Jump to content

Portable / Camper Battery LiFe with Build in charge controller


Guss Davey

Recommended Posts

Hey there.

I'm planning to "work from home", with my VW kombi.
So tired of the home environment and changing the scenery.
Most of my work is just laptop stuff, teams meeting etc.
Without going bananas and changing my kombi to a mobile off grid system...

..is there any complete camping type of packages available (plug and play style with battery and charge controllers build in), that any of you can recommend.

  1. All I need to drive is my Laptop, once internal battery used up... (maybe till 20:00 at night)
  2. Keep the mobile router / Wi-Fi going 24/7
  3. A led or 2 for some light
  4. Keep iPad and phones charged
  5. Little 12V fan for me and my dog (When needed)

What I will not use

  • no need for freezer.... (take-outs and braai is the easy route)
  • no TV (maybe radio)... SA TV has nothing to offer. Download a movie if need arise.

What do you think.... will the 555 flexpower thing do the job? (with some panels on the roof rack later)

Regards

Guss

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

To calculate how much does every device you wanna use waste I would suggest buying a plug in power meter like this one:

 

I have one of these and it's pretty amazing, you can calculate how much any device you plug in exactly waste on watts at the moment and also the KW/H it wastes until you reset it

rBVaJFlFMieAVTZgAADMcgn-KmQ586.jpg

Basically I would suggest to measure how much every device waste on watts individually (With the laptop put it under stress to know the max watts it can draw) and then plug everything you wanna use on it at once to see how much watts that wastes

 

And most importantly then you should use all those devices as you would for 1 day (or the time you normally work with them/use them) while everything plugged that way you will get an accurate bare minimun of KW/H of the battery you need to last for 1 day

 

All the devices you mentioned probably waste less than 200w combined, maybe even less that 100w but that depends on how powerful the laptop is (Intel/amd/Applem1? number of cores? nm of the cpu? does it have a dedicated gpu?) even with all that objects combined 60-30w could be possible when not doing much with the laptop, it could be even LESS if you put the laptop on energy saving mode

 

On 2021/05/20 at 1:08 PM, Guss Davey said:
  • All I need to drive is my Laptop, once internal battery used up... (maybe till 20:00 at night)
  • Keep the mobile router / Wi-Fi going 24/7
  • A led or 2 for some light
  • Keep iPad and phones charged
  • Little 12V fan for me and my dog (When needed)

Not sure how much a mobile router could waste but if you compare it with phones that uses 4G all the time, it can't be that much, 5-2.5w, 10w max

The smaller the light the more battery you get so that's up to you

The charging of the ipad and phones depends on how many watts their chargers have (it should be visible in the chargers), they will practically max out at that until they are charged completely, when they are charged completely they should waste differently depending on wherever you are using them lightly or heavy applications or not using them with the screen off

And for the fan a small 12v fan should be arround 1-5w, 10w max, it depends on the size and rpms, I've tested normal big AC fans and those only waste 20-40w depending on the speed setting

 

On 2021/05/20 at 1:08 PM, Guss Davey said:

What do you think.... will the 555 flexpower thing do the job? (with some panels on the roof rack later)

I think it probably will, as long as you put solar panels and you keep watt usage low

 

it your set up wastes 50w continuously then the 555wh battery would last 10 hours more or less

 

At 100w though that would mean only 5 hours, though this is without solar panels, the panels should help immensely, with up to 120W of solar, realistically it won't be making 120w all the time though

 

Hope this helped you, cheers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wanna point out that I made for myself a portable 280AH 4S1P Lifepo4 12V battery pack (about 3.5kw/h) with a 12V 2500W inverter (everything is about 25kg but everything is inside a tool box with wheels which makes it easy to transport)

 

and though it doesn't have a mppt I could install it, these premade battery and inverter packs are definetly more expensive than making your own

 

Inverter, Batteries, big toolbox with wheels, bms, 35mm2 cable and terminals, lifepo4 charger all cost about 800€ or R 13444,82

imagen.png.45dc429fe14f4394ed913bc4d8a3f781.png

Batteries go into the lower compartment and the inverter on top

imagen.thumb.png.37baa67a6bd98129044f038dbb6f9706.png

GzRQROx.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Anonymous_Llopi said:

I wanna point out that I made for myself a portable 280AH 4S1P Lifepo4 12V battery pack (about 3.5kw/h) with a 12V 2500W inverter (everything is about 25kg but everything is inside a tool box with wheels which makes it easy to transport)

 

 

Nice setup. Where did you buy the cells and how much? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Tim003 said:

Nice setup. Where did you buy the cells and how much? 

On aliexpress for 435.84€ or R 7324,76 https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005001563505796.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.274263c0sbFRZM,

 

the bms for 123.92€ or R 2082,61 (250a 4S1P one) https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005001349754494.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.274263c0sbFRZM

 

it also has a active battery balancer bms (15,38€ or R 258,48) which means instead of wasting the excess power of the cells higher voltage cells on resistances it instead charges the lower voltage cells with it so there's less power loss: https://es.aliexpress.com/item/4001171649360.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.274263c0sbFRZM

 

and the 12V 2500w 5000w peak inverter for 167,60€ or R 2816,7 but this was bought back in 2019 and this is a slightly updated version with a screen it seems, and also a bit more expensive https://es.aliexpress.com/item/33003269741.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.274263c0gQ0tjK

 

The inverter was bought next with a 12v 120ah lithium battery (1.44kw/h) for 275,40€ or R 4628,39 (back in 2019) that could output up to 950w I think, the thing is that this battery wasn't powerful enough for what I needed (I needed to power up a up to 1800w air compressor)

Similar to this one but smaller 120ah version: imagen.png.e2ccf9c9b8cf27d5530862e9cfc5db6d.png

To make that compressor work I basically had to put in paralel this lithium 950w battery and a big tractor start up battery, this worked until the lead battery got discarged and then it would put more pressure into the lithium battery, voltage dropped to like 9V or a bit less when trying to power up the compressor, the buses on the lithium battery heated up so much that the plastic arround them melted (kind of acted as a fuse) and stopped the metal arround them from being well connected, and also some inner cables that were soldered to the bms from the heat caused melted and got deattached from the bms and I had to solder them until I put some tape holding the cable in that position so in case the tin would melt again at least it would solder itself again

It was a mess, the lead battery died (because it's not made to be discharged), the lithium battery still works perfectly apart from the molten plastic shape arround the buses, the best thing about it was that it was very lightweight

this new lifepo4 280AH/280A it's amazing, it can deliver up to 3360w and half of that at half charge, more than twice the capacity and it has 4000 cycles

Cheers

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
2 hours ago, atti said:

Hi,

How did you find the 280ah lifepo4 cells from aliexpress? Would you recommend it. I am thinking of ordering 16 for my ME3000SP with a Daly BMS.

 

 

 

By searching "280a lifepo4" or "280ah lifepo4" something like that on AliExpress search

So far my portable battery pack has been working perfectly but I really don't use it all the time, maybe 1 to 4 times a month

I don't see why not order batteries from there, of course there's always the risk of shipping but mine came very well packed every cell was separated from each other and echa one had a 5cm wall of protective soft shipping material around them and AliExpress has buyer protection too, you can even get a partial refund if the thing you ordered came with a visual part broken while still working perfectly apart from the visual aspect of it for example

Cheers

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it is worth mentioning that @Anonymous_LIopi is from Spain, therefore, most sellers from Aliexpress are not shipping to SA and even if find those that ships, it might be expensive when you include shipping costs and taxes. There's a group of people people from another forum who have successfully placed an order and are now awaiting delivery. Apparently shipping by sea is more cost effective than air freight and bulk buying cheaper than just buying few cells as there's restrictions of how many cells can be transported by flight due to safety reasons. If interested PM me for details on this group buy. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am based in the UK. Before I part from my money I wanted to get some feedback from existing owners if this seller is genuine as there are many sellers overadvertising their capacity.

thanks for the advise guys.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Tim003 said:

Hi Atti, if you are in the UK then you probably stand a good chance to buy from reputable sellers. Have a look at the links recommended by Will Prowse:

Raw Lifepo4 deals

 

All the best with your built. 

The first one of the links literally links to the VariCore batteries I bought, he's saying they are the best price, I'm glad they agree and that they say they are high quality

On the page it says that the terminals are weak and the thread breaks easily which is true, I almost broke one of the terminals by tightening it too much, luckily I didn't break the whole thread and managed to screw it decently so do be careful about that, they must use some kind of weak soft metal on the terminals so don't tight it up too much, a bit is enough

They actually reduced the price almost 10% from when I bought them

Edited by Anonymous_Llopi
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have placed order for 16 cells 280ah each. I was wondering which BMS/balancer would I need for this. I will be using this for ME3000SP which has quite a bit of function to manage battery cutoff parameters. I am wondering if despite this I would need additional BMS or just a balancer will do the work. All standard BMS would do is to monitor cell voltage and cut off at critical points, this can also be defined under ME3000SP's configuration. Confused here. Any good BMS you guys can recommend which also has balancing for these size of cells.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...