June 23, 20197 yr Has anyone looked at the SOLAR MD lithium Ion batteries? I have seen a unit in a local solar dealer store, but have not been able to get my hands on any technical literature as yet. The units are supposedly manufactured in Cape Town. Solar MD, is situated in Montague Gardens. Sent them an email requesting more info. Would to get comparisons to the other brands available? Very clean looking unit, nice cabinet
June 23, 20197 yr Author It seems this topic has been raised before. A search of the site did not find the thread? But Google did? LOL.
June 23, 20197 yr 6 hours ago, Blinkwater9 said: Has anyone looked at the SOLAR MD lithium Ion batteries? I have had the 7.4kwh running for the last month now and am very happy so far !
June 23, 20197 yr I have had my 22kWh system running for about 8 months now and also very happy so far! I am wondering, after the whole monitoring platform, why this guys don't have decent website, asked this before without a reply...
June 24, 20197 yr 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.
June 24, 20197 yr Author 14 minutes ago, plonkster said: 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. Awesome info, thx
June 30, 20196 yr Author I have been informed by SOLARMD, that the logger unit mentioned, does not communicate with the INFINISOLAR inverter? Can anyone offer more info on this?
June 30, 20196 yr Author On 2019/06/23 at 5:07 PM, Mstott said: I have had the 7.4kwh running for the last month now and am very happy so far ! Hi Mstott, Can you share more information on your system, and your consumption? I am trying get a feel for the capacity of these units, and which kw size unit will best suit my needs? Thanks.
June 30, 20196 yr Sure my system is victron , multiplus ll, venus GX , MPPT 150-60 , 7.4kwh Solar MD and logger V2 , Art solar 350w panels not quite north facing and tilt is not great for winter . I get sun from 9am until 3pm , so far I am getting around 11-12kwh per day . I have been using around 4kwh from my battery per day , I guess it all depends on how you use the battery as well as the load you are planning to run . My grid consumption was 30kwh per day and now 15kwh at the very most , I did also fit a ev tube geyser
July 7, 20196 yr Author On 2019/06/30 at 4:55 PM, Mstott said: Sure my system is victron , multiplus ll, venus GX , MPPT 150-60 , 7.4kwh Solar MD and logger V2 , Art solar 350w panels not quite north facing and tilt is not great for winter . I get sun from 9am until 3pm , so far I am getting around 11-12kwh per day . I have been using around 4kwh from my battery per day , I guess it all depends on how you use the battery as well as the load you are planning to run . My grid consumption was 30kwh per day and now 15kwh at the very most , I did also fit a ev tube geyser Cool thx. Your usage looks pretty similar to mine, in summer.... lol.
July 7, 20196 yr Author I'm trying to get my head around the capacity of battery storage i would need. I have got info from SOLAR MD, that the 3,7kw unit is equivalent to 72 Ahour @52v. Practically, I think this will not be enough for my requirements, and I should therefore be installing the larger 7,4kw unit. Doing a very basic cost comparison between gel acid and lithium, looks as follows..... 200 amp hour gel acid x4 (12vdcx4=48vdc) @R4600 =R18400. Factor in the DOD @50% gives you 100 amp hour for around R20 000? Some shopping around may yield some discounts. Cables, cable accessories, fuses, frame structure etc etc etc. I would add at least a few thousand rand more? 3,7kw(76 Ahour) SOLAR MD, I can purchase for about R30k, and get at the very least twice the life span. The warrantee alone, is almost twice the expected life of the gels?
September 20, 20223 yr On 2019/06/30 at 4:55 PM, Mstott said: Sure my system is victron , multiplus ll, venus GX , MPPT 150-60 , 7.4kwh Solar MD and logger V2 , Art solar 350w panels not quite north facing and tilt is not great for winter . I get sun from 9am until 3pm , so far I am getting around 11-12kwh per day . I have been using around 4kwh from my battery per day , I guess it all depends on how you use the battery as well as the load you are planning to run . My grid consumption was 30kwh per day and now 15kwh at the very most , I did also fit a ev tube geyser Hi. Did you look into setting up your system without the Logger V2? I am asking because having already the Venus GX as a control unit (which can be connected to the internet), it seems like overkill (and waste of money/resources) to also install the Logger V2. I installed a Quattro with a Smart Solar 250/100, a CCGX, and a couple of Solar MD batteries, which is already running, but I haven't yet managed to have the batteries identified by the GX.
September 25, 20223 yr SolarMD make great batteries, but that LoggerV2 really lets it down... actually I have no words for it - its really unreliable. I won't even get into the UI... if there was a way to bypass that logger I would like to know!
September 25, 20223 yr 41 minutes ago, MockTurtle said: SolarMD make great batteries, but that LoggerV2 really lets it down... actually I have no words for it - its really unreliable. I won't even get into the UI... if there was a way to bypass that logger I would like to know! Hi @MockTurtle i have heard to many times problems people have with solarmd logger. Does anyone know what canbus protocol is implemented? . Maybe we can expose battery metrics to solar assistant, grafana as an alternative via a low cost gateway.
September 25, 20223 yr 5 minutes ago, BritishRacingGreen said: Hi @MockTurtle i have heard to many times problems people have with solarmd logger. Does anyone know what canbus protocol is implemented? . Maybe we can expose battery metrics to solar assistant, grafana as an alternative via a low cost gateway. well according to pdf attached it does... not so clued up on protocols. i've 2 axperts in parallel, so one is connected to LoggerV2, and the other to SolarAssistant. i rely on the SolarAssistant for metrics, LoggerV2 just manages the SolarMD batteries. wanted to scrape data off it so tinkered a bit and that LoggerV2 runs raspi os/linux and payara server... so yeah its basically just a souped up raspberry. LoggerV2-Datasheet-v10.2-EN.pdf
September 27, 20223 yr I'm running 3x SolarMD SS4037 batteries running with 3x Axpert Inverters. Agree that the logger is not great, and the Axpert AI thing sucks. I posted this onto MyBB forum yesterday with an update on my setup. After waiting for years for SolarMD to enable "Load Shedding Prep" via MQTT so I can automate it, and not have wait up until after power comes back on at midnight to manually start the batteries charging again for the next 4am load shedding sesh, I took matters into my own hands. I set up Solar Assistant on an old Pi 3, disconnected the inverters from the SolarMD logger (serial) and connected them to Solar Assistant via USB. I then integrated Solar Assistant into HA and everything is perfection. It took a bit of tweaking to get it all right. The SolarMD batteries use a CAN bus to communicate which wouldn't work with Solar Assistant. So I left the SolarMD batteries connected to the SolarMD logger which sends data into HA via MQTT and just connected the inverters to Solar Assistant. It's critical to get your float and absorption charge voltages right so it doesn't over charge the batteries (the values in the SolarMD manuasl are not correct!), but it's been working for a week now (through a pretty heinous load shedding patch) flawlessly. I have an automaton that switches to utility charging 45 mins before load shedding starts (as provided by the awesome COCT Load Shedding Integration) and then switches to SBU 1 minute before load shedding starts to prevent the quick drop in voltage when a dirty switchover happens if the grid suddenly disappears. This sometimes makes my HT Receiver drop which kills whatever I'm watching which is irritating (first world problem for sure!) but I thought if I could automated that problem away, then why not! I can also control when the inverters switch to SBU now much more efficiently that using the SolarMD "AI" thing which seems pretty random sometime and is terribly inefficient. I can now switch to SBU based on many different sensors via HA (and back to grid when needed). SolarMD used to switch off Utility to SBU around 70-75% SOC which meant that my batteries were full around 11am and I wasted all the lovely sun that I wasn't actually using for the rest of the day. I used to manually turn off Eskom at the meter during summer because I'm a maximiser and inefficiency like that drives me up the wall. All fixed now! Very stoked with Solar Assistant. It is a R900 additional purchase (plus a Pi if you don't have one) but to me, this is what Home Automation is all about. Making the stupid annoying stuff just go away. Well worth it! I am waiting on a fix from Solar Assistant to allow me to change the Grid Charge Current via HA. It gives an error at the moment, but I see the next beta already has some fixes for MQTT control so I hope this is sorted soon. Not being able to do this means I have to set it at max for a quick charge when needed for Load Shedding, but the inverters are powered only by battery so they consume around 120W all night and can run the batteries too low if I don't do quick small top up charge cycles. Being able to Adjust the Grid Charge would mean I can set it to 2A and use Utility and Solar at night so it would charge very slowly at night and compensate for this 120W inverter usage, but the taps could be opened up by HA when load shedding is coming so it can charge enough to get the through. Edited September 27, 20223 yr by DuncThePunk
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