diy solar

diy solar

Cinergi's 28 kWh / 4 kW Solar / 10 kW inverter RV build

nebster said:
I'm amazed you're going from New Aire to anything (except maybe a SpaceCraft). 2x5kVA Quattro is pretty heavy. What kind of CCC do you have in your new rig?

I'm not at all amazed that you're not over the moon with Chargery. It's not the kind of product that exactly exudes quality or inspires confidence. You can totally set up a 48V Victron-only system with no BMS, if you want, as long as you make 12V on the AC side and tune the charging parameters properly. You could do that and add a (better) BMS in any time down the road, if you can't find one you're happy with to start. I've yet to find a quality 16s BMS that isn't too expensive for the application, though.
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Going to a New Horizons. I am very disappointed with Newmar quality. The New Horizons is amazing. It's just 1 step below SpaceCraft in my opinion.

I've given New Horizons the specs on the weight of my batteries, equipment, and solar panels, so they'll account for that in the build and I'll still have the normal amount of CCC (I won't be eating into CCC with all this equipment).
 
ghostwriter66 said:
I think the foam will be a bad idea because it will eventually collapse within itself and allow for movement of the batteries - unless of course you just keep tightening all the time .... also i see that you left no spacing between the batteries in order to dissipate heat -- heat is the #1 killer of these batteries ... and you got allot of heat potential there ... all of these batteries only has 20% of the area open to dissipate -- EXCELLENT schematics though -- when you finally get it all updated drop me a note and let me know -- would like to see it
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I liked the foam except that it didn't provide the same compression on the outer two cells as the other cells (I would have to have rigid foam between each and every cell).

As for heat, I won't be generating anything of significance. Even with one battery (and I'll have 2), my typical discharge/charge rates will be well under 0.5C

Thanks on the +1 for the schematics! That's pretty much what I built (I just didn't include detail on the batteries; I'll draw a second schematic for just the batteries).
 
All this talk about the foam and cardboard.. LOL you guys are watching me like a hawk ... I better not show something I don't want you to see cuz you WILL find it haha!

So today I finished the bulk series charging and I've rearranged the pack into parallel and I'm top balancing to 3.65 ... I'm sure this will take a while even though I already did the bulk of the charge. I was charging at 6.6 kW (as measured by the Victron SmartShunt)! Sweet.

As for the Chargery comments... I think what I'll do is a live video review (once the battery is back together) and post the link here ... along with the main points in written form. Some of the stuff you need to actually see.
 
cinergi said:
Going to a New Horizons. I am very disappointed with Newmar quality. The New Horizons is amazing. It's just 1 step below SpaceCraft in my opinion.
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Dang, that sucks. We had a Dutch Star for a few years, and it was great. I guess there's a lot of randomness in the builds over time. We would consider something the size of a New Aire when it's just the two of us one day, but I'll record your vote in the "no" column now. :D

I don't think I've been in a New Horizons, but I'm interested to see how it works out for you.
 
cinergi said:
All this talk about the foam and cardboard.. LOL you guys are watching me like a hawk ... I better not show something I don't want you to see cuz you WILL find it haha!

So today I finished the bulk series charging and I've rearranged the pack into parallel and I'm top balancing to 3.65 ... I'm sure this will take a while even though I already did the bulk of the charge. I was charging at 6.6 kW (as measured by the Victron SmartShunt)! Sweet.

As for the Chargery comments... I think what I'll do is a live video review (once the battery is back together) and post the link here ... along with the main points in written form. Some of the stuff you need to actually see.
Click to expand...

WHEN YOU DO THE VIDEO PLEASE LET ME KNOW - SEND ME A PM OR SOMETHING ...THX
 
Cells charged and top balanced as of this morning. I've done some stress testing (220 amps - 11kW) and am now doing a full capacity test. I will have results this evening.
Also, the Chargery disappointed me once again - this time causing two blown Class T 300 amp fuses. :mad: So I took a video and will post that soon. I'm on the hunt for a new BMS, contactor, and precharge system.
 
I just keep finding reasons to hate the Chargery. This time, the BMS got its eyes crossed when the Victrons connected to shore power and the BMS permanently thought 1000 amps was being drawn so it cut off the DCC and I couldnt' charge the battery. I had to power off and power back on the BMS to get it working again.

It does beg the question -- how did that happen. Right now, I do NOT share the 48vdc ground with the rest of the ground. I want my 48vdc system to be isolated (as I'll have 120/240 as well as 12v sharing a ground ... where the 12v is coming from an isolated DC-DC converter ... I didn't want to ground the 48v system as well. But maybe I need to. I'm not sure if that works with an isolated converter.

Anyway, I only got 252Ah out of the bank. One of the cells hit 2.5 well before the others did. I may have a weak cell... This complicates things and will take time to diagnose and get corrected. Glad I bought 4 extra cells - if that's really what the problem is.
 
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 recent posts about the DCC and was reconsidering. Now I'm back to no idea which way to go. :(
 
hankcurt said:
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 recent posts about the DCC and was reconsidering. Now I'm back to no idea which way to go. :(
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Thanks! I've reached out to REC to see how much their setup will be. Any 16s BMS will do regardless of amperage because I'll just separately drive a DC contactor.... so I don't have to worry about the amperage specs of the BMS in question. But REC would be nice because it can talk to the Victron and the Victron can make decisions based on cell-level information. We'll see ...
I'm still researching what contactor to use ... I thought maybe a gigavac mil-spec but it's driving amperage is 3.6 amps or maybe 3.9 -- above the 3.0 that the Chargery supports. I really don't want a relay to drive a relay. The mil-spec would have been nice because it can handle inrush current and so I might not need a precharge board/circuit. But, my research is still in its infancy.
 
cinergi said:
I just keep finding reasons to hate the Chargery. This time, the BMS got its eyes crossed when the Victrons connected to shore power and the BMS permanently thought 1000 amps was being drawn so it cut off the DCC and I couldnt' charge the battery. I had to power off and power back on the BMS to get it working again.

It does beg the question -- how did that happen.
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It sure does. You could have some kind of wiring issue, I guess. I'm not sure why bringing shore power online would cause much current at all. Even if charging is going to occur, it ramps current pretty slowly.

cinergi said:
Right now, I do NOT share the 48vdc ground with the rest of the ground. I want my 48vdc system to be isolated (as I'll have 120/240 as well as 12v sharing a ground ... where the 12v is coming from an isolated DC-DC converter ... I didn't want to ground the 48v system as well. But maybe I need to. I'm not sure if that works with an isolated converter.
Click to expand...

I like floating a dedicated 48V house battery, but there are tradeoffs with either choice. If you're going to hang a lot of devices off the battery, I think the fault-handling tradeoffs swing in favoring of grounding it to the frame. If you use non-isolated converters, you don't have a choice.

cinergi said:
Anyway, I only got 252Ah out of the bank. One of the cells hit 2.5 well before the others did. I may have a weak cell... This complicates things and will take time to diagnose and get corrected. Glad I bought 4 extra cells - if that's really what the problem is.
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Hmm, not great, but it's good you have some alternates to test with. Is Chargery in the loop during that test? Maybe put your meter on that balance lead and make sure the BMS is not misbehaving.
 
cinergi said:
I thought maybe a gigavac mil-spec but it's driving amperage is 3.6 amps or maybe 3.9 -- above the 3.0 that the Chargery supports. I really don't want a relay to drive a relay. The mil-spec would have been nice because it can handle inrush current and so I might not need a precharge board/circuit. But, my research is still in its infancy.
Click to expand...

Those specs are coil inrush for 75ms. Surely the BMS drive line rating is for continuous? I would guess you'd be okay, but if you really want to use Chargery you could ask them to clarify the capability for momentary current.
 
thanks @nebster!

RE: BMS losing its mind ... i was wondering if it was noise introduced on the system when the Victron relays closed. *shrug*

Nothing will be connected to the 48v battery except the Inverters and the DC-DC converter -- all contained in the basement of the RV. That's why I'm feeling OK floating it. Ideally I'd have a double-pole breaker in the batteries but I don't know of any that handle 250 amps ... and if they did, they're probably 300 bux lol

I haven't talked to Chargery about this specific test but I've been PM'ing Chargery and @'ing them and no replies ... I should probably try to email Jason.

Readings the Chargery specs - it's actually 2.5 amps "total current" (for both charge & discharge relays if you configure separate port).. no idea if it can handle the inrush.. and now I'm seeing that a common port config would need an isolated optocoupler to take the two relay signals to combine them into one and drive the relay ... but that looks to get complex for 24 or 48v systems (due to the optocoupler power needs etc)... ugh.
 
Charged up. Cell 9 is highest at 3.611 .. lowest is 3.516. Not bad considering what happened at the bottom end. I'll see if the Chargery can get everything balanced out overnight. Meanwhile I'm charging a spare cell to full in case I need to replace cell 9. Tomorrow I'll clean up all the locations that had higher resistance and try a capacity test again. The Chargery seems to think I replaced the entire 14.3kW ... And I'm now wondering if perhaps I somehow started with the Victron at 100% when it shouldn't have been due to a DC power outage that maybe I'm not remembering. Regardless, cell 9 dropped out too quickly but maybe I got more than 252 Ah... time will tell.
 
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