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New Winter Battery Shed Build-Canada

Skythings said:
In Canada the fire code does not allow you to store batteries inside your house. You are allowed to store up to 20Kwh of batteries inside your garage but my garage is not heated and I wanted more than 20Kwh of battery storage. With an isolated shed I can keep up to 80Kwh of battery storage. That is why I decided to purchase the shed as I intend to grow my battery storage.
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That's very odd. Do they know how lifepo4 works?
 
Skythings said:
I suspect the current Canadian code was written before lifepo4 was mainstream. Canada typically follows the USA codes but 5-10 years behind. I was told the code was being relaxed in the future.
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Correct - the NEC and CEC both have similar requirements, and both sections concerning battery-storage systems were originally written prior to LFP being commonly available. I was told the CEC next edition will relax some of the requirements for LFP storage, but is unlikely to change the location restrictions in a home. {my own ESS is in a separate steel building, not close to my home}

There was a discussion about this a while back - here

You may find for your solar shed that a mini-split heat pump would fit well with your set up, rather than just the resistance heater or direct vent propane.
I have a 9k BTU unit for the solar equipment room - good to minus 30C and will allow you to control temps during hot summer days as well. The Senville wall mount was very easy to install. In very cold weather you will still need the resistance heater, but in all other milder weather the HP is by far the more energy efficient way to go.
 
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OffGridForGood said:
You may find for your solar shed that a mini-split heat pump would fit well with your set up, rather than just the resistance heater or direct vent propane.
I have a 9k BTU unit for the solar equipment room - good to minus 30C and will allow you to control temps during hot summer days as well. The Senville wall mount was very easy to install. In very cold weather you will still need the resistance heater, but in all other milder weather the HP is by far the more energy efficient way to go.
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I actually have a 12K Senville mini-split in my house and I have considered this option for the shed. I'm very familiar with them. My concern is the power consumption. My 12K system right this very second is currently on in my house and is drawing about 1200W in the heat mode using My Solark's usage graphs. A 9K would be less and yes would cool in the summer. Without the inverter this past summer the inside temps weren't too bad with both windows open. An air exchange fan hooked up to the thermostat may also work and I believe use less power than a mini-split. I will monitor it this summer and make a call at that time. Thank you for the idea's.
 
Skythings said:
I actually have a 12K Senville mini-split in my house and I have considered this option for the shed. I'm very familiar with them. My concern is the power consumption. My 12K system right this very second is currently on in my house and is drawing about 1200W in the heat mode using My Solark's usage graphs. A 9K would be less and yes would cool in the summer. Without the inverter this past summer the inside temps weren't too bad with both windows open. An air exchange fan hooked up to the thermostat may also work and I believe use less power than a mini-split. I will monitor it this summer and make a call at that time. Thank you for the idea's.
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Yeah, I love them, I put the whole house on a ducted 24k last summer - for cooling really - and this is our first winter test with it. Does an amazing job of heating in the shoulder seasons. Today it was -30C (-22F) in the morning but bright cloudless day - and we collected 46.2kWh which is a good day in January on 13kW of panels. - most of my panels don't get out of the shade of my East property line trees unit 10:30AM or so.
As a test, since my Official Solar Tester was out for the day, I let the wood furnace burn down to see what the Heat Pump would do - as the fire burned lower the heat pump picked up the slack and maintained the house set point, by 5:30pm it was pulling a good amount of power, but the great solar day could spare it. I built the fire back up at 5:45 and watched the amperage drop on the Heat Pump - very cool to watch. Currently -27C and forecast is -33C tomorrow AM.
We are well on track so far this year to reduce fire wood by 50% due to the heat pump. Added bonus is it just takes over and maintains the set point if we are out all day. Which is very nice.
 
OffGridForGood said:
Yeah, I love them, I put the whole house on a ducted 24k last summer - for cooling really - and this is our first winter test with it. Does an amazing job of heating in the shoulder seasons. Today it was -30C (-22F) in the morning but bright cloudless day - and we collected 46.2kWh which is a good day in January on 13kW of panels. - most of my panels don't get out of the shade of my East property line trees unit 10:30AM or so.
As a test, since my Official Solar Tester was out for the day, I let the wood furnace burn down to see what the Heat Pump would do - as the fire burned lower the heat pump picked up the slack and maintained the house set point, by 5:30pm it was pulling a good amount of power, but the great solar day could spare it. I built the fire back up at 5:45 and watched the amperage drop on the Heat Pump - very cool to watch. Currently -27C and forecast is -33C tomorrow AM.
We are well on track so far this year to reduce fire wood by 50% due to the heat pump. Added bonus is it just takes over and maintains the set point if we are out all day. Which is very nice.
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Having multiple sources to heat your home is wise. I do have a wood burning stove which I admit I don't use very often, however I do have a large emergency pile of firewood stockpiled if ever needed during an emergency outage. That's just me being lazy not using the wood stove more. As you know keeping a fire going consistently is a ton of work and time.

I have a regular gas furnace as my primary heat source and like yourself I added the mini-split two years back for the air conditioning aspect. I have been using the heat mode mostly in the as you put it, the shoulder seasons. I don't use the heat mode when the outside temps drop below -20C as I feel it consumes more electricity than I receive in gains. So far this winter my household daily usage with the mini-split on is typically 27-32 kWh. When I turn it off, my usage drops to 17-20 Kwh unless it's a laundry day with an electric hot water tank and dryer where use my daily usage spikes to 44-46 kWh.

My system was only hooked up this past October for monitoring so I don't have a large amount of monitoring data for good averages yet. The other thing is my first phase of ten 540W solar panels are on a flat roof and so far this first winter has been better than expected with only some occasional snow cover and of course the low sun angles. From Oct 20th 2024, solar production has only provided 12.5% of my total household loads from those ten panels. My spring and summer and fall production will improve significantly with these panels and with the addition of fourteen new 500W panels on my new ground mount currently under construction and due to come online this spring. Next winter should be a different story.

I'm a numbers guy and having the MySolark data at a glance has been a great educational experience which provides me hard data to understand my power usage and to plan and make future decisions.
 
Skythings said:
Having multiple sources to heat your home is wise. I do have a wood burning stove which I admit I don't use very often, however I do have a large emergency pile of firewood stockpiled if ever needed during an emergency outage. That's just me being lazy not using the wood stove more. As you know keeping a fire going consistently is a ton of work and time.

I have a regular gas furnace as my primary heat source and like yourself I added the mini-split two years back for the air conditioning aspect.
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We have a wood burning ducted furnace, a back up pellet burning furnace, and now the heat pump. I use the heat pump fans for moving air for all three systems, and we can put the HP into "Fan" mode, where it can't try to heat (while it is cold out) but being the first year, and curious-type, I have to push the boundries and test things, because I 'just have to know'. lol.
No natural gas lines in my rural out-in-the-sticks part of the province. We used to have propane and a bulk tank here, but it was no less expensive than electricity, and a lot less convenient to deal with delivery/tank rental/costs/ clearing a path all winter for the delivery truck to be able to access the tank. I got rid of the propane years ago and have never regretted it. If we had access to Nat.Gas we would use it.
With the new 'ultra-low-overnight-rate" hydro at 2.9cents/kWh, plus the battery-inverter set up to time-shift loads, the electric is very cheap here.
 
How far does a shed for the inverter & batteries need to be from the main house? If it is built from concrete.

What is the main source of temperature concern when it comes to heating such a shed? Battery or inverter operation temperature? Efficiency? Building code? How cold would it be acceptable to let it get?
 
ASword said:
How far does a shed for the inverter & batteries need to be from the main house? If it is built from concrete.

What is the main source of temperature concern when it comes to heating such a shed? Battery or inverter operation temperature? Efficiency? Building code? How cold would it be acceptable to let it get?
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I am not aware of any code rules for the distance from the house. All I was able to find was it must be a separate building if you are installing a over a specific number Kwh of batteries. There may be specific rules, but I am just not aware of what they may be. Basically common sense will dictate if you have a battery fire you want the shed to be able to burn and not affect your home. Battery fires can get pretty intense and typical fire fighting methods may not be effective depending on the type of batteries. In my case I positioned my shed 75ft away from the house, however it is only 6 ft away from a detached garage. The reason I used a shed is my garage is not heated and my shed is very well insulated and heated and code says I can have more batteries in a separate shed.

I see you are in Vancouver and you are fortunate not to experience too many very cold winter periods compared to us on the prairies. Depends on the batteries but my SOK batteries will discharge from -20C but will only charge if the temperature is above 0C. We typically in Calgary get a couple 10 day stretches of -25C to -35C over the winter. I keep my shed heated to 5 degrees above those minimums. In my setup of a small shed the inverter actually creates a fair amount of heat which can be an issue in the summer when it gets hot as the batteries have upper limits of 60C to discharge and 45C to charge. I have two windows which open in my shed but I may have to install an exhaust fan. This summer is my first with this system so time will tell and I will see how hot it gets.

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Yes, I’m in the Vancouver metro area, but it does get down to -15oC for a few days some years. I’m just wondering if the battery heaters many products have would suffice. Sounds like a firm “maybe”. I guess a just-in-case baseboard heater would be a worthy investment.

I was hoping a 6-8’ gap to the house would suffice, with the equipment on the opposite side of a concrete wall. Guess I’ll have to wait for that bulk buy on the official regs to find out!
 
ASword said:
Yes, I’m in the Vancouver metro area, but it does get down to -15oC for a few days some years. I’m just wondering if the battery heaters many products have would suffice. Sounds like a firm “maybe”. I guess a just-in-case baseboard heater would be a worthy investment.

I was hoping a 6-8’ gap to the house would suffice, with the equipment on the opposite side of a concrete wall. Guess I’ll have to wait for that bulk buy on the official regs to find out!
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California appears to require 10 ft from a dwelling and then you can have up to 600kWh:

Screenshot_20250316_182239_Chrome.jpg

5.12 Energy Storage Systems in R-3 Occupancies | SF Fire Website

sf-fire.org sf-fire.org

Canada may vary.
 
Skythings said:
Reading lots of discussions on winter battery operations so I thought I would post what I have done for my grid tied system thus far. This is my first winter with solar and so far things have worked well in terms of keeping the batteries warm.

I purchased an already commercial built demo shed which was insulated with 4 inch rigid foam sandwiched between magnesium oxide panels on all four walls, and six inches of rigid foam for the roof and floor. The builder indicated the shed has an R20 insulation value with the exception of the door and the window. I sealed all the inside joints with caulking and added 3/4 inch plywood interior walls and wood plank flooring. I purchased a good insulated door and window and wrapped the entire exterior, added hardy board siding, a metal roof and sealed the door and window installations very well. Both the door and window do open for summer ventilation.

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My long term plans were to add a direct vent propane heater to the shed to keep five SOK batteries within charging temps during the winter. I didn't have enough time this year to install a heater so I simply went with an oil filled 1500W two setting electric heater controlled with an external thermostat. I expected this to be an expensive way to heat the shed using electricity but I am still grid tied and chalked it up to the cost of doing business for the first year.

So far this year when the temperatures dipped down in the -25C range overnight the heater came on once every 4 hours for 15 minutes at a time on the high setting. I have a small lamp which also turns on so I can see the light on inside the shed from my house so I know when the heater is running visually. In the daytime at -10C the heater comes on about every 6-7 hours for 15 minutes at a time. I set the thermostat to turn on the electricity to the heater when the sheds inside temperature reached 43F and turn off at 50F. A seven degree spread. I use the Fahrenheit settings as the scale is slightly more precise with smaller increments for the thermostat settings. It has a temperature probe with about 6 feet of cord so I can measure the temperature close to the floor near the battery rack. Here is the Amazon link for the thermostat I used. INKBIRD Temperature Controller C226T Amazon It is rated for 15A & 1800W. I could actually lower the temperature settings some based on the SOK battery perimeters but so far these settings are not horrible in terms of electricity consumption. The inverter actually provides some heat inside the shed and the oil filled heater does stay warm and radiates heat for well over an hour after the power to it is turned off by the thermostat.

January & February will be interesting as we typically endure a week or two stretches of -35C to -40C temperatures. I am going to monitor this closely this winter and I may even reconsider installing a direct vent heater and just continue with this electric heater setup into the future. After factoring the cost of a direct vent heater, a couple of propane tanks and the cost of propane usage, I'm thinking it may not be worth it to go that route. I am adding an additional 7000W of solar panels this spring so my generation capacity next winter will provide the extra electricity used by this heater.

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Very useful information, how much insulation did you use? R15? R19?
 
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