New 48 volt rack battery specs-what do you want to see?

[almagron]

I have mobile applications with batteries, and I'd love for them to be as light as possible.

For sure the lion's share of weight is the cells. Is there any low hanging fruit among the (I assume heavy-gauge steel) chassis and case? Would a sporty one made from aluminum (and/or plastics) shave meaningful mass without adding a ton of cost? Maybe not. But a girl can dream...

 

[Supervstech]

One thing I'd like to see in these rack batteries are different capacities. Everyone's using 100Ahr cells to make the nice 5.12 kwh pack. But cells up to 320Ahr are getting reasonable in price. It'd be nice to see some larger packs coming out, with 150, 230, 280, 300+ Ahr capacities.

Odds are good, that larger cells would limit the voltage in a 4U case…
Or require an 8U case… or two linked 4U cases…

 

[WOLF-GANG]

I guess CANBUS support would be great especially the GROWATT CANBUS dialect to avoid the expensive GROWATT batteries
Some chinese alibaba dealer have already offered one for roughly 900$ plus ddp fees of cause for 5 kWh Rack battery which would be awesome especially if those would allow to upgrade the cells later or add some more cause in those racks they had shown there had been enough space so you could expand such system later on when you have gained the first years of savings.

 

[HighTechLab]

Odds are good, that larger cells would limit the voltage in a 4U case…
Or require an 8U case… or two linked 4U cases…

6U & deeper?

 

[Rednecktek]

Or require an 8U case…

Problem being? 6U and 8U weren't unheard of back in The Day and lets face it, none of us are paying for battery space by the U.

 

[Supervstech]

Problem being? 6U and 8U weren't unheard of back in The Day and lets face it, none of us are paying for battery space by the U.

Weight… manhandling that size box would be tricky… with two men.

 

[Bluedog225]

What’s a U?

 

[Supervstech]

What’s a U?

It’s about 1.75” x 19”

 

[Supervstech]

What’s a U?

Or did you mean, “what’s a yoot”?

 

[Bluedog225]

I have no clue what U stands for.

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

I have no clue what U stands for.

It literally means 'rack unit' of height. Its equal to 1.75 inches of height.

 

[HighTechLab]

U = Unit

1u = 1 rack unit (1.75")

5u = 5 rack units (8.75")

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

U = Unit

1u = 1 rack unit (1.75")

5u = 5 rack units (8.75")

Beat you to the punch :D

 

[Supervstech]

Beat you to the punch :D

Heh… I beat both to the punch… post#68

 

[Solar Guy Richard]

Heh… I beat both to the punch… post#68

I think you used mod powers to insert that reply.

 

[Supervstech]

I think you used mod powers to insert that reply.

I don’t think mod powers go that far… heck, we can’t even edit posts.

 

[Shimmy]

6U & deeper?

I am curious how other people are installing the batteries, but deeper is a deal killer for me; I would much rather have taller. Reason being they will be installed in my garage, and anything more than 24" starts to consume a lot of space. I want to be able to have 40kWh in a stack (custom rack), and mount the inverter on one side and support accessories on the other side to maximize utility of the system.

As for control/communications... integrate an ESP8266 (or ESP32) to host an internal web page and basic API. Don't make me use an app, no bluetooth, don't make me use a cloud, don't make me use a Windows computer... just a simple web browser. It isn't a whole lot of development to get it to output to MQTT or to even just let users pull a log file. Have the system work as either an access point or wifi client.