I’m looking to connect it to an 8kw Solis hybrid inverter. I know it’s only 0.5C but even so, it will still generate 7.168kWh, or is it better to buy a 1c 10kWh battery? I calculated that I plus minus use 10 units at night, if I buy the 10kWh battery it will barely take me through the night, on the other hand, the 14.336kWh battery will.

Please advise what to do.

4 hours ago, BillyBob said:

it will still generate 7.168kWh

Hi BillyBob, welcome to the forum!

No, it will not generate 7.168kWh, but it can theoretically store that much. However be aware that you cannot practically use the full theoretical capacity as the BMS will go into alarm mode at 10% SoC at the lowest. In addition there are internal losses that reduce the usable capacity. Also conceive your system such that you prevent to charge or discharge at more than 0.5C on order to preserve battery life. (C is the relative battery current with respect to its Ah capacity. I.E 0.5C on a 100Ah battery would be 50A.)

5 hours ago, BillyBob said:

I’m looking to connect it to an 8kw Solis hybrid inverter. I know it’s only 0.5C but even so, it will still generate 7.168kWh, or is it better to buy a 1c 10kWh battery? I calculated that I plus minus use 10 units at night, if I buy the 10kWh battery it will barely take me through the night, on the other hand, the 14.336kWh battery will.

Please advise what to do.

In my house we are two adults, and we typically use 4 to 4.5 kWh from 17:00 to 7:00. So I think you need to work on that figure a bit. What things that you do during the night could you instead do during the day when the sun is up and you can grab some free power?

We have a 1C 10kWh battery. I can't actually use the 1C because my inverter is rated at 4.6kW. Anyways, I expect to have better than 50% of the battery available at 7:00, and that's after the water heating (heat pump, not an element) has run.

We run all the appliances and the pool pump during the day. At night it's TV, wi-fi, security, external lights (all LED), some interior lights, a bit of air fryer or kettle. Oh, and the fridges are all running.

The more load you can shift to the sunlit hours (using timers if need be) the better your battery's chance of making it through the night.

My situation - > 50% at 7:00 - means that I have a good chance of going a few hours if the worst possible scenario arises: A power outage early in the morning and PV not so good. Your battery is at it's lowest ebb when the sun is coming up.

Edited January 6, 20251 yr by Bobster.
clarity

@BillyBob to be honest solar as a rule, more so batteries can be quite the rabbit hole. What would happen if your battery packed up, would you have some money lying around to be able to immediately replace that size of battery? The other side of the coin is having multiple 5kw batteries such as FreedomWon or Pylontech and if one in the pack gives you issues you may be able to hobble along and reduce your loads whilst nursing the other remain batteries. Still again, there's the issues of ensuring that you have enough panels and your inverter has the capability to fully charge your batteries as well as ensuring that the individual cells in each battery pack get fully balanced regularly.

1. So to buy 1 x large battery bank or;

2. To buy several in a pack; is the question.

Liquidity, ability to monitor the batteries will inevitably help you in your decision making process. Am sure others here with more experience, will chime in with their knowledge and expertise and experiences.

5 hours ago, Moffat said:

1. So to buy 1 x large battery bank or;

2. To buy several in a pack; is the question.

The same philosophy applies for batteries as does for inverters. In the attempt to have redundancy go for several smaller units in parallel rather than one big unit. I run two 5kW inverters in parallel with 6 100Ah packs LiFePo batteries. The max current the inverters (10kW) ever can draw is around 200A, that's some 0.33C.

There is another aspect to it: 100Ah, 4.8kWh packs wight around 45kg. 2 persons can handle this. A 200Ah pack would wight some 90kg. How would one handle that?

Edited January 6, 20251 yr by Beat

Thank you, guys, for the info.

I understand having smaller units is good redundancy, but it’s also more expensive and it takes up more space, which I don’t currently have, I wish I did.

Let’s say I use, on average, 1kWh per hour at night, to my calculations the 14.3kWh battery last 12 hours?

The recommended Charge/Discharge Current for the Dyness 14.3kWh battery is 140A (0.5C), is that enough for a normal household?

The Dyness 14.3kWh batteries sell for around R36 000 and the Sunsynk 10kWh for around R42 000. Is the R6 000 difference worth it for a 1C battery with less kWh?

2 hours ago, BillyBob said:

Thank you, guys, for the info.

I understand having smaller units is good redundancy, but it’s also more expensive and it takes up more space, which I don’t currently have, I wish I did.

Let’s say I use, on average, 1kWh per hour at night, to my calculations the 14.3kWh battery last 12 hours?

The recommended Charge/Discharge Current for the Dyness 14.3kWh battery is 140A (0.5C), is that enough for a normal household?

The Dyness 14.3kWh batteries sell for around R36 000 and the Sunsynk 10kWh for around R42 000. Is the R6 000 difference worth it for a 1C battery with less kWh?

For me the major and important consideration would now revolve around your loads. What equipment will be running off that and do any of them have high in-rush draw and are you also able to manage fellow housemates to ensure you don’t strain lower rated options of batteries, though I get the feeling you’re quite drawn by this battery and it’s aesthetics as well. Also plan to have enough panels or maybe a backup generator to be able to charge up this battery in the winter months so you are not caught with overcast days.

The other important consideration is, in your location, how quickly can you get product support for both Inverter and Battery should something go pear shape.

Edited January 7, 20251 yr by Moffat

20 minutes ago, Moffat said:

For me the major and important consideration would now revolve around your loads. What equipment will be running off that and do any of them have high in-rush draw and are you also able to manage fellow housemates to ensure you don’t strain lower rated options of batteries, though I get the feeling you’re quite drawn by this battery and it’s aesthetics as well. 

Thank you, Moffat, no heavy loads, the normal tv’s, 3 x fridges, microwave, etc. However, the 10kWh calculated needed at night included normal stove usage but excluded the geyser.     

3 hours ago, BillyBob said:

Thank you, guys, for the info.

I understand having smaller units is good redundancy, but it’s also more expensive and it takes up more space, which I don’t currently have, I wish I did.

Let’s say I use, on average, 1kWh per hour at night, to my calculations the 14.3kWh battery last 12 hours?

The recommended Charge/Discharge Current for the Dyness 14.3kWh battery is 140A (0.5C), is that enough for a normal household?

The Dyness 14.3kWh batteries sell for around R36 000 and the Sunsynk 10kWh for around R42 000. Is the R6 000 difference worth it for a 1C battery with less kWh?

Personal 2c, on paper it seems like a very good option, but I think only you can make that call depending on how you plan to use the battery. If you are recommended to use only 7kW of discharge power from the battery, while the inverter is rated at 8kW output, is that really a significant sacrifice? If you're mainly running baseload through the night plus the odd appliance and electronic devices, that's probably not an issue, but if you've got a peak consumption with the geyser and kitchen/kettle/microwave/stove and aircons etc combining daily, that could easily push against the 7kW limit and over, and that might be too much to do it regularly.

That being said, it's not a 7kW hard limit, since the batteries are rated for a max of 200A charge/discharge, while the inverter can only charge/discharge 190A at most. So you're not able to ever reach or exceed the battery's continuous rated capability of 10kW max power, you're just advised to not to push close to it on a regular basis. Touching 8kW once in a while like during a bout of loadshedding should in theory not be an issue. And if you're on-grid, and if the Solis has got the same sort of discharge-current-limit feature like the Deye inverter, you could set the peak draw from battery to 140A easily, and just get the rest from the grid for those times when you exceed 7kW household demand.

 

2 hours ago, GreenFields said:

Personal 2c, on paper it seems like a very good option, but I think only you can make that call depending on how you plan to use the battery. If you are recommended to use only 7kW of discharge power from the battery, while the inverter is rated at 8kW output, is that really a significant sacrifice? If you're mainly running baseload through the night plus the odd appliance and electronic devices, that's probably not an issue, but if you've got a peak consumption with the geyser and kitchen/kettle/microwave/stove and aircons etc combining daily, that could easily push against the 7kW limit and over, and that might be too much to do it regularly.

That being said, it's not a 7kW hard limit, since the batteries are rated for a max of 200A charge/discharge, while the inverter can only charge/discharge 190A at most. So you're not able to ever reach or exceed the battery's continuous rated capability of 10kW max power, you're just advised to not to push close to it on a regular basis. Touching 8kW once in a while like during a bout of loadshedding should in theory not be an issue. And if you're on-grid, and if the Solis has got the same sort of discharge-current-limit feature like the Deye inverter, you could set the peak draw from battery to 140A easily, and just get the rest from the grid for those times when you exceed 7kW household demand.

 

Thanks, GreenFields, for the reassurance. I was also thinking in that direction.     

6 hours ago, BillyBob said:

Thank you, Moffat, no heavy loads, the normal tv’s, 3 x fridges, microwave, etc. However, the 10kWh calculated needed at night included normal stove usage but excluded the geyser.     

Then tge 1kWh you mentioned earlier is an average. The stove won't use a steady 1kWh. 

Will it use 7kWh? If it won't get that high then the power brick meets your needs. 

What is the rating for the stove breaker?

I know you have to think about money, but get an air fryer. 

Iam going to by dyness power brick like you

Do you advice me to by it

Is it good quality ?

Late reply sorry.

I am running a 14.3kwh power brick with a 12kw deye single phase inverter, for about 2 months now. Still early but no issues so far.

I think there was a new version of the power brick released, because mine is a 1C charge/discharge, and the website also says it is rated for continuous 200A or 10kw discharge (https://dyness.com/powerbrick-low-voltage-storage-batteries-for-household-use). But my house mostly never gets that high, I have geyser times to make sure geysers don't turn on together etc.

Only gripe with it really is that one will get about 85% of the rated capacity. It's rated for up to 95% discharge, so if you in theory drain it to 5%, you should have gotten about 13.5kwh from it, but you'll get 12.1kwh odd. I tried to raise it with dyness but decided it's not worth the hassle of sending it to midrand for a load test. Installer tells me all batteries have this behaviour so it's not really unexpected.

Other than that, I have no complaints with it so far on 2 months use.

I have similar Esener 14;.33kWh, it retails for R29k VAT Included and it is really nice with colour touchscreen the works:

How i see it/calculate it:

It works out to R9963 for an 5kWh battery.

No brainer.

The Deyness @ R36000 work out to R12371 for an 5kWh battery. So there you are close to buying separate 5kWh batteries.

The Esener 16kWh now retails for about R32k

Edited August 22, 2025Aug 22 by jlr

On 2025/01/07 at 2:39 PM, BillyBob said:

Thank you, Moffat, no heavy loads, the normal tv’s, 3 x fridges, microwave, etc. However, the 10kWh calculated needed at night included normal stove usage but excluded the geyser.     

One thing you can do then is move the stove and geyser to the non-backed up side of the system. They won't draw any more power, the battery will only deliver what it can with the inverter pulling from grid to supplement the battery when necessary. Flip side: When there's a power outage then the stove and the geyser don't work.

If you're concerned about getting through an outage then there should be a way that you can set the inverter to only discharge to a certain depth when the grid is available. I do this. In my case the reserved amount is 40%, which means I will always have at least 30% of the battery available if there's an outage. Do not calculate on using the whole of the battery - they usually shut themselves down when there's just 10% left, maybe 5, but you will never get ALL of the battery overnight.

If you want to get through the night without troubling Eskom then you need to check that you have enough battery to service your loads (which you may do, but you'll be close) and that the total draw you could have at any one time can not exceed the lesser of what your battery or inverter can provide. Or you need to restrategise EG geyser on timer switches, discipline as to what can and can't be used when the sun is down (really the same thing I suppose).

I've said that I usually expect to have at least 50% of the battery available at 7:00. In the winter that it is before the sun comes up. Recently a person in the house decided to have some late night snacks that required the microwave. The snacks then were left in the oven, got cold and then were reheated. Result? Battery hit the 40% cut off in the early hours of the morning and the system started drawing from grid. Without the 40% reservation the battery would have got down to 20/25%. There's different ways of looking at those numbers and deciding what's acceptable (especially with the current load shedding situation or lack thereof) but my point here is that a change in behaviour took 15% or more out of the battery overnight, and so the way that we behave does affect how long we get to use the battery.

Edited August 24, 2025Aug 24 by Bobster.
sppelling

3 hours ago, Bobster. said:

One thing you can do then is move the stove and geyser to the non-backed up side of the system. They won't draw any more power, the battery will only deliver what it can with the inverter pulling from grid to supplement the battery when necessary. Flip side: When there's a power outage then the stove and the geyser don't work.

Ummmm ... ja... This actually isn't going to make much difference. Most of the time most inverters will use battery before grid. Please ignore that particular thing that looks like a thought.

Did the OP buy the battery? I'm also looking at it with interest... The 0.5C doesn't make a difference if you buy/install 2 of them - 28kW capacity with 14kW available... I'm considering replacing my bank of 5kW batteries.

Where can I source the Esener 16kWh ?

Kuodos to Esener. It's the first Battery Spec that I've seen that actually specifies what BMS is inside the Battery.!

Edited October 3, 2025Oct 3 by Sidewinder

On 2025/10/03 at 12:13 PM, Tag11 said:

Where can I source the Esener 16kWh ?

NovaCraft is legit, I dealt with them before. Great service
https://nova-craft.co.za/product/esener-es-16-8-kwh-51-2v-314ah-lithium-battery/

and then there are these guys. Not sure if they are legit,
https://sinogy.co.za/product/esener-es-16-8-kwh-51-2v-314ah-lithium-battery/

The Power Forum Store also had them listed in September
https://powerforum.co.za/topic/33009-september-specials/#comment-223124

Edited November 20, 2025Nov 20 by zsde

50 minutes ago, zsde said:

and then there are these guys. Not sure if they are legit,
https://sinogy.co.za/product/esener-es-16-8-kwh-51-2v-314ah-lithium-battery/

Thanks for this. Ironically, Sinogy are the company that installed my Solar solution 2 years ago - they are indeed legit.

I wouldn't say they were perfect, but a solid 8/10 in terms of their service offering and pricing. Definitely no risk in buying from them.

I'll just be worried that it does not have a RS232 port, as regular Pace BMS's have.

Spec says: Ports: 1x CAN-bus, 1x RS-485 Battery Link ports, 2x Parallel Instruction ports.

Hopefully local access via RS485 is enabled, in order to customise settings.

If anybody knows/have knowledge of this, would be great to know.

Also what PACE software version it comes with.

1 hour ago, Sidewinder said:

does not have a RS232 port, as regular Pace BMS's have.

Nice spot. Which is rather peculiar as RS232 has always been a standard port on Pace BMS'

5 hours ago, Sidewinder said:

I'll just be worried that it does not have a RS232 port, as regular Pace BMS's have.

Spec says: Ports: 1x CAN-bus, 1x RS-485 Battery Link ports, 2x Parallel Instruction ports.

Hopefully local access via RS485 is enabled, in order to customise settings.

If anybody knows/have knowledge of this, would be great to know.

Also what PACE software version it comes with.

It is my understanding that the never Pace BMS boards do not come with the RS232 port.

Unfortunately I cannot help more than this. Perhaps ask Esener. You can connect to the BMS using the RS485 port using a different version of PBMS tools. The one limitation here, at least with the older BMSes, is that you cannot change BMS settings (which can be done using the RS232 port), apart from this the sofrware displays the same information.

Edited November 20, 2025Nov 20 by I84RiS

@Tag11 @Sidewinder @I84RiS
Took a couple of days, but the owner of NovaCraft passed on the question of the RS232 port on the Esener 16kWh battery
They then sent him a photo of the ports. Standard Pace BMS, including the RS232 port.
Also noticed a plastic pouch with Bluetooth and WiFi QR code attached. That would be a bonus too.

I asked him to communicate with Esener and request that they update their concise spec sheet accordingly if indeed this is the Esener 16kWh

Edited November 25, 2025Nov 25 by zsde

On 2025/11/25 at 10:12 AM, zsde said:

Bluetooth and WiFi QR code attached

Just had confirmation that the Bluetooth and WiFi are part of the BMS on this Battery. Still trying to establish whats up with the RS232 port that they don't list in the spec sheet.