FLA settings for SCC and power meters

[Lonlywolf65]

Hello all. My name is David I live in Minnesota and decided to try solar to help with my utility bills. Lets start with the basics....I bought a 400 watt "kit" from HQST... nope not the best but fit my budget... I spent the summer gathering the extra parts needed , cables breakers and such... The last components were the batteries which are 3 114 ah everstart max and 1 everstart max 122 ah all 4 are FLA batteries. in parallel as are the 4 100 watt panels. I also added a couple meters to observe the various other info amps volts capacity. 1 of the meters is a low voltage alarm.... I am currently at work and not totally sure of all the settings required and will get to that as this as this thread grows...
fully charged voltage?
Float?
equalization?
bulk?
Boost?
And any other possibly related numbers.... I have noticed that different vendors use different terms for same item..??
Any help with these numbers will be greatly appreciated!!! Thank you in advance Dave

 

[ArkCabinMan]

Everstart maxx is an engine-starting battery, not a deep-cycle solar power storage battery, and not appropriate for solar applications.
Even the so-called deep-cycle marine batteries are engine-starting batteries, and not for solar power storage.
For solar applications, if you want to go with FLA, 6V deep-cycle golf cart batteries are an excellent choice.

 

[Lonlywolf65]

These are deep cycle marine batteries. they also make AGM and "starter batteries" Well I have 4 of them... And no not the normal solar storage battery like the spendy life po4..
pretty sure this is them https://www.walmart.com/ip/EverStar...ery-Group-Size-29DC-12-Volt-845-MCA/131118029

 

[ArkCabinMan]

These are deep cycle marine batteries. they also make AGM and "starter batteries" Well I have 4 of them...

Deep-cycle marine batteries will give you more watt-hours of energy than automotive starting batteries, but not nearly as much watt-hour capacity as true deep-cycle.
You could get by with your marine deep cycle batteries, and live with the limitations until you have the opportunity to upgrade to true deep-cycle.

 

[Vigo]

Here's a great link to show the differences. Can just scroll through and read the picture captions if it's too wordy for your (current..) interest level:

What is a Deep Cycle Battery? - Marine How To

Light Cycle vs. Deeper Cycle NOTE: This article deals with FLOODED marine batteries, not AGM or GEL batteries. The Problem: The problem, as I see it, is one of dishonest marketing where multiple battery types wear the same clothes (sticker) and will perform differently when

marinehowto.com

I have briefly 'powered' my entire small house off of 4 group 27, then 4 group 29 marine batteries before migrating them to other uses. BUT! I had 5kw of solar panels hooked up since day 1, and 10kw since day 15 or so. So the batteries only had to cover very narrow gaps between what 10kw of panels would make under clouds, etc, and what my actual consumption was.

With 400w of solar you would have to have VERY little actual power consumption to actually avoid deeply discharging the batteries, and being unable to recharge them with 'excess' solar power the next day, on a recurring basis.

So i see the 400w of solar as a bigger issue than the batteries, right now. Unless you have 'time of use' pricing and plan to just 'shift' some of your consumption from daytime to nighttime and then recharge the batteries with grid power in the evening, the only type of system i'd be comfortable powering with those panels and batteries would be a ~100w relatively fixed load. It would make it through the night without absolutely murdering the batteries, and the 400w of solar, even when making less than 400w, should be able to power the 100w load AND recharge the previous night's usage and get the batteries back up to full pretty much every day. So you could perhaps shift some of your small continuous loads off-grid and never pay the utility for them again. But i wouldn't leave such a system hooked up to anything that might all of a sudden be pulling 600 or 1000+w from it. I'd want the safety of hooking it to more or less 'fixed' loads.

Sounds dire but it might even be optimistic, because if you scale that up to the 10000w of panels I have, it would suggest I could carry a 2500w load throughout the day AND recharge from drawing 2500w continuously overnight, and my experience right now is that sounds iffy. With all of the inefficiencies and varying solar conditions the practical truth is probably less than that. But i do live very comfortably 100% off grid regardless of the math, so that's something. ?

 

[ArkCabinMan]

And no not the normal solar storage battery like the spendy life po4

I heartily recommend FLA batts over lithium, and I would not consider those lithium batteries as "normal."
In the context of survivability in an off-grid system, I'll take low-tech FLA instead of the vulnerable high tech of lithium, any day.

 

[Lonlywolf65]

at the moment I am only powering a few 12v lights and fans to circulate air... I have a1100watt inverter but no real plans tom use it unless I have a power outage and run the fridge on a on/off cycle just to keep it cold..... Ya not the best batteries but best I could afford with the most ah... so far as things are programmed I only use about 12% of my capacity...

 

[Vigo]

Sounds like your expectations are properly calibrated, then. You could totally use that system to keep food from spoiling during a fairly long power outage, as long as you had decent sun during the days.

Under some conditions the batteries would be considered 'expendable' because what you're powering is a lot more important than the batteries you're abusing. So the system is absolutely not 'limited' to 100w. That is just what's possibly sustainable in a 'set it and forget it' kind of way. If needed the system could do much more, for shorter time periods, with human supervision. So it's potentially very useful.

 

[Hogheavenfarm]

I had the same system, with two 200 ah batteries, best I could do was 100w overnight. No way would that start the fridge, startup surge is just too high. I was able to run a chest freezer though (not overnight). Even my Honda 2200w genny wouldnt start the fridge, but will run both freezers. I have since added some more panels but have not thoroughly tested things since then.

 

[Lonlywolf65]

When I started this project I just wanted to move some air from hot rooms to less heated areas with pc fans. I also picked up a couple usb ceiling fans... I am also running a few usb hubs to replace wall warts for phones hearing aids tablets ect..... I never thought for a second I could power my home, I just wanted to offset some of the parasite power from my regular ac circuit. And no this set is not grid tied in any way... And as for sun I ran my 4 panels in parallel due to shading, which will hopefully get ma bit better as the leaves fall.
Ok now that we know I didnt get the better option for batteries, how do I set my MPPT CC ...lol
Thank for the help and advice ....I was on a limited budget so I went the best route I could figure out at the time...

 

[Vigo]

The default settings for FLA are probably acceptable, unless the battery area temp varies wildly in which case you might need to worry about temp compensation. Considering the batteries aren’t a ‘matched set’ and there’s not that many of them i would disable equalization and deal with the possible issues of imbalance between batteries or between cells in a battery manually, by charging each batt individually. With unmatched batteries some drifting apart of state of charge and health is inevitable but if you live with the system full time you’ll probably just need to give it a little attention every few weeks or every month or so to make sure the pack balance is ‘close enough’.

For the record i have NO issue with small systems, mismatched components etc, as long as your expectations are in the same ballpark as reality. I have done plenty of things most here would be embarassed to admit to, and ive only been at this 5 months! A lot of the stuff people wouldnt recommend or will turn their nose up at, is the stuff i put myself through intentionally to get my head around all the whys. It’s the people who go in thinking they are going to get the moon and sky from a 12v system of starter batteries and then go bitching about how solar is a ‘scam’ to cover their ignorance when they fail, that people worry about when anyone says something about a car/boat battery. ? I for one am all for running WHATEVER you can get your hands on, and learning to make up in expertise and finesse some of what the equipment lacks. There’s not many of us on our ‘last’ solar systems, so everything until then is a stepping stone.