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Recent content by viccooper

  1. viccooper

    Replacing cells in a lifepo4 48v 400ah battery

    Thanks for the responses. I think I will start with upgrading the BMS and adding an active balancer and see what happens. Even with one cell limiting the pack to 340ah per cell, I would still get ~17kWh.
  2. viccooper

    Replacing cells in a lifepo4 48v 400ah battery

    I have a 7 year old LifePO4 DIY battery that uses CALB 400ah cells. It is managed using an OrionJr BMS which was not setup to do any sort of active balancing. After years of daily cycling I noticed that the capacity was dropping quite a bit due to the cells being out of balance. So I purchased 6...
  3. viccooper

    GROWATT Shine WiFi-X Hotspot Default password ?

    I recently had the same problem. The password that work for me when I connected to 192.168.10.100 was 12345678 Now I am trying to figure out the password for the Shine Phone app to edit settings. growattyyyymmdd did not work
  4. viccooper

    reliable off-grid internet for monitoring - what are you using?

    Have you looked at LoraWAN? It's very low bandwidth but for monitoring and IOT sensors it works great. You can connect devices up to 3 miles (five kilometres) in urban areas and up to 10 miles (15 kilometres) or more in rural areas. Depending on your location there may be LoraWAN hotspots nearby...
  5. viccooper

    Feeding new solar setup with old for capacity

    I don't see why not. It's kind of inefficient but it doesn't seem that much different than charging an EV from a PV system
  6. viccooper

    Outback to Growatt system upgrade - Keep using Outback and other ?

    I can export it as an image if you want. But that seems to defeat the purpose which is to have smart shapes and connectors that adapt to changes in the drawing. And it does support layers so you could just look at the AC or DC side.
  7. viccooper

    Feeding new solar setup with old for capacity

    How old is your lead acid bank? Might not be worth the trouble to maintain it with all the battery voodoo you have to do with lead acid. Could you setup the Outback to run specific loads rather than the whole house. Also don't you want to move the old solar panels to the new system? What is...
  8. viccooper

    Fuses, breakers, and BMSs

    Also I probably should have posted my thread to this forum but I am also working on a new system. Perhaps we can compare notes? https://diysolarforum.com/threads/outback-to-growatt-system-upgrade-keep-using-outback-and-other.34462/#post-429529
  9. viccooper

    Fuses, breakers, and BMSs

    I have also been hunting for a new BMS. I have a 400 Ahr 16s CATL LifePO4 bank that uses an OrionJr BMS with an external contactor. This was a good choice 5 years ago but now there are a lot of other options on the market. I would like to use the same BMS that EG4 batteries use but not sure they...
  10. viccooper

    Outback to Growatt system upgrade - Keep using Outback and other ?

    Daily usage is in the 10 to 20 kWh range but we now have caretakers living in the second house and we do not generate enough power to keep the water tanks full and are having to spend too much on propane for the generator. It takes thousands of dollars to fill our two 500 gallon propane tanks...
  11. viccooper

    Outback to Growatt system upgrade - Keep using Outback and other ?

    Thanks for asking. This was the view from our house Friday night within one hour of the fire starting. Luckily the wind was blowing towards the ocean and away from the house. But it was super scary how fast it happened and just crazy to have a fire in January. We had heavy rains just before...
  12. viccooper

    Outback to Growatt system upgrade - Keep using Outback and other ?

    Not sure if this will work but I created a template from my Lucidchart diagram and then created this link. I think this should allow anyone to create their own copy of the drawing. There does not seem to be a way to just export the drawing as a file unless I save it as a Visio drawing first. Let...
  13. viccooper

    Outback to Growatt system upgrade - Keep using Outback and other ?

    Individual. $8 per month billed yearly. I also use it in my day job (telecommunications systems architect) which helps me justify the cost
  14. viccooper

    Outback to Growatt system upgrade - Keep using Outback and other ?

    Yeah, could be read that way. The upgrade is in system capacity not necessarily the quality of components. The standard I am going for is "good enough, safe enough."
  15. viccooper

    Outback to Growatt system upgrade - Keep using Outback and other ?

    It's called Lucid chart. I used to use Visio a lot but this is cheaper and does everything I need. Plus the online sharing is better. If you have a login then you can add comments to my drawing. Also happy to share a copy if you want to use any of the shapes. They are nothing fancy but it does...
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