like an interesting experiment. Might you be able to share a link maybe? 🙂

Thanks @JaseZA for the heads-up That's very true especially if they perform as advertised it'd be a steal. I will compare the specs for these with the prismatic cells at Lithium Batteries SA just to see which of the two is the real deal. I just checked the documentation and it looks like they're using 100Ah cells in a 4S2P arrangement

Hello @Igubuthanks for your response. It's a 24v inverter I've also seen the Mecer branded ones and this line was almost always there 👇🏾 "NB: No Parallel charging ability and max 4 in Series" So that kinda put me off and that's why I got a little excited about this one. The site claims 👇🏾 "The BMS supports a matrix of 4 battery in series – x 4 battery in parallel. – A total of 16 batteries in the matrix" Not sure if it's not another scam site but here's the link Vision 12v lithium 200ah Yes, that's what I'm thinking. I've been comparing this with the Giter brand but these cells seem to have a lot more going for them than that option (i.e. 1C vs 0.5C, 200Ah vs 100Ah, price etc.) but I'm no expert that's why I value the opinions of the people on this forum.