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So, I did a little reading, and now I'm not sure if I understand the scope of what @SolarQueen said. The codes are pretty clear that an arc fault/ground fault protection device is required for 'PV systems' on buildings. And by the definition of what a ground fault protection device has to do...

There are some potential problems (such as frying your alternator) when charging LiFePo4 batteries from a vehicle charging system. I don't have any first hand knowledge of the best methods of dealing with this, so someone else would be a better source of information. The basic problem seems...

Most Lishen datasheets say that charging must take place above freezing. I looked for hours last night trying to find a datasheet for Lishen cells that listed a charge temperature below 0° C and was not successful. I would feel much more comfortable with that claim if a cell model number could...

In regards to the Midnite Classic it does. Thanks. The other part of my questions was more code related. I did find that they define a 'PV System' as And they define Utilization as basically "end use equipment" So by that I understand any requirements for the 'PV System' apply to the...

@lockep, I think you posted an aliexpress link to your personal order instead of the product page. No one but you will be able to view it.

Just so others are aware, this page explains the difference between copper and brass. https://www.bluesea.com/resources/108/Electrical_Conductivity_of_Materials Essentially, even though brass contains a lot of copper, it has much lower conductivity. They explain that it can be used, but the...

Hi @GregTR. I guess you are kind of new here.. welcome to the forums. This IS what we do.:sneaky: Have you seen the posts that are 45 pages long, and only about 15 pages are on topic? Obviously, looking at my previous three sentences, I can't argue your point about the smart-assery. I can...

I worked at a gas station that had a cash price and a higher credit card price. That was during the gasoline price spike in the late 80's. Where this practice is not allowed, some businesses get around it by giving a 'discount' for using cash. Now it is common to get credit cards that give...

That's bad news. Hang on to the old one. If you are feeling intrepid sometime, you can watch some tear-down videos and carefully open it up. There is a good chance the cells are fine. You may be able to use them to make DIY battery with a different BMS.

The manual put out by Loctite, found here as a pdf, notes that their thread locker products will not harden unless the right metals are available to activate its curing process. Specifically they mention that loctite will not properly cure in aluminum and stainless steel without first treating...

@Teddy did you get your actual question answered in a way that makes sense to you?

I looked at the photos above and never noticed that these aren't QR Codes. Has CALB always used DataMatrix to code their batteries? I tried the LiFePo code scanner app on them and it doesn't work, so apparently it will only read QR Codes, which is a bit of a bummer. Looking closely at the...

Couple of questions: When you measured the voltage on the roof, was it with the solar wiring connectors disconnected? Do you have the model number of your panels, so I can look at the datasheet? The panels should have two voltages on the datasheet. One is Voc, which is the open circuit...

Very cool tool! I gave it a quick try and it does have data for my area. I'll have to compare it to PVWatts from NREL.

@merlin077 , That is just painful to look at. Sorry to hear about the damage, but I am curious which BMS you were using.

Interesting. Maybe my camera is struggling doing the scan on a screen. It has worked in the past. (edited because my previous reply was garbage for lack of actually looking at the content of your post. ):rolleyes:

This would make my life easier. I planned to do my installation in an equipment shed detached from the house. The problem I have is that I'm currently under NEC 2014 but I have heard that an update to NEC 2020 is in the works, so its hard to plan a project for spring without knowing which code...

Sorry to see all the issues with the Chargery and DCC. Just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate how thorough you have been in describing the problems you are experiencing because I'm trying to decide on a bms for a 16s pack and at one point had ruled out Chargery, but then saw the...

This makes perfect sense if the fastener torque is high enough to actually flatten the copper against the aluminum to the point it provides a good seal. This works on the oil pan of my car where the torque is about 25 newton meters. I still have trouble buying that a copper washer is getting...

I just got done playing around with trying to get an idea of the capacity of my 304ah 12 volt battery. I have one of the cheap constant-current/constant-voltage power supplies that can provide about 10 amps. The battery bms is a 200A JDB smart bms. I also have this hall effect DROK...

Not to my knowledge. It does incorporate weather data to help provide realistic daily production figures in the table it produces for a given PV array at a given location. I'm guessing that PVGIS does the same, so I am curious to see if they calculate similar production expectations.

I interpreted RC's chart as relating temperature and loss of charge over time, not loss of battery capacity over time. A while back, I was looking into the question of battery degradation due to calendar aging, and I posted a couple links to different sources. Post #9 and post #12 in the thread...

Without a load on the inverter, if the inverter volt meter is accurate, it should be pretty close to the actual battery voltage. So some quick math: The battery claimed capacity of 1500wh ÷ 12.8v = 117.87, so you probably have cells with around 115 to 120ah of capacity. Your load of 820 watts...

@HighTechLab, I re-watched your videos on the testing and addition of the CALB cells to your system, and its obvious that you must have made a significant investment in lead acid cells at some point in the past but I couldn't find anything other than a few comments about them in the video on the...

I've been getting pieces and parts together to put a modest solar power system together in a few months, mostly using U.S. based suppliers and purchasing off ebay and through the affiliate links. All of this is pretty familiar territory, but it appears that the battery and bms components will...

My understanding is that you never should use Friends and Family to pay someone you don't personally know and trust. There is very little protection from fraud if you use that. Goods and Services has higher fees, but has some protection for the buyer.

So this is the problem trying to compare watt hours. You see different watt hours and assume the cells are different. How do you know that the resistance of the connections to the cell wasn't different for one cell than the other? That would also cause the watt hours to be different. The...

Hi Martin, I'm in the U.S. with our 240V split phase electrical system, so I don't know if this directly applies. However, I have run my 120V portable induction HOB on a 2000 watt high frequency inverter and did not notice any performance difference. On its highest setting, I think it pulled...

The panels have two voltages listed on them. One is an open circuit voltage, Voc. This is the voltage that the panel will create when the circuit is open and there is no where for the electrons to go. This is the maximum voltage that the panel can create. But since the panels are creating a...

Thanks for the reply. Somehow I missed the video where you were showing the pallets of non functional batteries. Its a shame they are so hard to recycle. I was in Sacramento a couple of years ago for a wedding and then went up to the lava tubes and hiked some of the forest. Beautiful area...

Since this is in the Beginners Corner, and just for the sake of clarity, from the voltages you state, I take it you are referring to LiFePO4 chemistry, not lead acid. For lead acid, float charge is a normal part of charging to reduce sulfation. As I understand it, it is preferable to have no...

I think this is where the grounding (meaning earthing) gets confused with grounding (meaning bonding). The ground fault protection devices for roof mounted PV detect whether all the current is going through the current carrying conductors or if some of the current is leaking to the grounding...

Payback can be defined many different ways. When I started deciding to buy stuff to try to make a solar system that could provide all of my electricity at least 8 months out of the year, with battery storage because net metering just isn't worth the added cost here, I calculated that I would...

@T-486 Ashepoo , you bring up a good point. I read the first sentence of the original post and assumed that he was wiring the panels in a string that would put out 60v at 10 amps. The rapid shutdown requirements from NEC 2017 and 2020 require that the voltage outside the 1 foot boundary be...

The state of charge is only unimportant if you can guarantee that the cells will not be exposed to high temperature conditions for an extended period of time. In your case, it sounds like you intend to put them back into use in a relatively short period of time, so this is probably not a...

When I imagine applying epoxy to set battery posts, I think of the messes I've made using epoxy in the past. There really is no room for getting the epoxy on top of the battery terminal. You would have to get it perfectly clean afterwards. The conductive paste looks interesting, but it also...

I finally got around to figuring out how to use an iCharger X8 to cycle a battery cell to compare with the capacity that I got when testing the 12 volt battery made from Docan 304ah nominal cells. When it has a power source that it can discharge back to, such as a battery, the iCharger x8 that...

Thank you both for sharing your experiences. I also appreciate the explanation of the difference between alibaba and aliexpress. I had read that aliexpress was owned by alibaba, but now this makes sense in that they serve different sorts of marketers. It also explains why the Alibaba ads...

Thanks for the suggestion, but I already have one of those. I think they are good for checking connection resistance, and I did use it to test all my cells. However, the manual says it is not for testing large cells. It is an AC resistance tester, and I think in larger cells capacitance and...

You only need to fuse the wires coming from each string of panels in series. So if you have a string of two panels connected in series, the positive wire from one panel and the negative wire from the other panel will be fused before they are joined with the wires from the other strings of two...

You don't state if your inverter is modified sine wave or pure sine wave. If you want to run an inductive load like a freezer motor for any length of time, you really want a pure sine wave inverter. I had a power outage a couple years ago and used a cheap Harbor Freight 3000 watt modified sine...

This pdf lesson from Teach Engineering does a pretty good job of describing how MPPT and solar panels work together. It has this graph in it of the voltage / current curve for the panel they are using in the classroom. Notice that if you are all the way to the right, the voltage goes up to...

It is from this paper from NREL. It contains a lot of math I don't understand, but what they are trying to do is come up with a predictive formula that can be used to project calendar aging and cycle aging under various conditions. The vertical scale units have a use in their formula, but for...

I was trying to ask this question. Near as I can tell, the charge controller does not protect against a short on the battery side. The fusing at the battery has to do all of that. And I did look up the NEC article on electrical storage systems, and they say that it only applies to system...

I agree with the sentiment of your comment, but not the details of your 'grade A or B' terminology. Here is a short paper that lists many of the certification tests for EV grade battery cells. It was written in 2020 to compare the Chinese GB/T standards with standards from other countries...

@larrylwill In the photo of your board in post #7, it appears that you might be using all of the balance leads. The two wiring method diagrams in Post #1 do not show all five of the balance leads being used. In method #2, where they have no connection to B+, they are using the red and three...

Did the vendor with the 'Grade B' cells say why they are being sold as grade B? It seems that if the cells don't have obvious damage, the vendors always say they are Grade A. If the 'Grade B' cells have bloating or dents, I would have reservations about throwing money at them. Neither 'grade'...

What is your intended use of the iCharger? Do you want to simply charge the battery, or are you looking for something to cycle the battery through a charge and discharge for capacity testing?

I like the concept of the utility incentivizing customer feed in when its needed. These incentives would let customers benefit from using small battery systems to help out the grid. This is much better than the 'pointy haired boss' option.

I've got the 4s 200A JBD BMS and can change all of the settings over Bluetooth using version 3.1.1026 of the xiaoxiang app. It is on Overkill's website here: https://overkillsolar.com/support-downloads/