Fish in a Birdcage project needs help and advice

[fishinabirdcage]

Hello! My name is Dustan Townsend. I'm the cellist/singer songwriter of the Fish in a Birdcage project. (bio - www.fishinabirdcage.com/epk)

We have a very ambitious project on the go. Over the last 10 months through live streaming we've been building a community around our music and this project. What has come of that is our community coming together to help us put together a full on streaming rig attached to a studio on wheels. (photo attached of the rig)

We are currently recording our fourth album out in Kelowna BC, and then we are going on tour across North America to meet up with 38 twitch artists (so far) to collaborate on our channels.

The reason why I joined this forum is because I made a mistake. I bought four 6v Deep cycle lead acid batteries at the beginning of this journey and what i've discovered is as a power source its not going to be able to cut it for the power that we need because of the 50% cut off of lead acid batteries.

Through research I've found i need at least 400Ah to make this on the road project work.

I was wondering if you have any tips on where I can find the batteries for our 12v system. Any help in this direction is much appreciated by myself and the bread pirates.

Thank you for your time, advice and expertise.

-Dustan Townsend

 

[FilterGuy]

Could you tell us more about your system?
Loads?
Chargers?
Do you have an inverter? What size

Also, how willing are you to do things like building battery out of cells?

There are a lot of ways to proceed, but we need more info on the system to make any recommendations.

 

[fishinabirdcage]

I currently have a 12V victron system with 600W total solar power. Id check the model number of the victron inverter that i have but unfortunately i left my phone in a friends car the other day so im waiting for an opportunity to get that back from him.

For loads.. i donno. i think we are pulling about 1800 watts when we have our entire system running. for a charger I've got a 2200W Honda generator which seems to work really well for the few times we have used it. We are currently connected to shore power at my sound engineers sisters place until we finish the fourth album. from there we will be mostly relying on the generator, solar panels and random plug points to make our system work.

Cody and I are fairly into the DIY side of things. its crazy that we have basically become novice RV mechanics through this adventure through sheer necessity. Ive been learning a lot through Wills channel and feel like I could probably build a battery myself at this stage as long as i had the cells and parts to make it happen. I've been struggling although on what to buy to make all of this work.

thank you for your time!

 

[FilterGuy]

Ok.... It looks like most of the system is reasonably sized to the needs, but if you could give a system diagram it would be helpful.


The easy way to proceed is with pre-built batteries. The lower cost way to proceed is to build a DIY battery.

What timeframe does this need to be completed? (Ordering cells from China is lower cost but can take several months)

 

[fishinabirdcage]

unfortunately our tour starts in about the middle of december.. i mean we do have these 6v batteries that with care might be able to do us for a couple months. the problem is we are not sure when the shipment would arrive, as well as where we we will end up.

so with that in mind, as much as i would like to go cheaper and build our own batteries we think the shipping time will be a deciding factor. do you have any suggestions on a 12v prebuilt battery/ batteries youd recommend?

 

[FilterGuy]

I kinda thought the timing might be a problem.

Battleborn is expensive but a solid product you should be able to get quickly. I am on the road and will look for other options when I get to a good spot

 

[FilterGuy]

SOK is on amazon. They are still a bit expensive but are probably the best quality-Price combination that can be had in a short time frame.
Most of the other brands on amazon are going to be a crap-shoot when it comes to quality.

 

[FilterGuy]

BTW: We need to know the inverter size. Is it a Victron MultiPlus 3K?

The reason I ask is that we need to make sure to pick a battery that will be able to provide adequate amperage.

If you have a 3KW inverter that runs at 95% efficiency, it can draw up to (3000/.95) / 1V = 263A. A lot of the batteries will only provide 100A, so you would need to have 3 in parallel.

 

[FilterGuy]

For loads.. i donno. i think we are pulling about 1800 watts when we have our entire system running.

If that is truly the max load, we could use that to calculate a lower current requirment on the battery. For safety, let's assume 2000W.

(2000W/.95)/12V=175A. With that you could use two batteries with 100A capability.... but if you ever max out the inverter, the BMS in the batteries would probably cut out.

 

[FilterGuy]

I just noticed Renogy batteries on Amazon. I am not a big fan of Renogy, but they are probably a safer bet than the no-name brands.

 

[FilterGuy]

If that is truly the max load, we could use that to calculate a lower current requirment on the battery. For safety, let's assume 2000W.

(2000W/.95)/12V=175A. With that you could use two batteries with 100A capability.... but if you ever max out the inverter, the BMS in the batteries would probably cut out.

BTW: 200A continuous will give you ~2200W continuous out of the inverter.