Any advice on which one to choose?

Greenrich UP5000 or wall mount or the Shoto SDC10-Box5
This will in the beginning mostly be used as backup with a Luxpower SNA 5000. 
The Shoto is cheaper but I have seen a few posts about communication issues with them and the Luxpower. 
There is also the Volta stage 1 but they seem quite new on the market? 

 

I personally would rather go for the Greenrich, a friend of a friend has some and apparently they have been performing well.

The Shoto and Volta, I do not think they are bad batteries but if it was my money I'd spend it on the Greenrich.

 

Keeping in mind the Greenrich is a 95AH battery I believe and uses cylindrical cells. I do not think that is a deal breaker though, it offers 1.5C discharge rate as well if my memory serves me right.

1 hour ago, Nitto said:

Any advice on which one to choose?

Greenrich UP5000 or wall mount or the Shoto SDC10-Box5
This will in the beginning mostly be used as backup with a Luxpower SNA 5000. 
The Shoto is cheaper but I have seen a few posts about communication issues with them and the Luxpower. 
There is also the Volta stage 1 but they seem quite new on the market? 

 

Both good batteries, I would go for the cheap one 

The cheaper one would be the Shoto. But some places list them as 0.5C recommended and maximum 1C.
The manual states the same but they put the 0.5C in RED, that saying to me is the maximum. Would this be how the BMS is configured?
Then there are a few posts I saw where the Luxpower only saw the battery at half the rated ampere. Is this communication issues resolved with this combo?

I personally like the Greenrich but there is quite a difference in the price.  
Looking at all the warranty T&C's (and what I have read on posts before) it's almost like, by it, use it like you should and hope for the best. 
 

19 hours ago, PsyCLown said:

it offers 1.5C discharge

If only a single Inverter is used, this is a non issue. The Inverter is limited to 100Ah which is 1C for a 5kWh battery

36 minutes ago, zsde said:

If only a single Inverter is used, this is a non issue. The Inverter is limited to 100Ah which is 1C for a 5kWh battery

You are right, a single SNA5000 would only be able to draw 5KW. So not really gaining much in this situation.

 

Greenrich has a much better BMS in my opinion.

5 hours ago, Nitto said:

I personally like the Greenrich but there is quite a difference in the price.

I'm seeing Shoto at around 26k incl from a google search, the greenrich is about R27500.

On 2023/07/11 at 1:07 PM, Nitto said:

Any advice on which one to choose?

Greenrich UP5000 or wall mount or the Shoto SDC10-Box5
This will in the beginning mostly be used as backup with a Luxpower SNA 5000. 
The Shoto is cheaper but I have seen a few posts about communication issues with them and the Luxpower. 
There is also the Volta stage 1 but they seem quite new on the market? 

 

I have installed 8 x Luxpower SNA 5000 with the last 3 using Greenrich UP5000 very nice battery. To be fair i haven't used Shoto so can't really compare apples with apples. My first choice at this stage is FW Lite or E-Tower but they are pricey.

Just an update.

I decided to get the Greenrich WM5000.

One question, does the cable supplied work directly with the Luxpower? Or should some pins be re arranged?

 

1 hour ago, Nitto said:

One question, does the cable supplied work directly with the Luxpower? Or should some pins be re arranged?

You'll have to check the pinouts for both in their user manuals. With a bit of luck they may be, but I suspect you may have to configure the cable to match the pinouts

Just a late update.

The cable supplied works 100% 

Been using it as backup and I am really happy with battery and inverter so far.
Still saving for panels. 
 

On 2023/07/11 at 4:15 PM, PsyCLown said:

a friend of a friend has some and apparently they have been performing well.

Question; How does one know when your battery is performing well?

There are so many statements that refer to X is better than Y because it "performs well".

Pylontech "performed well" till we got 3-4 yrs experience in using them....and the warranty sems to be worthless

China, where most batteries are manufactured grades their batteries industry wide as follows;

"A" grade ; "A + " and "A-"  (A+ have 2 yr warranty with manufacturer, A- the reseller/battery manufacturer carries the warranty)

B, C etc...

So any A-grade battery cell should be of the same quality on a cell level.

How many people have actually taken their battery apart to see what it looks like inside, see build quality?

For me there are 2 major decision criteria

1) BMS - One should buy a battery based on the BMS it uses - if the manufacturer does not tell you the make of the BMS stay away.

2) There must be a BMS application that you can use to see what's going on in at a cell level 

3) Does the battery talk to the inverter without fancy additional cables, configs, fine tuning etc.

4) Warranty - Does the manufacturer / supplier keep to their word?

5) PRICE..

So based on the above, any A-grade battery with a decent BMS (PACE comes to mind)  will do the job and provide "good performance".

My view;  Price, make sure the cells are A-grade, battery has a decent BMS.

Also, most manufactures will say "1C", but in the fine print they recommend C/2 charge and discharge.

Its purely a physical chemistry thing that the charge rate over C/2 degrades the battery quicker due to lithium plating on the anode.

I have pylontechs, frankly I don't expect them to last 10 yrs. I also expect that in 10 yrs time there will be different Tecnologies that will make our current batteries obsolete.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

25 minutes ago, FixAMess said:

Question; How does one know when your battery is performing well?

There are so many statements that refer to X is better than Y because it "performs well".

Pylontech "performed well" till we got 3-4 yrs experience in using them....and the warranty sems to be worthless

China, where most batteries are manufactured grades their batteries industry wide as follows;

"A" grade ; "A + " and "A-"  (A+ have 2 yr warranty with manufacturer, A- the reseller/battery manufacturer carries the warranty)

B, C etc...

So any A-grade battery cell should be of the same quality on a cell level.

How many people have actually taken their battery apart to see what it looks like inside, see build quality?

For me there are 2 major decision criteria

1) BMS - One should buy a battery based on the BMS it uses - if the manufacturer does not tell you the make of the BMS stay away.

2) There must be a BMS application that you can use to see what's going on in at a cell level 

3) Does the battery talk to the inverter without fancy additional cables, configs, fine tuning etc.

4) Warranty - Does the manufacturer / supplier keep to their word?

5) PRICE..

So based on the above, any A-grade battery with a decent BMS (PACE comes to mind)  will do the job and provide "good performance".

My view;  Price, make sure the cells are A-grade, battery has a decent BMS.

Also, most manufactures will say "1C", but in the fine print they recommend C/2 charge and discharge.

Its purely a physical chemistry thing that the charge rate over C/2 degrades the battery quicker due to lithium plating on the anode.

I have pylontechs, frankly I don't expect them to last 10 yrs. I also expect that in 10 yrs time there will be different Tecnologies that will make our current batteries obsolete.

100%

It is quite difficult to say whether a battery is good or not until you have had it for a couple of years however there are batteries out there that seem to give issues pretty quickly or which just seem to be problematic out of the box - CFE and Nenergy come to mind.

 

Warranty is a big one and having local warranty support is always a winner instead of the manufacturer not having a proper local presence other than the distributor.

As we have seen, all good having a warranty on paper but useless if they decide to not honour it and often the wording is in such a way that it is easy for them to void the warranty. Simple example being temps over 25C, impossible to avoid that in South Africa unless its in a room with aircon.

 

I do not think the 1C vs 0.2C is much of an issue, yes the quicker you charge / discharge the batteries the more the cells degrade but the percentage does not seem to be significant and what sort of loads are most people running when on battery only and how many batteries do they have and how often are they doing this?

Just having the cells sit around also leads to them degrading. In my situation with my batteries I can basically charge / discharge at 6KW or less and be within that 0.2C limit and I seldom have such a big load on the batteries - I would imagine in most house holds that bigger loads would be for a shorter period of time.

ie. Boiling the kettle, running the air fryer etc.

 

I think in the next 3 to 5 years we will start to have a better idea as to how some of these battery truly perform after a bit of usage and which hold up well and which do not.

I do like the Greenrich warranty - it's very clear and straightforward without a clause for every possible reason to void the warranty. As to whether if push comes to shove they will honour it a few years down the line is always the question but of the one or two batteries we have returned (which is tiny compared to another local company that has the same name as a famous space telescope), we've never had any arguments.