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Just bought 24 REC 370 watt panels from Santan. The package was perfect when delivered, took a week to unload due to weather and when I got to the bottom panel it was smashed. No damage visible from the outside of the. stack, must have gotten something under it. I emailed a pic to Santan and...

Long time listener, first time caller here. I have 10KW of panels and 8 L16HC batteries for the last few years. I've been wanting to upgrade my system to lithium but the craziness with the Alibaba vendors kept me out of the market. When i heard about a vendor with USA stock I got interested...

I have 32 of their Eve 304 ah cells in 2 batteries, watching the BMS data the cells are typically within 3-4 millivolts of each other across the charge range. Couldn't be happier, have another 16 on the way. I'd much rather support a business that seems to be working hard to provide a good...

Just a brief update. I bought 32 of the Eve 304 ah cells a few weeks ago and finally got them built up and hooked into my system When delivered, they were within 2 millivolts of each other, so I figured I'd just try charging them as a bank and see what happened, I could always top balance...

Just got 16 more from them, all perfect. OP needs to support their claims, as a new poster who says an established vendor failed and then the poster disappears? Too many vendors too eager to stab each other in the back in this business.

To answer the OP's original question, what's the difference? Ask anyone who has had anything manufactured in China. You work out the contract, agree to terms, take delivery, all is good. Next shipment you notice that the capacitors you specify have been substituted for cheaper ones, contract...

I've built 3 fairly large batteries recently, each have 16 cells of EVE 304 ah cells, making 24 volts at 600 amp hours (approximaely), or about 15 kWh each. The cost for each was about $2400 for the cells and $120 for the BMS, a little over $2500 each. The EG4 is about $1500 for about 5 kWh, 3...

EMP just stands for Electromagnetic Pulse. It's a short, sharp spike of electromagnetic energy across a broad spectrum of frequencies. The most common EMP experienced is caused by lightning. Lightning induces massive currents in power lines, which act as long antennae, the voltage induced can...

Instead of volts/amps, think in terms of power, it's pretty straightforward. If your controller is getting 100 volts at 5 amps from the panels, that's 500 watts of power. It converts those 500 watts into 12.5 volts at 40 amps. (for example), still 500 watts of power, but in a different form.

If you live in a sunny climate it's not big deal. Where I live, my 20kw of panels will produce 1-2 kWh of power on many days in the winter. An inverter that draws 1-1.5 kWh of power is using up a good chunk of my day's production.

Just another satisfied customer here. I bought 32 of the 304 ah Eve cells a month or so ago. Great communications and they handled my special shipping request without issue. Cells arrived perfectly packaged and in great shape. They're up and running now, in two banks of 16 cells. I'm...

My most recent load of 40 panels from Santan looked perfect coming off the truck but when opened the bottom panel was very broken. I sent them a picture and an explanation, they credited a refund to me that afternoon. No hassles, excellent people to do business with.

Just watched Ray's video, really appreciated the straight talk. Another happy Docan customer here, three purchases last three months, all great experiences. Nice to see a company really exploding by exploiting the niche of "honest and good customer service", who would have thought it?

I buying a new Tesla and a new Rivian, but I need a cheap solar system because I'm on a budget. These things just don't go together in my brain for some reason.

Over the last year I've switched from lead/acid to lithium, couldn't be happier. I put it off for several years waiting for a good, reliable supplier of high quality cells, but then Docan started shipping from US stocks and I started buying. Currently up to 2400 ah at 24 volts in the system...

By far, the cheapest way is to plug it into the wall. Anything you do with solar will be much, much, more expensive, no matter the cost of electricity. Call it 40 watt power draw, that's 1 kilowatt hour per day (x24 hours). Even at 50 pence per kwh, that's 15 pounds a month. If you used it 4...

If you've got 10 acres, seriously consider ground mounts for the panels rather than the roof. Ground mounts are so easy, roof mounts create so many potential headaches. I have about 20 kw of panels, all ground mounted, built and put up by myself, so much easier than roof mounts and don't have...

I worked for some time as an insurance adjuster, for work comp, one of the guys who made the decision whether to approve a claim or not. The truth of the matter is it was 99 percent the doctor, not me, but anyway, we worked really, really hard to reduce the number of appeals filed, as they were...

As you say, it's about how much power you use. I'm constantly amazed at how many people with vans talk about their electric hot water heaters, microwaves, induction cookers and so on and then try to figure out how to get 2kw of panels and 30 KWh of batteries packed in. I live in my van for 3...

That's why my 60 panels are all ground mount. Between difficult installation, chances of leaking roofs, difficulty of re-roofing, etc. it's not worth the hassle if you can avoid it.

There are higher quality systems with much lower current draws. You pay more, but they're better quality and most likely will last a lot longer, as well as letting me sleep better at night.

Good grief guys, I know it's tough times out there but the guy is just looking for a cheap charger to top up his new cells, not to run his house off of. I'm as big of believer in buying quality as anyone, No one wants to pay hundreds of bucks for a top notch supply to use a handful of times...

I can only share my experience. In the last year I bought 4 orders of 16 280 ah EVE cells from Docan Tech, 64 cells in total. All were in perfect condition and extremely well matched. I've built 4 batteries, 24v @ 560 ah each, and the cells are typically within 5 millivolts of each other...

Plug the Midnite into a wireless bridge, about $20, and it connects to your local network. I've been using it for a long time to monitor 3 of them.

There are at least two, and I'm sure more, vendors widely discussd on this site as being reliable and shipping what and when they promise. They charge fair prices for what you get but you get what you pay for. There are hundreds of scam sites, selling misrepresented batteries for lower prices...

For the best prices on Samlex check out DonRowe.com, they've beat everyone else by quite a bit. I have a 2224, a 4024 and a new 4248 waiting to be installed. Well worth the money.

That 6.2 Megawatts per day is going to take a pretty good sized coal fired power plant, solar isn't going to work.

So you're going to spend $20,000 on batteries and you're not wanting to spend an extra $500 for 5 more BMS units to protect those batteries? Doesn't make sense to me. Put a BMS on each string.

That works out to about $125 each delivered, without breaking out the calculator. I just bought 32 of the Eve 304 ah from the same company for about $140 each, delivered in USA, from US warehouse. Perfect transaction, all promises kept, shipped and delivered exactly when they said they would...

Check out the idle power draw of the inverter you're considering. A lot of the less expensive inverters have very high idle power draws that can use up a good portion of the power generated by a small system just keeping the inverter turned out, before it even starts powering. your gear. A...

I've long had a dream... The CEOs of all the major oil producers stand on stage one day and say "For years we've listened to you tell us how bad we are, and how we're not needed. You know, we've thought about it and decided you're right. Fossil fuels are evil and we need to run the world on...

I guess it depends on how optimistic you are. When all the components you're buying are part of a complex supply chain mainly coming from a country on the edge of economic catastrophe, with bad realtions with all its neighbors and internally whipping up an anti-foreigner frenzy, I'm happy to...

The main concern, and you're discussing exactly what I have in my van, is the fact that the lithium batteries will take all the current your alternator can deliver when they're low. A big battery can easily overload an alternator and overheat it, whereas a lead/acid battery just won't take as...

You have a choice, buy from a reliable, established seller and pay a fair price for a quality product, or, you can send a lot of money to an unknown seller trying to get a "bargain" and have a slim chance of getting a second rate product. Your choice.

What makes you think solar is going to be cheaper? It will be at least several thousand dollars for enough solar to run it, is it really that much to run a wire from your house?

I'm not familiar with your controllers, but most decent quality ones these days measure their output and limit it to a safe level. There's no need to "turn off" panels. The controller takes the amount of power from the panels it can safely handle, and no more. When you plug a toaster into the...

The Samlex PST series of inverters are good quality high frequency pure sine wave inverters. Not as cheap as the no name stuff, but high quality for a little more money. I have their 1500 watt / 12 volt, it's a nice piece of gear.

As a few people have noted amongst the other discussions, the tax credit is "non-refundable", meaning if you're low income it's pretty much worthless. Last year I got about $5,000 in "tax credits" for my solar expenses, I was able to use about $500 of it to offset the small amount of taxes I...

A bottoming tap is what you need. They're designed to tap to the bottom of a hole.

Shouldn't there be a forum rule about linking to Youtube videos with no explanation just to spam for their channel? Too many of these lately. Oh, and there's another term for a battery built like that, technically it's known as a "bomb".

Just one comment. I see you're in the Portland area, I'm just a bit south of you. Have you looked at the solar irradiance numbers for the area in December-February? I have almost 20kw of panels and 60 kWh of lithium batteries. They run my freezers and shop just fine in the winter, but that's...

Don't forget the old "fast, good, cheap, pick 2" saying. In solar it's more like "simple, good, cheap, pick one". Just read these forums, they're absolutely full of people who chased the cheapest deal and are now trying to figure out how to deal with the consequences. The truth is that...

Those tankless water heaters are efficient, but their instantaneous power demand is enormous when operating. I can't imagine running one off solar, even modest sized ones I looked at were 10KW and more when running.

Sure, I'm getting live updates from the charge controller showing among other things input volts and amps from the panels, output volts and amps to the batteries, total energy generated for the day (with month history available), amp hours currently in the battery bank, temperatures of the...

I understand wanting to save money, but honestly unless you do a lot of learning. you're just taking money and burning it. Buying overhyped junk won't get you anywhere in the long run. If money is short, you need to be smart about how you spend it, and that's not what you're doing now. Don't...

One thing you'll find with Aliexpress vendors, many of them but not all, is they can be reliable for a while but then they get a chance to sell you some cheaper goods for the same price they'll do it. I've seen it many times with foreign companies that conract for manufacture, all goes well for...

All I can add is I've bought 48 cells from the same vendor in the last few months, in 3 separate orders, and all have been essentially perfect. They arrived in great condition, and after being assembled into batteries the voltages stay within 3-5 millivolts of each other across the charge band...

I have a gas furnace and this last summer I installed a 12K BTU minisplit in my living room. It costs me about $30 a month to run and has dropped my gas bill by about $75 a month, so big savings for me. It's small enough I could run it of the solar but right now that power is being used...

Insurance, that's funny! Unfortunately things are going downhill fast in that area. When I was in San Felipe last year I was robbed of my computer, phone and all my money. Fortunately still had my passport elsewhere and a credit card. I'm afraid if you replace everything you'll just be...

Mark Twain said "professionals only gather together to scheme against the masses." Regulation is always good for the big players, they write it.

You can certainly drill it oversize and put in an insert, but to thread the insert in you'll need a bottoming tap for that thread size. Might as well stick with the M8 that's started. They're not expensive, a standard set of taps for a size includes one.

Sounds like time for a call to the credit card company for a chargeback based on not receiving what you ordered.

I constantly hear on this site that insurance companies won't pay if there's something that's not UL certified. I'd sure like hear an actual experience along those lines. I've only had one house fire in my life, which was caused by a faulty appliance timer, but it did about $50K of damage...

I would just say you probably can't plan based on annual use, given your location in Denmark, you need to think about a week of use in December and January. Here in Oregon I think our climate is pretty similar to Denmark, and you are even further north than us at 45 north. For the last month...

They're the same efficiency as the REC 370 watt panels I recently bought, so they're going to be almost twice as big. The 370s are about as big and heavy as I care to pick up and move around, sometimes ease of use is an important factor too.

No one can tell you everything you need to know. You have two choices, buckle down and learn the basics, or pay someone else a lot of money to do it for you and be at their mercy for maintenance and repair forever. Watch all of Will's videos, he lays it all out in very simple terms. Second...

That chart is for "welding applications", intermittent use, not hours at a time. Look for "ampacity charts", the numbers will be much lower.

Sheets all need to be well bonded to each other, as well as grounded, no windows or doors allowed. Makes it kind of hard to have a useable room, unless you cover the doors and windows with wire mesh and bond them too. Of course the main issue is all the lines coming in, power, telephone...

I built my first two arrays using the 250 watt used panel, a total of 36 panels, and they're working great, but the last array I bought 24 of the REC 370 watt panels from Santan, new panels, not used. They were a but more expensive, but they put out more than 50 percent more power, are split...

Let's see, you have 480 amp hours of lead batteries, meaning you shouldn't be using more than about 240 amp hours from them. A 1500 watt space heater will need perhaps 160 amps or a little more to allow for inverter and wire losses, so your system will run that heater for about an hour and a...

I live in a similar climate, western Oregon, but quite a bit further south at 45 north. I have about 20kw of panels and 60 kWh of batteries, it's no where near enough to heat my small house in the winter. It runs lights, fridge, freezer, etc. but that's it.

This reminds me of an interview with Elon Musk I watched the other day, he said something that really struck me, as someone who's done a lot of manufacturing. He said "the problem with good engineers is they will spend an enormous amount of time and effort optimizing a component that's not...

The problem is that you're dealing with Alibaba, so despite what you're told you have no idea of what you'll actually receive. In. your situation I'd consider buying cells from one of the very few reliable sellers of cells that are recommended on this forum and building your own battery, I...

I've got 5 of the Overkill BMS units, the new app doesn't detect any of them, the XiaoXing works great.

DonRowe.com has the Samlex EVO 2224 for $1080. It's a big step up in performance and capabilities from the PST series. It has an integrated auto transfer switch, AC and Generator inputs for charging and a built in charger. My 2224 runs my 2 horsepower shop tools without blinking, nice piece...

I have both. I bought a couple of pallets of Santan's used 250 watt panels a couple of years ago. They're older panels, but I get great output from them and the price was right, no complaints. Last. year a bought 24 of the REC brand new split cell 370 watt panels from them, one of REC's best...

Transformers don't transform DC, so that doesn't work. The other issue is that you need to be careful picking hardware to go with the system, lots of switches, circuit breakers, fuses and such are rated up to 48 volts, not for 250 volts.

I recently watched a video on Youtube, an "investigative report" by some news channel in the South, where they did hidden camera filming of salespeople offering "free solar" to people, and then calling them on their lies. It looked like a pretty sleazy operation and there were a lot of ticked...

The only concern is that high voltage DC is dangerous as heck. I've worked with HV all my life, been hit with 6KV before, woke up across the room with the smell of barbacue in the air...I run my panels at 100-110 volts, anything much higher than that personally I start getting nervous. I know...

It constantly amazes me how many new "members" join and their first post is a link to a battery store that just opened. Funny. Over and over and over.

On the one had I agree there is no Grade A or B, it's just marketing. On the other hand in the last few months I've seen this forum fill up with FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) generated by vendors intended to slam other vendors, like the line above that "Grade B" cells only charge at half...

I've had 20 kWh of L16's for a while and wanted more storage, so this year I added 45 kWh of lithium batteries, DIY style. I've really enjoyed the new battery, for a couple of reasons that aren't spoken of often enough I thought I'd mention. The first is charging speed. The lead acid cells...

And one little suggestion. When you install the balance leads, before you connect it to the BMS, use your voltmeter and check that each lead shows a 3.2v higher number than the one next to it, as in 3.2, 6.4, 9.6, 12.8, etc., adjusted for your actual voltage of course. A couple of times I've...

If you get top quality cells it's not such an issue. I've built two 16 cell packs recently with cells from Docan / Amy Zheng. I thought I'd charge them and then finish top balancing when after the first cell maxed out. As it turned out both of the batteries track within less than 5 millivolts...

I've had a Truckfridge in my van for years, it's a 12v Danfoss compressor fridge, does a fantastic job. My original solar setup was 200w of panels and a 150ah lead / acid battery, it ran the fridge and lights just fine. I spent 2-3 months a year on the road living in the van, camping around...

would not

Just to second MichaelK's comments, here in the Willamette Valley I see about 10 percent production during January and February, meaning one of my 5kw arrays will put out about half a kilowatt hour of energy per day on a lot of days. Sometimes we have a bunch of those in a row, other times the...

Just speaking from my experience, which is living and traveling in my van for 3 months a year through extremely rural Mexico and Central America, I have 400 watts of solar on the roof and 280 ah of lithium battery. I don't have any kind of shore power connector or charger and never needed or...

To answer the question you didn't explicitly ask, don't ever discuss solar with whoever gave you the information you described, it's complete BS. It's clear you know far more than them, they're just misleading you, probably for profit.

You know that famous quote from Abraham Lincoln, right? "Don't believe everything you read on the Internet." Aliexpress if full of amazing claims that are too good to be true, and most of the time they aren't true. At least in the solar world it's just a big machine to part fools from their...

They make lots of solar charge controllers like that, just not the cheapest ones. It's basic electrical design to monitor the output current and component temperatures and to limit the output of the charge controller to a safe level. My controllers are rated at 94 amps, they're hooked up to...

I've bought 3 separate orders of 16 cells each in the last several months. Each has been a perfect transaction, great communication, did everything promised and the cells are fantastic, perfectly matched and performing great. The best contact method is email as noted above, they usually get...

You mean to tell me the unit is so poorly engineered that it's not capable of monitoring it's own output and operational temperatures and regulating its output to a safe level? That's freshman electrical engineering stuff, totally inexcusable in a commercial product if it's true.

If by "half lock washers" you mean split ring, the kind that are a circle with a slit in them and slightly twisted, don't use them. They are completely worthless at doing what you think they're supposed to do, lots of studies proving that, even look on Youtube for some good videos documenting...

Now figure out what happens when you have a few cloudy / rainy days in a row, that's what makes it interesting and expensive.

i picked one up for about $35 and it's been a fantastic tool. After putting up my panels I was able to check the output of individual panels and found a couple that weren't putting out, turned out to be bad MC4 connections. I would have never found them without the clamp meter, can't believe...

My experience is that I spend three months a year traveling and living in my van, a 1982 Vanagon. I have 400 watts of solar and a 280 amp hour lithium battery. They do a pretty good job of keeping up with my solar needs, because I don't have a crock pot, electric heater or other appliances. i...

I had that same Epever in my van for years, it did a fantastic job and I'd recommend the same, can't be beat for the price.

I don't find annualized maps to be all that useful, but then I live in that little green area in the upper left hand corner. My batteries don't operate on an annual cycle, it's the amount of sun I get in a week that matters to me. In the summer we have months of sunny days with no clouds at...

I've spent a lot of time working with high voltage DC, up to 6KV, and I'd never, ever want to have 600v or more with the capacity to deliver 1000's of amps behind it in my house, just too damn scary. I got bit by HV DC once, woke up across the room with the smell of bbq in the air and a big...

My 16 of the 280K cells just shipped from Houston yesterday, ordered about 5 weeks ago, so I imagine yours will ship right after the holiday.

For a basic setup I think it's hard to beat the Epever units with the cast metal body, I think they're the BN series. I had one in my van for years that took tons of abuse and just kept ticking. Reasonable prices and well built Don't bottom feed, you'll just spend a lot more money in the long...

Another option is to just run a jumper cable from the house battery to the starter battery wiring. I've done that a few times and "jump started" myself in the middle of nowhere before I got the van's wiring sorted out and the isolator working properly.

Not sure if you're looking at inverters or not, but lots of better inverters include a charger and transfer switch. My Samlex EVO inverters are connected to the grid, so that if the battery voltage drops below a value I program the charger kicks in and charges the batteries up to a chosen...

They're good for folks like me. I have several Classics charging two battery banks connected to Samlex EVO inverters, which have built in chargers. They're set so that if the batteries get to 50 per cent charge they kick on for an hour and put 50 amp hours into them, then turn off. Where I...

I have two batteries with 16 of the 304's and two with 16 of the 280K's, all operated in parallel and working great. The difference in real capacity is minimal, the batteries all charge and discharge in unison, no problems.

If you can use 100 amp fuses, I found a deal on the big A for a 5 pack for $60. For some reason the 100's were half the price of the larger ones and only the 100's were available in the 5-pack. Since I'm running several batteries in parallel they work for me for the individual batteries.

For a similar setup I'm using a Kisae DMT1250, it's sold under several names. It has MPPT solar charge controller and also a DC/DC converter which is fed from the alternator to charge the lithium batteries when the engine is running. I have 400 watts of solar attached to it and a 280 amp hour...

Time to file a chargeback and be thankful you didn't do a bank transfer like they wanted.

Email them, posts a little earlier said they'd found a credit card payment option after emailing.