These seem like an interesting option. At least for a smaller 40-50 kWh pack. Its along the lines of the 18650 power wall builds that are all over the place on the net.

Has anyone here gone this route? Price is OK @$200 kWh

So I have reached out to some Chinese suppliers...... the Chinese two step has started already. Its not pretty is it......

Hey @Delta9 there are other more established products at really great prices available on the local market with excellent local support Like the BSL BUll Battery or Shoto 

you should try contacting Power forum store I see they have specials on the BSL Bull batteries with the Sunsynk inverters as far as I know they also do Shoto ZTE and Hubble batteries 

The Sunsynk inverter can run in 3 phase or single phase parallel setup so theoretically you can have 26.4 KW Per Phase in three phase at 380 v that is 9 x 8.8 KW Sunsynk inverter all connected to a common battery with the ability to feed back to the grid if you need to total solar production per Hour will give you 93.6 KW per hour the system will be able to function off grid and you can have a very large battery bank connected combinations of the 1C BSL Bull 5.1 or 6.4 KW batteries that can deliver 100 amp and 125 amp continuously you can also look at Hubble 1C batteries or Shoto Batteries I know of installations where there are more than 250KW of Shoto batteries installed that work well in combination with the Sunsynk inverter systems to run water pumps and pivots. The inverters can also blend power very well my opinion may be biased towards the Sunsynk and BSL Bull batteries as far as I know the batteries are approved by Victron and Sunsynk officially.. My 2 cents  

On 2020/10/23 at 9:55 AM, Delta9 said:

When you say you were quoted $34 per cell ++ is that from the suppliers link you posted? As you say, for the price it seems likely they are second life. Did you ask them about if they were second life?

I want about 120 kWh of battery so its sizeable and expensive. Need to get it right.

Yes, from that site. I see nowtheyre quoting usd47 per cell....

That's a huge battery, you will need a huge array and charger to charge that. Also, what BMS are you going to use to balance the cells/batteries.

Ask the boffins what charge current you will need to charge in e.g 8 hrs (of sunshine) and link that back to the inverter and solar panels...

 

 

Edited October 24, 20205 yr by FixAMess

Yes it is a big system. I will use a pro designer to figure out the final layout and how it all goes together.

I am doing a deep dive so I know the in's and out's and how it all works so I can have an intelligent conversation with a pro system designer about all the options and why I think I need to use certain components/brands etc.

I will probably do a smaller system first to get a feel for it all. 

Some rules of batteries dont change though. To get a large number of cycles requires that the battery be discharged as low (DOD) as possible. So the larger the battery bank the better because it means we can discharge a good amount of energy and not take the DOD too low if the battery bank is big.

To offset that is calendar life of the batteries. Its no use having a 30 year design life of the battery bank in terms of cycles when the electrolyte life of the battery is thought to be around 20ish years. Then we have to consider that in around 10 years time, most definitely 15 years, the battery tech will be very different and probably a lot cheaper per kWh then it is today (look back at the history of solar prices). So its no good to invest too heavily in a huge battery bank today to get 10000 cycles out of them (27.3 years if cycled everyday) when its more cost effective to aim for 6000 cycles (16.4 years if cycled everyday) and then buy into  a new cheaper battery in 15 to 16 years at probably half the cost of todays cost. So there is all that aspect to consider.

Then we have to be thoughtful of the inverter design rules which force us into a certain battery size if we want to ac couple and power big ac loads without a grid being up (we have a lot of grid outages and load shedding around here). So there's that.

Then it comes down to raw cost per kWh. The more you buy, generally the better the cost per kWh.

I plan to have a lot of PV - there is a whole other logic to that I wont even go into. Bottom line is it works for me in my scenario. So charging a big bank wont be a problem.

I prefer to build the battery bank myself if I can. 1/Because I will enjoy the journey and 2/ because I am in a remote area and if I build it I know it and can fix/service it.

I like Battrium for a BMS. Expensive yes, but good.

You may well be right. It might just be easier to go with something like this for the price .....

https://lithiumbatteriessa.co.za/collections/frontpage/products/100ah-3-2v-lifepo4-new-a-grade-cell.

Its only .5C discharge though so I dont know how good they are for big loads.

 

Its quite the juggle this battery/inverter/ac coupling story.

Edited October 25, 20205 yr by Delta9
Typo's

20 hours ago, Boerseun said:

Hey @Delta9 there are other more established products at really great prices available on the local market with excellent local support Like the BSL BUll Battery or Shoto 

you should try contacting Power forum store I see they have specials on the BSL Bull batteries with the Sunsynk inverters as far as I know they also do Shoto ZTE and Hubble batteries 

The Sunsynk inverter can run in 3 phase or single phase parallel setup so theoretically you can have 26.4 KW Per Phase in three phase at 380 v that is 9 x 8.8 KW Sunsynk inverter all connected to a common battery with the ability to feed back to the grid if you need to total solar production per Hour will give you 93.6 KW per hour the system will be able to function off grid and you can have a very large battery bank connected combinations of the 1C BSL Bull 5.1 or 6.4 KW batteries that can deliver 100 amp and 125 amp continuously you can also look at Hubble 1C batteries or Shoto Batteries I know of installations where there are more than 250KW of Shoto batteries installed that work well in combination with the Sunsynk inverter systems to run water pumps and pivots. The inverters can also blend power very well my opinion may be biased towards the Sunsynk and BSL Bull batteries as far as I know the batteries are approved by Victron and Sunsynk officially.. My 2 cents  

Appreciate your 2c worth. Thanks.

My three inverters of choice are

1/ Victron because they are the Landcrusier of inverters in Africa. The only thing I dont like about them is 48v limit.

I also like

2/ Studer because they are Swiss and I feel I could literally put my life on thier reliability. They have a new 3 phase Hybrid coming out early 2021. Expensive and also only 48 volts.

3/Selectronic in Australia have a great rep and are highly regarded as good and reliable. They go up to 120v (so 144v nominal?). Expensive and not easy to get here.

Then there is also.......

......SMA. Too dammed complicated to wrap my head around !! The webs site sucks and they are just not easy to understand. By all accounts good though and once its installed there is not much interaction with them, so they could also work for me.

Anything Chinese for inverter is out. Just dont feel I can trust Chinese electronics. Batteries are different. Where else does one get a LiFePO4 cell from ?

These BSL BULL/Shoto/ZTE/Hubble batteries look interesting. They all pretty much look the same. The ZTE batteries are at a good price although the cells from Lithium South Africa (is the seller Bim?) come out at a lower price per kWh for raw cells. But of course by time you add all the connectors and odds and ends and a BMS its more expensive then the packaged ZTE battery. But how good is the ZTE BMS? At least with raw cells you can build whatever you want. With the Shoto/ZTE/Hubble class you are locked into what the vendor says you can do.

So thats my 5c. I could be wrong though as I am new to this.

Edited October 25, 20205 yr by Delta9
Typo's ..must learn to type

Hi Delta9, you can parallel up to 16 ZTE batteries per inverter, so multiple inverters can connect 16 batteries each.

Data sheet - ZXDC48 FB101 Lithium-ion Battery V2.0_20180716_EN.pdf SJ-20180408094053-001-ZXDC48 FB101（V1.0）Lithium-ion Battery User Manual.pdf