Help with 128 batteries each one is 280ah, and want to configure for 48v system.

[Sanwizard]

Agree. I use the same shelf but I added 3/4" plywood that spans just beyond the side braces for added strength. Makes a word of difference I think.

Great minds think alike. I have the same brand shelf from home depot in the box ready to be put together when my cells arrive.

 

[DerpsyDoodler]

I would stick with a 16s battery, with each battery having its own 16s BMS. That gives you 8 batteries.

It would seem to me that your selection of BMS is much larger if you stay with 16s as opposed to say 32s or larger.

Yes, I would use a BMS. Think of it as the final authority on maximum charge. All other components such as solar charge controllers and AC-DC converters must understand how to properly charge a LiFePO4 battery.

With that many batteries, I would look into a battery balancer that keeps the voltage balanced between all 8 batteries.

That's a lot of 48v strings. Do you plan to have them all paralleled at once?

 

[Shawn Hayes]

thanks. A cable from the positive battery bus runs to a busbar in the panel that has the shunt trip breaker. This bus bar is on the shut trip output side. A cable from the negative battery bus runs to a string of 3 shunts. One for the batrium and one for each of the midnite classic charge controllers. The schneider electric battery monitor is doubled up on one of the controller shunts.

I’m using dual (2) Sol-Ark 12k inverters. So if I do a 16s4p layout and connect all four negative and positive battery cables to their own respective bus bar/terminal blocks (blue sea) like you have. Then am I correct thinking I could connect my negative/positive cables from my inverters directly to the extra terminal posts on the bus bar/terminal blocks to supply my inverter with “48” volts? The bus/terminal blocks do not add up the volts from the 4 battery banks?

Of course I’d have fuses in the positive cables and Batrium shunt on negative side cables.
Sol-Arks have a built in 250 amp breaker internally where the negative/positive cables connect from the batteries. So I would not add another breaker inline since they’re built in.

 

[Sanwizard]

I’m using dual (2) Sol-Ark 12k inverters. So if I do a 16s4p layout and connect all four negative and positive battery cables to their own respective bus bar/terminal blocks (blue sea) like you have. Then am I correct thinking I could connect my negative/positive cables from my inverters directly to the extra terminal posts on the bus bar/terminal blocks to supply my inverter with “48” volts? The bus/terminal blocks do not add up the volts from the 4 battery banks?

Of course I’d have fuses in the positive cables and Batrium shunt on negative side cables.
Sol-Arks have a built in 250 amp breaker internally where the negative/positive cables connect from the batteries. So I would not add another breaker inline since they’re built in.

Simple battery math. Series makes volts go up, parallel makes amps go up.
Using a bussbar as a central point to connect the banks together puts them in parallel to each other. Positives to positive bar, nagatives to negative bar.
So a 280ah 16s in parallel with another 16s bank makes a 560ah battery. 4 together makes 1120ah battery.
The current would be spread across the banks, so busbar position can become important.

 

[Shawn Hayes]

Simple battery math. Series makes volts go up, parallel makes amps go up.
Using a bussbar as a central point to connect the banks together puts them in parallel to each other. Positives to positive bar, nagatives to negative bar.
So a 280ah 16s in parallel with another 16s bank makes a 560ah battery. 4 together makes 1120ah battery.
The current would be spread across the banks, so busbar position can become important.

Thank for the reply. It seems obvious now, suddenly I went brain dead and forgot what 16s4p means. Lol

 

[jtvt]

I’m using dual (2) Sol-Ark 12k inverters. So if I do a 16s4p layout and connect all four negative and positive battery cables to their own respective bus bar/terminal blocks (blue sea) like you have. Then am I correct thinking I could connect my negative/positive cables from my inverters directly to the extra terminal posts on the bus bar/terminal blocks to supply my inverter with “48” volts? The bus/terminal blocks do not add up the volts from the 4 battery banks?

Of course I’d have fuses in the positive cables and Batrium shunt on negative side cables.
Sol-Arks have a built in 250 amp breaker internally where the negative/positive cables connect from the batteries. So I would not add another breaker inline since they’re built in.

You could directly connect your inverter, but you might want to have a contactor or shunt trip breaker between the battery and the inverter so the Batrium can offline the battery. That might be moot if Batriums can talk to the Sol-Arks. I have no idea if they can. I use a shunt trip breaker that offlines the battery from one inverter and 3 charge controllers.

 

[kromc5]

You could directly connect your inverter, but you might want to have a contactor or shunt trip breaker between the battery and the inverter so the Batrium can offline the battery. That might be moot if Batriums can talk to the Sol-Arks. I have no idea if they can. I use a shunt trip breaker that offlines the battery from one inverter and 3 charge controllers.

Do you have a link for the batrium recommended battery configuration I tried to find it but not sure of the words I should use to search. I will be connecting two 4p16s together for the the heating and cooling side. I moved alot of breakers to the other panel and will have on 4p16s on that one.
This one comes up right away but is not what I'm looking for: https://support.batrium.com/article/289-configuration-series-parallel-banks

I was thinking of pulling cables from the cables from each + / - from the one bank to the next + / -. This way they would both be going through the shunt.

One video I saved a while back:

Batrium

support.batrium.com

 

[jtvt]

The only one I have is

Batrium

support.batrium.com

I don't think they have a recommended configuration.

 

[kromc5]

The only one I have is

Batrium

support.batrium.com

I don't think they have a recommended configuration.

Thank you that is like the video I saved a while back, which gave me the idea to run two off of one batrium / shunt:

Batrium

support.batrium.com

 

[jtvt]

And heres the doc on extending cellmon cables: https://support.batrium.com/article/78-can-cell-monitor-cables-be-extended

I guess you get 4 meters. That seems like enough unless your other strings are in a different room. I extended mine only ~60".

 

[Shawn Hayes]

You could directly connect your inverter, but you might want to have a contactor or shunt trip breaker between the battery and the inverter so the Batrium can offline the battery. That might be moot if Batriums can talk to the Sol-Arks. I have no idea if they can. I use a shunt trip breaker that offlines the battery from one inverter and 3 charge controllers.

Do you have a link or suggested shunt trip breaker that hooks up to Batrium? Batrium does not talk with Sol-Ark.

 

[jtvt]

Do you have a link or suggested shunt trip breaker that hooks up to Batrium? Batrium does not talk with Sol-Ark.

I used one like this:

ABB BREAKER S5N SACE S5 SACES5 S5N300TDDAS8 300 AMP A 300A 300AMP 3P 3 POLE | eBay

ABB BREAKER. SEE PICS FOR MORE SPECS.

www.ebay.com

You may have to shop around for one with larger amp rating or use two since you have two inverters. You could easily use two with the batrium (assuming you have the expansion board). You might want to see how your inverters handle being disconnected from the battery while under load.

If you get a shunt trip, make sure it's 24v (or if you can find one that will work with battery voltage). There are a few youtubes on wiring like

. I went the route like this guy did with a 48v->24v converter which powers the batrium and provides power for the shunt trip. The Batrium will run on up to 65 v and you can tap your battery for 24v for the shunt, but I didn't know if I would add any other gadgets like fans and 24v is common. So I went with a converter.

 

[kromc5]

Do you have a link or suggested shunt trip breaker that hooks up to Batrium? Batrium does not talk with Sol-Ark.

Older post testing batrium and shunt.

Very new to solar but started purchasing items, not sure of the final specs of the whole system.

53.6/16 = 3.35 Part way up the knee of the curve. That will show if they're top balanced and remain that way. I suppose some difference in capacity could affect how they move up the curve at equal current. Internal resistance would also produce differences at higher rates of charge/discharge.

diysolarforum.com

Shunts are hard to get the breakers are decently easy.

 

[solardad]

Do you have a link or suggested shunt trip breaker that hooks up to Batrium?

FYI - Sol-Ark strongly discourages using a shunt trip breaker on the battery side. Can damage the inverter I guess. I believe you would have better success leveraging the 12v RSD switch via Batrium relay. Ex. A cell voltage exceeds some set limit trip the RSD relay and the solark shuts down.

 

[Shawn Hayes]

FYI - Sol-Ark strongly discourages using a shunt trip breaker on the battery side. Can damage the inverter I guess. I believe you would have better success leveraging the 12v RSD switch via Batrium relay. Ex. A cell voltage exceeds some set limit trip the RSD relay and the solark shuts down.

Thanks for the FYI. I’ll look more into that. Not familiar with 12v RSD? I’ll do research but is the RSD an added external item or a feature of the Sol-Ark I’m not familiar with, yet?
Thanks again for the FYI.

 

[solardad]

Thanks for the FYI. I’ll look more into that. Not familiar with 12v RSD? I’ll do research but is the RSD an added external item or a feature of the Sol-Ark I’m not familiar with, yet?
Thanks again for the FYI.

RSD is standard functionality with the Sol-Ark. There are a couple members I believe that are using the switch already on the board (that is where I got the idea - I don't have it setup yet with my system). ex: https://diysolarforum.com/threads/solark-install-plan.15698/page-4#post-226620

 

[Shawn Hayes]

RSD is standard functionality with the Sol-Ark. There are a couple members I believe that are using the switch already on the board (that is where I got the idea - I don't have it setup yet with my system). ex: https://diysolarforum.com/threads/solark-install-plan.15698/page-4#post-226620

Great, thanks for the link info. So if you have not yet setup the RSD, how do you have your batteries currently connected to Sol-Ark? Do you have automated battery shutoff/separation system or just fuses etc for now?
I have two bussman class T fuses I plan on installing, one for each Sol-Ark. I really haven’t thought much about putting a “shunt/RSD” type of shut off/separating system inline. My thoughts is Batrium would disconnect batteries if parameters were violated......

 

[Shawn Hayes]

Several members in this thread have Batrium setup. Did any of you guys have trouble when doing the bypass test on your setup?
I started my Batrium up this afternoon and all went well until the bypass test. 1- 64 Blockmons and it repeatedly failed after 5 going to 6. I changed out the Blockmon, cables, changed minimal temps setting in bypass test options. Any suggestions?

 

[kromc5]

Several members in this thread have Batrium setup. Did any of you guys have trouble when doing the bypass test on your setup?
I started my Batrium up this afternoon and all went well until the bypass test. 1- 64 Blockmons and it repeatedly failed after 5 going to 6. I changed out the Blockmon, cables, changed minimal temps setting in bypass test options. Any suggestions?

Has everything else passed,wizard setup, device sync? I made changes one time and forgot to sync and that caused the bypass to fail.

 

[Shawn Hayes]

Yes that's what's crazy. everything went well. re-synced multiple times after the changes as well.. E-mailed Batrium but it may be Monday before I get a response. It was weird, originally it stopped at 5 -6, then it failed after 4 several times. Then went back to 5-6 fail..so..?