14 EnjoyBot 200AH batteries & a Victron 450/200 -- pass the smell test?

[AlaskanNoob]

Saw Will's video on these dirt cheap batteries. The 300AH ones are out of stock, so I'm looking at 12 of the 200AH ones to be charged by a Victron 450/200. I just want to make sure I could wire these up into a 48V battery bank and charge them efficiently with the SCC.

Any issues if I connect 4 of the batteries in series to get 48V/200AH and then wire that in parallel with two other sets of 4 (48V/200AH) for a final bank of 48V/600AH?

And assuming I did so, the Victron 450/200 should be able to charge them at 48V and pump 200amps into them to charge the bank in about three hours, correct?

Just wanted to make sure I'm thinking about this correctly. Thanks for any help as usual!

 

[Bud Martin]

Regarding to the charge limit per your link:
Rated Capacity : 200Ah / 2560Wh
Cycle life: 2000~5000 cycles at 80% discharge depth
Rated voltage: 12.8V
Charge voltage: 14.2 - 14.6V
Depth of Discharge (DoD): 100%
Standard charge current: 40A
Charging time: Approximately 6 hours
Max continuous charge current: 100A
Max continuous discharge current: 200A
Peak discharge current: 600A (Duration: less than 3 seconds)

So if you can insure that each string will not get >100A then you may be OK.

 

[AlaskanNoob]

Regarding to the charge limit per your link:
Rated Capacity : 200Ah / 2560Wh
Cycle life: 2000~5000 cycles at 80% discharge depth
Rated voltage: 12.8V
Charge voltage: 14.2 - 14.6V
Depth of Discharge (DoD): 100%
Standard charge current: 40A
Charging time: Approximately 6 hours
Max continuous charge current: 100A
Max continuous discharge current: 200A
Peak discharge current: 600A (Duration: less than 3 seconds)

So if you can insure that each string will not get >100A then you may be OK.

Ah, drats. I was hoping even in a 48V configuration that each battery individually could still take 100AH continuous. The Victron 450/200 only supplies 200AH for charging so I just figured that would be split up among the 12 batteries to keep me good with that limit.

 

[Bud Martin]

The 200A charging current will be spitted up to charge 3 strings of batteries, so if they are perfectly matched, you will have 200A/3 strings = 66.67A per string, it will take about 3 hours from 0 to full, so not bad.

 

[AlaskanNoob]

The 200A charging current will be spitted up to charge 3 strings of batteries, so if they are perfectly matched, you will have 200A/3 strings = 66.67Aper string, it will take about 3 hours from 0 to full, so not bad.

Awesome. Thinking maybe we'll go with four strings and just make it a 48V/800AH system. That should spread the amps out even more. Hopefully all I have to do is wire it correctly and the Victron and the BMSs will make sure no single battery gets more than 100 amps...

 

[TorC]

LFP will generally naturally share current pretty well, as long as they're pretty well matched in charge. A +50% to nominal expected as a buffer should be more than within reason, I think, especially if you usually don't have the SCC at its output limit.

I just recently read something on MOSFET based BMS switches - this thread - and it looks like MOSFET resistance is proportional to temperature, so there's a negative feedback effect. See post #33 by @RobertGreen. That means an overcurrent in one BMS would tend to direct more current to the other strings, at least to a small degree.

 

[Bud Martin]

That is a lot of power storage. What are you running?
You have to make sure that you can monitor the system and it will notify you if one or more of the BMS has dropped out or not, so if you try to draw heavy load or charge the battery but two of the BMS have gone into shutdown some how you will cut down the load, hopefully the system will notify you when that occurs.

 

[TorC]

48V, 600Ah? Not that huge. A 10kWh/day load on 6.5kW panels with a few days of terrible weather will consume that, no problem. A comfortable house with gas/wood/etc. heat for a family can consume that easily enough.

 

[AlaskanNoob]

Not sure if I'm going to end up buying this particular brand of battery or not. Has anybody dealt with this company before?

They gave me a quote via email to sell me ten of the 200AH batteries for $6300. That's $630 a battery. So I asked if they could drop the price further if I bought another four more. So they quoted me $725 per each of the additional four batteries. I pointed that out, offered to pay the original $630 a battery and buy 16 of them if they could provide free shipping. No word back yet though.

 

[AlaskanNoob]

I've seen some 48V server batteries and while they're all more expensive than the quote I seem to have gotten from Enjoybot (still waiting on them to email me back), are there any reasons why that would be a better option for a setup with a Victron 450/200 SCC and a Multiplus II?

 

[AlaskanNoob]

Enjoybot won't get back to me so I'm going to ditch them and go with 8 of these 48V Signature Solar batteries I think all wired in parallel.

48V 100AH EG4LL LCD Battery by EG4

ADD-ON CHARGER DEAL Get the 25A 48v LIFEPO4 Charger for 33% off in cart DESCRIPTION SPECS & MANUAL VIDEOS SHIPPING 48V 100AH-LL Battery by EG4Signature Solar’s premier lithium battery, GYLL, has been rebranded to EG4. This version is complete with an LCD readout on the face of the battery. You...

www.signaturesolar.com

 

[Bud Martin]

Do you know what inverter you will be using?
Should read this thread:

Schneider xw pro 6848 not powering up with eg4 lithium battery

On the bright side, I bet Signature Solar will have a pretty good handle on this issue going forward.

diysolarforum.com

 

[AlaskanNoob]

Do you know what inverter you will be using?
Should read this thread:

Schneider xw pro 6848 not powering up with eg4 lithium battery

On the bright side, I bet Signature Solar will have a pretty good handle on this issue going forward.

diysolarforum.com

Thank you, I'm going to get to reading this. The inverter I was planning on in the Victron Multiplus II

 

[Bud Martin]

It may not affect you but just in case you run into the issue with the pre-charge problem.

 

[AlaskanNoob]

It may not affect you but just in case you run into the issue with the pre-charge problem.

Wow, what a frustrating mess for a bunch of folks. It seems the ones I'm ordering with the LCD screen have a different BMS that apparently avoids those issues though I'm definitely going to talk to Victron to make sure these batteries are not problem children. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[JoeHam]

Wow, what a frustrating mess for a bunch of folks. It seems the ones I'm ordering with the LCD screen have a different BMS that apparently avoids those issues though I'm definitely going to talk to Victron to make sure these batteries are not problem children. Thanks for the heads up!

And specifically ask the question to @Signature Solar as well since they will be the ones to solve the issue, should it arise.

I think you will be happier with 48V batteries for a 48V system instead of cobbling together a bunch of 12V ones but that is just my opinion.

Fewer connections to worry about and fewer chances for all of the 12V battery BMS's to have a problem when put together.

You also gain battery communications with a multiple battery situation with the server rack batteries.

 

[AlaskanNoob]

And specifically ask the question to @Signature Solar as well since they will be the ones to solve the issue, should it arise.

I think you will be happier with 48V batteries for a 48V system instead of cobbling together a bunch of 12V ones but that is just my opinion.

Fewer connections to worry about and fewer chances for all of the 12V battery BMS's to have a problem when put together.

You also gain battery communications with a multiple battery situation with the server rack batteries.

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. I asked the question this morning via email of @Signature Solar and hopefully they'll confirm there are no issues with the LCD-battery and the Victron 450/200 SCC and Victron Multiplus II since everything is much more difficult where we're at and we don't need any additional frustrations.

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

Thank you, I'm going to get to reading this. The inverter I was planning on in the Victron Multiplus II

Believe the issue is only with the XW pro series that we have seen so far.

 

[AlaskanNoob]

Believe the issue is only with the XW pro series that we have seen so far.

One of your sales reps informed me that the LCD-batteries will not communicate with the Victron 450/200 SCC or Victron Multiplus II but I assume those components will still get SOC, battery temps, etc in order to charge them and pull power efficiently. What is lost by the batteries not communicating with the Victron equipment?

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

One of your sales reps informed me that the LCD-batteries will not communicate with the Victron 450/200 SCC or Victron Multiplus II but I assume those components will still get SOC, battery temps, etc in order to charge them and pull power efficiently. What is lost by the batteries not communicating with the Victron equipment?

Communication wise this is correct. The previous commenter linked to a page where the Victron is actually having issues working with the battery at all, and in this model that is not the case. Regarding communication - some inverters allow you to program settings based on % charge etc as opposed to using voltages when you can communicate between the two. That being said, operationally, you should have no issues with the battery and inverter.