Hi all from NZ,
New to the forum, but not new to Will's vids or electrical/electronics/mechanical :-D
I have a few applications:
1. Boat (40ft/12.5m, 8.3L cummins, long term goal to go EV-hybrid with some merc OM648 car engines) start/house banks - AGMs dead, old gel barely hanging on, 2 220W panels and an epever that keep my gear fed while "working from home" on the boat, eg while watching the AC75 America's Cup boats tear around a few months back from mere metres away :-D
2. Bach/holiday cabin off-grid setup enough to power a full time low-power server that can do a few things like remote backups of a ZFS file system in case my local redundant set burns or is stolen and sensors and cameras on the site to keep an eye on what's going on. Probably a panel or two on a long pole as the site is steep and south facing and the location of the gear will be at the bottom, so panel needs to to above the tree line on a pole to be safe and efficient in winter especially.
3. The start of a house bank in our rental at home with a few panels as an ultimate UPS for my computer gear, fibre router, wifi, etc so I'm not subject to occasional outages and increasing grid power rates here. Also figure with under 1kw of panels I could power a 200+ Watt heater direct from the panels in my office during the day during winter and it would pay itself off in 4 years if I ONLY used it in winter, but I could migrate the panels for holiday use during summer so it'd be better than that. Batteries would mean a buffer that could spread that heat throughout the day more and into the dark, obviously.
4. One of my cars has an electronic odometer/trip counter and the trip counter is NOT flash or EEPROM backed, so battery disconnect is not an option. On my other cars I use 4s1p and 4s2p Headway 38120HP packs with little HeltecBMS capacitor balance boards and URUAV cell voltage OLED display boards, but with these the plan is to isolate when not in use and gain additional security. But for the one with the battery backed trip meter, I want more than 8AH or 16AH of capacity so I can leave it connected and not worry about it draining and/or losing the km count. I'm thinking a 4-big-cell pack of prismatics would easily deliver the starting current required and would last for AGES between drives without going flat. In another car with the 4s2p 16AH pack I can not drive it for a full month and it still starts fine every time, for eg.
So why am I here? I want some seller trustworthiness advice and maybe some NZ shipping advice on picking up high capacity prismatic EVE/Lishen/CATL cells in the 200-350AH range. Ideally I'd like to get just 4 in to try and test and play with first, however the shipping specified by the one seller I've been dealing with for 230AH cells is around 400USD/600NZD for 4 cells OR for 64 cells delivered, one unit of sea shipping, about 1-2 weeks from China apparently. Not sure on the local costs when they arrive, but at least 60 customs fee if over 1000nzd inc shipping and 15% GST, which makes getting 4 cells in nearly 1000 nzd but getting 64 cells in only 7500 including tax.
So, I looked through all the sections and it wasn't clear to me where the best spot to ask for supplier recommendations / feedback was, hence this intro thread.
Any links to existing threads so I don't spam the forum with duplicate threads would be appreciated. I have a few more tabs open to read through once I post this.
Cheers,
Fred.
New to the forum, but not new to Will's vids or electrical/electronics/mechanical :-D
I have a few applications:
1. Boat (40ft/12.5m, 8.3L cummins, long term goal to go EV-hybrid with some merc OM648 car engines) start/house banks - AGMs dead, old gel barely hanging on, 2 220W panels and an epever that keep my gear fed while "working from home" on the boat, eg while watching the AC75 America's Cup boats tear around a few months back from mere metres away :-D
2. Bach/holiday cabin off-grid setup enough to power a full time low-power server that can do a few things like remote backups of a ZFS file system in case my local redundant set burns or is stolen and sensors and cameras on the site to keep an eye on what's going on. Probably a panel or two on a long pole as the site is steep and south facing and the location of the gear will be at the bottom, so panel needs to to above the tree line on a pole to be safe and efficient in winter especially.
3. The start of a house bank in our rental at home with a few panels as an ultimate UPS for my computer gear, fibre router, wifi, etc so I'm not subject to occasional outages and increasing grid power rates here. Also figure with under 1kw of panels I could power a 200+ Watt heater direct from the panels in my office during the day during winter and it would pay itself off in 4 years if I ONLY used it in winter, but I could migrate the panels for holiday use during summer so it'd be better than that. Batteries would mean a buffer that could spread that heat throughout the day more and into the dark, obviously.
4. One of my cars has an electronic odometer/trip counter and the trip counter is NOT flash or EEPROM backed, so battery disconnect is not an option. On my other cars I use 4s1p and 4s2p Headway 38120HP packs with little HeltecBMS capacitor balance boards and URUAV cell voltage OLED display boards, but with these the plan is to isolate when not in use and gain additional security. But for the one with the battery backed trip meter, I want more than 8AH or 16AH of capacity so I can leave it connected and not worry about it draining and/or losing the km count. I'm thinking a 4-big-cell pack of prismatics would easily deliver the starting current required and would last for AGES between drives without going flat. In another car with the 4s2p 16AH pack I can not drive it for a full month and it still starts fine every time, for eg.
So why am I here? I want some seller trustworthiness advice and maybe some NZ shipping advice on picking up high capacity prismatic EVE/Lishen/CATL cells in the 200-350AH range. Ideally I'd like to get just 4 in to try and test and play with first, however the shipping specified by the one seller I've been dealing with for 230AH cells is around 400USD/600NZD for 4 cells OR for 64 cells delivered, one unit of sea shipping, about 1-2 weeks from China apparently. Not sure on the local costs when they arrive, but at least 60 customs fee if over 1000nzd inc shipping and 15% GST, which makes getting 4 cells in nearly 1000 nzd but getting 64 cells in only 7500 including tax.
So, I looked through all the sections and it wasn't clear to me where the best spot to ask for supplier recommendations / feedback was, hence this intro thread.
Any links to existing threads so I don't spam the forum with duplicate threads would be appreciated. I have a few more tabs open to read through once I post this.
Cheers,
Fred.
