Most reacted posts

First, a picture: Now, some explanation: We’re building a house up in Maine on a large, undeveloped lot (100+ acres, 50+ hectares). The site we chose to build on is well back from the road and our driveway is about 950’ (~300m) along it’s length. I was quoted an exorbitant price by the local...

Pictures! So, after a dry-spell of posting — some progress photos! I used the big bobcat to clear our building lot and had to spend quite a bit of time building out our driveway. Two culverts, some mistakes and 350y³ (~276m³) of 4” (~10cm) road base later... We can now get a fully-loaded...

I don’t know if anyone is interested, but I’ve put together a google sheet where I’m keeping a running cost of all of the parts involved in the battery boxes, which you can find here. I’ll pretty it up — I promise. ? It lists costs for all of the major components, though I’ve left out little...

Along with the move to 16s, I decided to buy the big-dog Quattro from Victron. 48/15000/240 (yep, 240v. more on that in a minute). Here’s my thinking (feel free to disagree!): I want this part of the system to last a very, very long time — “grid-down” will be our every-day. Victron has been...

After 450 miles of driving last night, all of the batteries and the inverter are now up in Maine at the top of my driveway. I need to do some site prep before I can place them. The telehandler really shines when you need to reach in to pick something up. This one came with frame levelling...

Here's a pic of our temporary accomodations when we're up here working on the house site.

No, that's not quite right. I'm trying to follow a data-driven approach, here. I can insulate the boxes, because it's cheap and there's space within them to do that. The heating elements are likewise inexpensive and easy to implement. I'll monitor the inside / outside temperatures closely, and...

I tried wearing tighter jeans on my video thumbnails, but it didn’t work out as well for me as it seems to for them. ????

Yep. I’ve checked in on them from time to time. As I understand it, they’re using brand new LFP 48v batteries from Simpliphi. At ~3.8kWh (and ~$2500) each, their six batteries are going to give them ~23kWh of storage at a cost of roughly $15k. That works out to somewhere in the $650-700/kWh...

Naw... we’re still firmly in the BETA/VHS (or Blue-Ray/HD-DVD for younger people) stage of this tech. It’s okay, though, give it a little while and it’ll firm up. In the meantime, these little microcontrollers make for a nifty fix to the problem. I’m working through the various messages and...

That’s a great question. Here’s how I went about answering it for myself: I started out by looking at the average amount of power my current house uses in peak months and divided by thirty to give me a rough worst-case kwh/day figure. The average american household uses ~11kWh / day; we seem...

I've had good results talking directly to the Daly over it's UART port. I've done some digging and have started to document some of the commands that control / query it's configuration.

Made the interconnects...

I took some inspiration from the SimpBMS for tesla modules, and I now have the Daly sending BMS.Can messages that my Victron equipment is reading successfully. Yay! From what I understand this would make my little adapter work with any inverter that is compatible with the SimpBMS or the ones...

They estimated somewhere in the $30-40k range. We have a really long driveway, and would need transformers and poles and we'd have to draw up a utility easement, etc. etc. etc. All in, with inverters and all the fixin's, I should come in at well under $20k. The panels will be more, but will...

Command 0x51 appears to query the "Number of acquisition board", "Cell counts" and "Temp Sensor counts" -> a5 40 51 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 3e <- a5 01 51 08 01 0e 00 00 01 00 00 00 0f Byte 0: Number of acquisition board? [01] = Board count of 1 Byte 1-3: Cell counts [0E 00 00] = (14, 0...

Tomorrow, I'll put together a one-panel Enphase IQ7+ system and wire that up to the Victron. We'll see if that's going to work out the way that I think. Fingers crossed.

Command 0x50 appears to query the rated pack capacity and nominal cell voltage. -> a5 40 50 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 3d <- a5 01 50 08 00 00 9c 40 00 00 0e 74 5c Byte 0-3: Rated pack capacity, in mAh. [00 00 9C 40] = 40Ah Byte 4-5: Reserved? Byte 6-7: Nominal cell voltage, in millivolts...

Speaking of data... I had one of the boxes rigged up with a data logger to watch the temperature at the center of the pack and the outside temperature (taped to the underside of the box, so it was shaded / shielded from the wind.) I've attached a graph of about 18 days worth of data. The black...

yes you can, but they wanted even more $$$. ~1000’ down the new driveway from their last pole. they mentioned something about maybe having to upgrade that branch, too, since this was at the end of it. not that it matters now, we’re fully committed to 100% battery and solar.

Victron (and other) inverter/chargers can be configured to control the output of the micros with frequency shifting (when off-grid) when AC coupled. This makes it economical to use whatever batteries you like.

Ah. I didn't see that no AC-coupling was a hard requirement. By "appropriately configured," I meant setup for frequency shifting to control the output of the micros and safely deal with islanding, along with a battery sized to handle a spike. Aside: With the new Enphase IQ8 micros (they keep...

You make an excellent point! I haven’t gone into writing up the details (yet!), but I was planning on doing a full write-up on that in a post all by itself... but, the General Idea™ is to equip each of these boxes with four inexpensive ~25w silicone heating pads, wedged between the pairs of...

You make a solid point. This experiment was purely a PoC. I was looking at the numbers coming off the Victron Inverter, through the BT dongle and Victron Connect. I was giddy enough that it all worked together at alI and didn't investigate any further.... and nothing has been calibrated at this...

Hey all! I'm looking to to use the Enphase IQ7/7+ and their Envoy with my Victron Quattro 15k/230/200, in an AC coupled setup -- I will not be connected to the grid. The Victron will live at a location roughly between two buildings, and will be used to create a micro-grid (at 240v/60Hz...

I have a some SmartBMS units from Daly that I want to talk to. On other threads in this forum, I've seen some discussion of the protocol, and there have been some successes that people have had in getting some documentation out of them. Having read over the documentation, I've come to discover...

Okay, here's what I tested today: Experiment-1: Setup: A Victron 15k/230/200 that I set to 240v/60Hz single phase. I connected it's Output-1 directly to the L1-L2 of an Enphase IQ Combiner. I placed one 20-amp breaker on the combiner, and wired that directly to the red/black of a Q-cable...

Command 0x62 appears to query the "Software Version": -> a5 40 62 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 4f <- a5 01 62 08 01 32 30 32 31 30 32 32 6a // "2021022" <- a5 01 62 08 02 32 2d 31 2e 30 31 54 85 // "2-1.01T" Byte 0: The frame number; Each frame carries 7 bytes of the string. Byte 1-7: The...

Command 0x63 appears to query the "Hardware Version" -> a5 40 63 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 50 <- a5 01 63 08 01 44 4c 2d 42 4d 53 2d de // "DL-BMS-" <- a5 01 63 08 02 52 33 32 2d 30 31 45 9d // "R32-01E" Byte 0: The frame number; Each frame carries 7 bytes of the string. Byte 1-7: The...

Command 0x59 appears to query the Level 1 and 2 alarm thresholds for high and low cell voltages. -> a5 40 59 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 46 <- a5 01 59 08 10 36 10 04 0a f0 0b b8 1e Byte 0-1: Level-1 alarm threshold for Cell High Voltage, in millivolts [10 36] = 4.15v Byte 2-3: Level-2 alarm...

I got a lot done today on pack #5...

Tomorrow, I'll put together a one-panel Enphase IQ7+ system and wire that up to the Victron. We'll see if that's going to work out the way that I think.

As promised, I've started to document the protocol between the "official" Daly BMS software and the BMS. Anyone that's interested in such things can take a peek, pitch in some help, whatever right over here. I should be able to get the code for this up on github tonight. I'll post a link when I do.

Command 0x5A appears to query the Level 1 and 2 alarm thresholds for high and low voltages for the pack as a whole. -> a5 40 5a 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 47 <- a5 01 5a 08 02 45 02 3e 01 88 01 b2 cb Byte 0-1: Level-1 alarm threshold for Pack High Voltage, in 10th's of a volt [02 45] = 58.1v...

Command 0x5E appears to query the Level 1 and 2 alarm thresholds for allowable difference in cell voltage and temperature sensor readings -> a5 40 5e 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 4b <- a5 01 5e 08 01 f4 00 c8 0a 0f 78 1e 78 Byte 0-1: Level-1 alarm threshold for Cell Voltage Difference, in...

Command 0x5B appears to query the Level 1 and 2 alarm thresholds for charge and discharge current for the pack. -> a5 40 5b 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 48 <- a5 01 5b 08 6b d0 6f 54 7e 90 78 1e ab Byte 0-1: Level-1 alarm threshold for High Charge Current, in 10ths of an amp (with a zero-value...

I appreciate the complement... but please don’t take anything I say or do as the gospel — rather, consume lots of information from lots of sources, and apply the filter between your ears to screen out the junk. Ask questions; lots of questions. (My grandfather constantly reminded me that there...

Command 0x5F appears to query the voltage thresholds that control balancing. -> a5 40 5f 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 4c <- a5 01 5f 08 0d 48 00 32 00 00 0e 74 16 Byte 0-1: Cell voltage threshold at which balancing is enabled, in millivolts. [0D 48] = 3.4v Byte 2-3: Voltage differential between...

For the love of all that is holy, please apply heat shrink to those lugs. It only takes a few minutes to do, and you'd go from a 9 to a 10. It makes my eye twitch. ;)

...those poles and transformers all come with the promise of a monthly bill, too, and no guarantee against power cuts in the winter (it happens here alot.) Using the grid, on this particular property makes very little sense when batteries and solar are becoming so cheap. Whatever it shakes out...

Box #6 insulated, framed and the receptacle site drilled through. Battery test fits nicely.

Command 0x60 appears to query the short-circuit shutdown threshold and the current sampling resolution. -> a5 40 60 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 4d <- a5 01 60 08 07 d0 00 64 00 00 00 00 49 Byte 0-1: Short-circuit shutdown threshold, in amps. [07 D0] = 2000A Byte 2-3: Current sampling...

three 5" x 18" LVL for the ridge beam, supported by two posts, consisting of 5" x 9" LVL. those transmit the downforce to the floor, supported by a gigantic 28" x 16" LVL beam that runs the full 24' span.

I've made a breakthrough in my attempts to directly communicate with the Daly SmartBMS (16s/150a) over it's UART port. Posted elsewhere on this forum, I've seen some partial documentation for the protocol, but it didn't really make sense until I was able to see it in action. What I did, was...

I've actually just pushed up my initial sketch -- it doesn't do much other than receive and decode the various documented commands (cell voltages, etc.) I built the packet-decoder as a state-machine, so that it's easy to integrate into the main loop without adding a ton of overhead -- this...

I paid ~$135/ea (incl. shipping) for two pallets of Hyundai HiAS370HI panels, 54 in total. I bought them off a seller on ebay, no troubles, beautiful panels. I had a little problem with the shipping company (UPS freight), who misrouted the panels, but once that was sorted out...

That’s a variation on the same theme I’m looking into: Basically some sort of resistive silicone heating mat. @Will Prowse recently did a video on some reasonably priced ones, designed to heat waste-water tanks in RVs and boats. Those shake out to ~$35/ea. and are self-regulating. The ones that...

You might also look into the Dinkle modular terminal blocks for DIN rails. I really like the way they work.

UPDATE: The IQ7+ has arrived. Combiner should arrive tonight.

I'm pretty sure the "password" is just baked into the app. The PC software doesn't require it, and from what I've seen of the over-the-wire protocol, it's not even a thing.

I’d recently bought 48 of these same batteries, and have done pretty much exactly what you’ve described. I’ve broken down 32 of them so far, reconfigured them in parallel and have set up each block of 8 (doing 16s) with it’s own (Daly) BMS in an insulated steel box. It’s funny we should arrive...

My situation is, well, a little weird. We bought a 100+ acre chunk of raw forest, that had as it’s only existing infrastructure a stubby stretch of 150’ of driveway. If we were retrofitting batteries into a place that already had some existing buildings, amenities and such, I’m pretty sure that...

Just gonna leave this here, with no additional comments...

I don't think that there will be much you can do about this, other than unplug the bluetooth adapter when you're not expecting it to be used. I'm pretty sure they were designing for "easy" and didn't make security a serious concern.

I'd second this as an economical choice. use the factory oil for the first thirty minutes, and then switch to a high-quality synthetic -- it's worth the $8. I've run mine daily for ~2h (to charge the batteries in my worksite tent, using a 24v multiplus) for the last 8 months and it's super rare...

UPDATE: I ordered one IQ7+ and an IQ Combiner to use with a 375w panel we have that’s idle (due to our impending move). That’s pretty much the minimal system possible, and I should be able to answer a number of the questions that I laid out above. If it doesn’t work out, the expensive bit (the...

Well, so far it's just eavesdropping, but the talking will probably get going tonight. :) Will do. I expect I'll put up a GitHub project later this week, after I knock the kinks out. Most of it... I think you still need an interface chip to finish up the job, but it's just a couple of wires.

Is this what you'd be wanting?

Moving right along, today on box #5. Picked up the enclosure for box #6, and placed it on the trailer. I'm going to fit-out the insulation and the framing for #6 after lunch. The Anderson SB175 is going to fit perfectly, allowing a flush mount. I need to work up a metal bracket for it and 3D...

That's actually pretty doable. I'm playing around with pulling the data from multiple Daly's over the BLE (different packs, wired in parallel) and collating that to send to my victron quattro. Doing the same for PylonTech-speak shouldn't be all that difficult, and would still work with my...

Yeah. I can't see how you'd do both at the same time. I'm 97% sure that the BT cable just proxies whatever it gets, and doesn't do anything at all smart. The connector to the immediate right of the UART/BT connector in your picture is the rs485/can connector on my model...

Each rack battery module contains 14 cells, in a 14S string. I took them apart and reorganized them as 7p2s. I then I took 8 of those reconfigured rack modules to make a very large 7p16s battery. I'm very sure they have. I tested a large fraction of the units and they seem to fall between...

We're building a SIP house, 10" walls, 12" roof.

tryb try accessing the bms with another phone. you'll see that the password doesn't matter. the physical bms has no concept of a password, it's just some weird thing they did in the app.

There is no concept of a password in the BMS itself. If I have physical access to it, I can plug into a port and change whatever I want. The "password" feature of the mobile app is entirely internal to that app -- it's basically just the app asking, "are you sure?" in a convoluted way.

Also, the inverter that I'm using is rated to 66v, so using 16s not only fills out the box nicely, but allows me to run at a slightly higher voltage (which decreases resistive losses and cuts the amps that I'd push over the wire by ~9% for the same amount of power.) Alternatively, I could have...

Scrap the ac-battery, and setup three Victron multiplus-ii's (or quattros if you want more inverter/charger capacity), which can work together to produce three-phase power, are designed to be grid-forming, and can easily be wired / configured for proper islanding in grid down. Then, hook up as...

Yep. They want an absolute mint $$$ for those batteries with builtin heaters, too. I'm not knocking 'em -- they're high quality and well made... but they're very expensive. If I were building a pack to handle short outages, I'd probably use them. For example: With Battleborn... 100Ah @ 60v is...

the ground isn't really meant to carry current for any length of time, it's fine to use a smaller conductor for the job. for instance, I run 240v AC about 100' to my house from my inverter, for that I use 4/0 wire as the conductors. the ground, however, is only 6awg. it just needs to be large...

Thanks! They’re known to be very price-competitive for pre-built systems, which is why I used them as a baseline for my cost model. I looked at the Enphase, LG, and a whole bunch of other systems as well. Tesla had them all beat on price per kWh. If the cheapest of the options was still too...

That's only true I'd you don't have a grid-forming inverter. Even with a tiny battery pack to drive it, an (appropriately configured) inverter could keep your micros running.

TL;DR: These batteries will live out their days on a concrete pad about 50’ away from the house — they’ll be placed in a central location to shorten the wire runs between our house, workshop and well pump. The boxes themselves are insulated on all sides with 2 layers of 1” of PolyShield EPS...

Basically, they’re the allowable frequency ranges, voltage ranges, thresholds for disconnection, etc. for the local grid. After much thought and research... I don’t think it’s really going to matter too much, as whichever I end up choosing (some ISO standard, probably), I’ll configure the...

post a picture?

yep. it's due for an update -- been busy building a house. here it is.

The Victron units can be configured to do power limiting by frequency shifting, when offgrid. I use this feature on mine.

I don't even pretend to know what it all means, but we had an engineering firm spec everything and wet-stamp the plans. they insisted that it was over-spec'd for the area and conditions. they were more concerned with the wind-loading on the long sides, actually, since the building is long and...

UPDATE: The combiner has arrived; Waiting on cables / connectors.

I know, right? ;) Interesting... I’ll be running these with enphase microinverters, so I wonder if that negates the issue to a degree? This is a dead link for me. :(

Ah. I do remember reading this! (thanks for the link, btw.) I don't think it's going to be much of a factor, because my system isn't ever grid-tied, and my inverter is grid-forming -- basically, you can't rely on an inverter to reliably use frequency shifting if it can't completely control the...

We haven't made a final choice yet. Suggestions?

I have three of the six batteries online at the moment. Because the house loads are more "gentle" than their previous jobs, the batteries are doing much better than expected. Things I have learned: When I bought them, they were being sold as ~2.2kwh, per unit. I'm seeing about 2.6kwh per due...

I'm about a month away from having the full array up on the roof. That said, I have setup a small test system with three panels and have had great success with that so far using just the frequency-shifting. I was planning to setup one of the quattro's relays to control an AC dump load and to...

I haven't tried to get anything off the can bus, but I've been very successful at reading data off it's UART port. Maybe give that a go, first?

I think I'll probably just bolt them to the concrete pad I'm going to pour. They weigh ~1000lbs each, so you're not going to move them without heavy equipment.

Yep! That’s the one i was looking at... I just was wondering if anyone had any experiences with it. It seems straightforward enough, but who knows. ;)

That work looks great! Nice job. I'm glad to hear that you were able to get it all up and running. It does take a while to get through processing them! I managed to get it down to about a half an hour each, by doing batches of 16 in passes: disassemble them all, cleaning, module disassembly...

oh! these look neat! i had short bits of some 2/0 marine grade and a pile of lugs left over from another project that i used for the interconnects. each battery will get its own internal 125a breaker and an Anderson SB175 plug to the outside world, flush mounted through a pre-existing cutout...

No. It'll live in the great outdoors, on a concrete pad. The boxes have 2" of insulation, a radiant barrier and will be fitted with some heating elements between the packs before winter.

Awesome! I hope the IQ8’s come out soon, too... because it’ll make the 7-series that much cheaper. The 8’s big advantages seem to be around the fact that it can be setup to better deal with “grid down” situations. In our setup, because our inverter will always be “the grid,” we don’t see that...

Does anyone know what seiko chip they're using? I can't seem to find much information on that. Knowing the chip, there may be manufacturer datasheets and documentation that I can mine for additional features or functionality that Daly chose not to expose.

On the UART cable, there are only three pins used: (using the colors from the picture) red, white and black. The red and white wires are the serial rx/tx and the black is a ground. The bluetooth cable adds an additional wire, the green (again, from the picture above). My suspicion is that is vcc...

Good find! This seems to be another version of the documentation that I had found already, and serves to confirm and clarify a few things.

My understanding is that the 4-cell models are a.completely different thing, maybe from an acquisition or something. They're not the same underlying tech.

awesome advice! we just received our standing seam roof (24ga) yesterday, and it's due to be installed next week. what would you recommend for fastening the rail to the roof seam?

I’m going to do a try a variation on the suggestions from snoobler. I’ve got a pet project going to communicate with the Daly BMS through the serial port, and I was planning to monitor it’s built-in low-temp and high-temp alarms to run a pair of relays for heaters and fans, among other things. I...

Those are not operating. Just sitting in the elements, not far from where they'll be installed.

UPDATE: I was able to execute my IQ7+ / Quattro tests today.

The SIP panels that make up our roof are 12-1/4" thick. The EPS foam that cores the panels makes for some pretty good noise insulation. Our roofing goes up this coming Tuesday, but we've had some hard rain in the week since the panels have gone up. I went out to listen to the noise, and TBH...