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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...

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.

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...

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...

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.