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diy solar

My new UPS bench, Growatt SPF-6000T-DVM-MPV, Battery Evo 120AH 6KWH X2

shot428

New Member
Joined
May 25, 2022
Messages
112
Location
Colorado
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.








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Here is the link to the thread I made to put all the info I found on the old A123 batteries in one place,


There are probably a lot of these battery users here that already know this stuff but I'm just learning it and trying to help make it easier for the next guy/gal (my pronouns are Boomer and Asshole)

It explains why we are putting A/C in the room, the design pdf has graphs and test showing the effect of temp on the batteries lifespan. They set optimum or best operating temp at 25c (77f). We currently cool our home with a swamp cooler and the best it can do in this room since adding the Growatt, which is a little heater, is 84 degrees (was 105 outside yesterday) I intend to keep the room at 76 and not to mention I don't want to move the grow lights though we use em when it's colder outside (Feb,Mar & Apr).

The design book also shows best charging practices defining a 0% SOC as 3 volts, 50% SOC as 3.3 and 100% SOC as 3.6. It sets float at 3.5 which would be 80%. So best practice would stop the discharge cycle at 3v even though it is considered safe to go to 2.5v

And of course after reading all this stuff I'm curious what folks real world experiences are ?
 
Speaking of real world experiences, the book also says that max charge current should be 20a (Growatt default setting is 40).

Seems to be about internal temps staying within ranges for best/optimal which makes sense but I am curious if anyone has limited charge to just 20a and also for those that go over are you seeing anything concerning ?
 
Awesome work and equipment man, but why next to the washer? Maybe even if it is a test bench I don't think that's a good idea.
 
Awesome work and equipment man, but why next to the washer? Maybe even if it is a test bench I don't think that's a good idea.
Thanks

That's actually the dryer, washer to the right of it

If a hose was to burst (we have the all metal ones) water on the floor would run into the basement (there's a sump pump), I was standing on the basement steps while taking the pics, batteries are on wheels so no worries
 
My numbers are fairly basic 26 kwh a day with a monthly kw demand of 6.4 kw (this was why we got the 6000T as a just in case for SHTF)

Our sun hours are, for summer 6.77 and for winter 4.4

the math, Daily Usage (kWh) ÷ Sun-Hours ÷ 0.9 inefficiency factor = Minimum Solar Array Output

26 ÷ 6.77 ÷ 0.9 = 4.2672 kw

We're gonna throw a palette from Santan at it so,

4267 ÷ 240 = 17.77 panels minimum

We have a fairly large back yard

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Look dead center of the tree line, you can see a minor blip of the homestead, as we walk closer

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Now we're standing in our garden looking out, this is where the solar panel will go

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We're gonna do something very different, build a fence and mount panels to it via cables.
 
2nd battery arrived today, it is currently charging

Got the portable air conditioner few days ago, it's a serene life 12,000 btu heat pump


Put one of these on the vent hose and have zero heat coming off it


The batteries will now operate in optimum temperatures, will keep the room at 75 ~ 77 degrees

Once the battery is charged I will hook it in where the current one is to test it (alone) as I will be re-doing all the wiring. Gonna go from #4 to #1/0 so I gotta re-do everything. Waiting on the British T fuses (BS88.4) to arrive before planning things
 
2'nd battery passed its test and the A/C has GREATLY reduced the growatt fans coming on

and

the fuses arrived, they are much bigger that I thought they would be so the new design will include busbars. The fuses are the British version of a T fuse BS88, these are BS88.4 which is even better (? I think higher aic rating ?) rated at 100kA they are 120 amp, fast acting (20 ms), 800v ac, 500v dc, Eaton, Bussman GSMJ120 and were $27 each (got one for each battery)

gonna be fun
 
Finally all the parts have arrived and now we upgrade. Once again I have to thank this forum as I almost got those damn 250a brass busbars. Same logic I used to buy the cable ,,,,, Anderson plug in battery is 175 amp, so I got 1/0 awg which is also rated at 175 amps, going bigger makes the plug the weak point and changing the plug involves killing my battery warranty. Plus the most I've pulled out of the batteries thus far is 15 amps, granted I do plan on pulling more but not until next summer when I'll add another air conditioner, we plan on letting the sun cool us next year :cool:

I used Fastronix mounts to add the fuses and shunt and the fuse covers are made out of disposable butter dish lids cut to fit (they are sold at walmart with sliced cheese in em)




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Here is a pic of how we installed the portable A/C , made a wooden door wedge and mounted the hose unstreched and straight which makes it the most efficient it can be. Were gonna put the next one where the swamp cooler is as it is mounted thru the wall with a door for winter. So well simply vent the hose thru the door. These little guys are heat pumps so can do heat too

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Yes, it's an outside door but there are iron bars on the other side :cool:
 
Been awhile since posting an update. I waited until Dec to see if SanTan Solar would do their normal Christmas special, from what I've read here it's $34 and sure enough there was a panel for $34 and then there was a panel for $25. Ok it's a 190 watt so it's prolly kinda old? But it has the 1 yr santan warr, and I ordered 24 of em. Was just told they were being put on the truck and I would be getting tracking info soon

With all of the inflation price gouging going on currently it is simply awesome to see a company that doesn't !!!
 
Solar panels arrived and I am stoked. Santan did an incredible job of packing them and there was zero damage.

Saw no blemishes, no cracks, no snail trails, and open voltage test was good, sticker says 32v and we got 30.8

Now just gotta get em set up

stay tuned
 
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