Hello Everyone
First I want to thank Will and all the active members here for sharing your knowledge
I am a 65 yr old retired electronics tech. For 44 years I fixed TV's, Stereo's, VCR's, Camcorders etc. The last 16 years I spent restoring old electronics in the Arcade Industry. Component level repair of 386 and 486 motherboards like the brain in a Williams Pinball 2000. It was a blast but I'm happy to be retired.
My experience with solar up to now was a $1000 Natures Generator that became a solar powered device charger as the inverter/ups function only worked twice before it failed. Later I added a 12v 54qt fridge, so I have a solar powered refrigerator/freezer and we have a bunch of solar powered led motion lights all over the property.
I got the Growatt from Signature Solar that experience was good, Madison was awesome, it was an open box deal and was only missing the little disc. I downloaded PVKeeper 2.0 from Watts24/7 and thought nothing of it. I did spend 2 days trying to get it to work under Linux and then decided to add Solar Assistant to my shopping list.
I got the Battery Evo for a bunch of reasons and for any vendors that might read this,
#1 was FREE SHIPPING !!! (with lift gate)
#2 was price (10% discount coupons, 5% discount bulk)
#3 was they accepted Amazon pay and Paypal both of which pretty much always side with consumer in a dispute, so I felt safe
#4 was a thread here detailing a great experience with Evo via Fred ( he seems to be as famous as Ian) I wanted that experience and got it ! Fred and I exchanged several emails, he always responded within 24 hours and he was always helpful though I did gather he was more sales than tech. The trucking co driver called and set an appointment, he arrived within the window and he helped us unload it. I charged and tested it and reached a full charge and then ran 660 watts of light for many hours.
While yes, there are many bad reviews and yes, I saw the conspiracy theory that Big Battery and Battery Evo and Tech Direct are all related ? I can confirm that Evo & TD are the same as Tech Direct was who my Paypal went to. Big Batt has higher prices and no free shipping but does seem to use the same cases ? and I don't care because the bottom line was once I read about the better chemistry of the A123 Nano batteries that was what I wanted and once I made that decision there were not a lot of options to choose from. And because these old batteries are becoming limited, once I was happy with the first one I ordered a 2nd, it is in transit as I type this and they are now out of stock.
But wait there's more, when I bought the 1st one I got a screen grab of the sales page because it had specs & info I wanted. It also had the price $2295. Two days later I revisited the site and they were having a sale, the price was now $1995. I fired off an email to Fred, I got a screen grab of the new page ready now for a Paypal dispute LOL. But Fred refunded the difference within 24 hours no hassle what so ever.
We decided we wanted to be portable so we built a small work bench to hold it with room for both batteries underneath, put it in the wash room as that was the only 220v plug in the house. That black plug you see in the pic is a 50 amp Y connector, wire from it to Growatt is 8awg, the output is 10/3 w/ground romax and yes, the shunt is a 400a Junctek. You can also see the hanging LED lights in the pic, they are 1000 watt eqiv, 650 actual (326 each) that we use to start our garden. Next week this room will get an air conditioner and it will plug into L1, the O2 machine and TV will run on L2 (approx 750 watts per line) and we will be completely ready for any and all power outages.
Next I will be adding solar panels so we can charge the batteries for free and then we'll cycle things a bit to recoup some of the cost. I also made room to be able to add a 2nd MPPT down the road and yes that is concrete fire board lining the bench.
First I want to thank Will and all the active members here for sharing your knowledge
I am a 65 yr old retired electronics tech. For 44 years I fixed TV's, Stereo's, VCR's, Camcorders etc. The last 16 years I spent restoring old electronics in the Arcade Industry. Component level repair of 386 and 486 motherboards like the brain in a Williams Pinball 2000. It was a blast but I'm happy to be retired.
My experience with solar up to now was a $1000 Natures Generator that became a solar powered device charger as the inverter/ups function only worked twice before it failed. Later I added a 12v 54qt fridge, so I have a solar powered refrigerator/freezer and we have a bunch of solar powered led motion lights all over the property.
I got the Growatt from Signature Solar that experience was good, Madison was awesome, it was an open box deal and was only missing the little disc. I downloaded PVKeeper 2.0 from Watts24/7 and thought nothing of it. I did spend 2 days trying to get it to work under Linux and then decided to add Solar Assistant to my shopping list.
I got the Battery Evo for a bunch of reasons and for any vendors that might read this,
#1 was FREE SHIPPING !!! (with lift gate)
#2 was price (10% discount coupons, 5% discount bulk)
#3 was they accepted Amazon pay and Paypal both of which pretty much always side with consumer in a dispute, so I felt safe
#4 was a thread here detailing a great experience with Evo via Fred ( he seems to be as famous as Ian) I wanted that experience and got it ! Fred and I exchanged several emails, he always responded within 24 hours and he was always helpful though I did gather he was more sales than tech. The trucking co driver called and set an appointment, he arrived within the window and he helped us unload it. I charged and tested it and reached a full charge and then ran 660 watts of light for many hours.
While yes, there are many bad reviews and yes, I saw the conspiracy theory that Big Battery and Battery Evo and Tech Direct are all related ? I can confirm that Evo & TD are the same as Tech Direct was who my Paypal went to. Big Batt has higher prices and no free shipping but does seem to use the same cases ? and I don't care because the bottom line was once I read about the better chemistry of the A123 Nano batteries that was what I wanted and once I made that decision there were not a lot of options to choose from. And because these old batteries are becoming limited, once I was happy with the first one I ordered a 2nd, it is in transit as I type this and they are now out of stock.
But wait there's more, when I bought the 1st one I got a screen grab of the sales page because it had specs & info I wanted. It also had the price $2295. Two days later I revisited the site and they were having a sale, the price was now $1995. I fired off an email to Fred, I got a screen grab of the new page ready now for a Paypal dispute LOL. But Fred refunded the difference within 24 hours no hassle what so ever.
We decided we wanted to be portable so we built a small work bench to hold it with room for both batteries underneath, put it in the wash room as that was the only 220v plug in the house. That black plug you see in the pic is a 50 amp Y connector, wire from it to Growatt is 8awg, the output is 10/3 w/ground romax and yes, the shunt is a 400a Junctek. You can also see the hanging LED lights in the pic, they are 1000 watt eqiv, 650 actual (326 each) that we use to start our garden. Next week this room will get an air conditioner and it will plug into L1, the O2 machine and TV will run on L2 (approx 750 watts per line) and we will be completely ready for any and all power outages.
Next I will be adding solar panels so we can charge the batteries for free and then we'll cycle things a bit to recoup some of the cost. I also made room to be able to add a 2nd MPPT down the road and yes that is concrete fire board lining the bench.