NI-FE 1000ah 12V with 5kw of panels running 4kw Reverse Cycle AC for heating house

[Will Prowse]

Dear Will,

So, I guess I need to address your hit piece on NIFE which I thought border lined on irrational hatred. Now I guess you probably looked at these batteries back in the day and decided they didn’t suit a RV installation, and I would agree. But transport isn’t the only application for batteries and many of the parameters you mentioned are simply irrelevant for stationary solar storage.

First off, solar panels are friggin cheap dude!!! What’s the big deal having a few more!! After all think of all the virtue signaling you will get from an impressively large array!! ? If your limited on space then yeah perhaps NIFE is not for you. 35% efficiency? Well that’s not always true and you can get efficiencies closer to lead acid if that’s relevant to you with the right charge profile and setup. But again, for me that’s irrelevant, and even if it was 50% efficient, I’d still consider this chemistry.

Second, yeah, the batteries themselves are heavier and larger, but again for static applications this is irrelevant! If you have a back yard with space for a garden shed then you have the space. You could also stack these vertically along the wall of a garage if you really wanted to. For some this is going to be an issue, I get that, it’s not an issue for me and I suspect it’s also not an issue for many of your viewers.

Third, lets talk for a moment about the disposable razor blade business model. Battery manufactures want repeat business, its not in their interest to sell you a battery that lasts you a lifetime. It is in their interest to sell you a product every 5 years, 15 years whatever. This is why Exide purchased Edison then quietly allowed it to go away, quite intentionally. I don’t want to be dependent on the grid, and I certainly don’t want to be dependent on battery manufactures to fleece me every 5-15 years. My calculation on Li-ion was 9c per kWh when you take into account cycle count and replacement cost, you might as well be tied to the grid!!! (yeah this is the dirty little secret). Also if you’re a prepper then this is the battery chemistry is for you!! Stock pile the electrolyte and a 2nd set of panels and your good for 60 years or more!

Finally Will, I know you’re a big advocate of lithium in many of its different chemistry's, but lets for a moment consider the pending ecological disaster that’s not all that far off the horizon. You may not be aware but less than 5% of lithium is currently recycled worldwide and lithium is extremely toxic. In Australia it’s even worse….

Lithium-ion battery recycling - CSIRO

www.csiro.au

• only 2 per cent of Australia's annual 3,300 tonnes of lithium-ion battery waste is recycled
• this waste is growing by 20 per cent per year and could exceed 100,000 tonnes by 2036

Whats happening with the lithium that’s not being recycled today? Is it being stockpiled? Is it going into landfill?? NIFE is 100% recyclable and the waste electrolyte can simply be used on your garden as fertilizer. If you’re going to virtue signal then do it where it counts, we don’t have to rape the planet but we can choose too!!!

View attachment 6772View attachment 6773

Regards,

Jimbo.

It's not irrational hatred. No hatred at all. I think they are very interesting, but I would never buy them. And no, virtue signalling not present in my arguements.

Oh, there are some misconceptions here:

• First off, solar panels are very energy intensive for manufacturing, and require a lot of materials. Saying to "buy more solar panels" to offset an efficiency loss is not strategic at all in my opinion.
• Lithium IS being recycled every day, specifically from electric vehicles. That's why we use them. LiFePO4 is EXTREMELY friendly for the environment. Cheap batteries from phones and laptops? Probably going to the dump. And I am ignorant about australia's recycling. Sounds like they are doing a bad job. My mom was raised in australia, and she hates the government there, so maybe you just have a bad system in place?
• Makes sense globally considering china sells more ev's than the entire world combined, and probably do not have a recycling program, because its china haha!
• Stationary system weight does matter because shipping cost is CRAZY. Absolutely insane cost. Which is why even people with nife systems that I know, have complained about this and say people dont factor it in.
• Yes I stand corrected about the new cells. Some can pull off 80% efficiency.

What I find funny is that Edison Battery, who is a pretty big nickel iron battery manufacturer, now sells LiFePO4! What do you think about that?

I personally think nife is neat. Sounds like the best nuclear fall out bunker setup. But for solar for most people? I prefer even LTO, personally.

There are pros and cons here to all batteries. I dont take it personally, they are just batteries.

 

[Supervstech]

KNiFe battery chemistry! I wonder why they leave off the potassium in the name?
the electrolyte is a potassium mixture... so yup, the battery can be correctly called KNiFe chemistry batteries...

Cool eh?

 

[Darkstar]

KNiFe battery chemistry! I wonder why they leave off the potassium in the name?
the electrolyte is a potassium mixture... so yup, the battery can be correctly called KNiFe chemistry batteries...

Cool eh?

Pretty cool!

I was considering KNiFe but went with BYD modules for the new system I am putting together because of the upfront costs, and the fact that I can have many times more storage with BYD. If/When my BYD system fails I am pretty sure I would go with KNIFe. Hopefully by then I will be able to afford a battery that will last the rest of my life and well into the life of my kids.

 

[jimbo78]

What I find funny is that Edison Battery, who is a pretty big nickel iron battery manufacturer, now sells LiFePO4! What do you think about that?

NIFE has its use case, as does LiFePO4, as do other chemistry's, why does it have to be a binary proposition? I'm simply pointing out my use case along with my experience and my data. I think some of your viewers are interested in an alternative to lithium, many are probably not even aware there is an alternative! For many NIFE wont make sense, but for those where it does make sense I think they will be glad they at least knew about it before dropping the big bucks!! I'm sure glad I found NIFE before going lithium.

The lithium recycling issue is a world wide issue....

It’s time to get serious about recycling lithium-ion batteries

A projected surge in electric-vehicle sales means that researchers must think about conserving natural resources and addressing battery end-of-life issues

cen.acs.org

"The batteries are valuable and recyclable, but because of technical, economic, and other factors, less than 5% are recycled today. The enormousness of the impending spent-battery situation is driving researchers to search for cost-effective, environmentally sustainable strategies for dealing with the vast stockpile of Li-ion batteries looming on the horizon."

Now maybe we will crack that nut, I certainly hope so, I'm just pointing out its going to be a major issue if we don't do something about that. Ultimately it may even add to the cost of ownership of lithium, if cost effective recycling methods are not found (disposal cost?). And yes solar panels are not being recycled as much as they should be either, so I agree adding more panels does add to that problem.

I looked at lithium first, I watched many of your videos, and I decided the continual cost of ownership didn't make sense for me to the point I might as well have stayed with the grid. Cost of lithium is expected to come down 30% over the next 5-10 years but even then, the continual expense just got to me. I'm planning on purchasing some land in the near future, when I go looking at land I wont shy away from off grid options because I will have a drop in solution day one.

 

[jimbo78]

Battery Maintenance

This was the one area that I had the most concern about going in on this battery type. My decision to go with 1000ah and not the more common 200 or 500ah sizes was heavily influenced by the need to do regular maintenance. In a 48v system you will have 40 cells, and if you go 500ah and decide to run a couple string in parallel then your now talking 80 cells which you need to maintain. I was also encouraged by my supplier to purchase his uber special lab grade distilled (or deionised) water, no doubt at a nice little mark up. He touted the purity of this water and how that will help the longevity of the batteries. My one question to him however, is the potassium hydroxide 100% pure also? To which the answer was obviously NO! So, I decided that was BS, and I looked for alternatives.

Iron Edison in the US sells a product from Philadelphia Scientific, I contacted Iron Edison to see if I could purchase from them however, they do not ship outside of the US without the use of a freight forwarder (which adds cost and complexity). Luckily Philadelphia Scientific has distributors all over the world and it was a simple matter of phoning my local supplier and placing an order, sending around AU$750 and the next business day a package arrived!

Philadelphia Scientific worldwide distributors

Contact Page

address, contact, info, phone

www.phlsci.com

HydroPure™ Deionizer System

HydroPure Deionizer System

Changes tap water into pure deionized battery ready water

www.phlsci.com

Model: GUN-X

Battery Watering Gun-X

Battery Watering Gun for filling standard access batteries

www.phlsci.com

I purchased the HydroPure™ Deionizer System, along with the Model: GUN-X, which is the minimum you need to get started. They have all kinds of automated systems as well as monitoring systems which I may invest in in the future, but for now I’m very happy with what I have. You don’t need to purchase a watering cart, you simply attach the gun-x to the end of the HydroPure as long as it’s located in proximity to your batteries. The Gun-X is fantastic, you simply adjust the yellow donut at the business end of the gun to the desired water level, and the gun shuts off automatically like the nozzle at your local gas station (that’s liquid gas for those outside the US, otherwise known as petrol). The HydroPure runs off regular household water pressure and does not require any external power source.

Now the water I’m using is rain water stored in a tank and before the recent bush fires and dust storms my water was testing around 32ppm (it’s probably way more now). Which means my HydroPure filter is good for 1440 gallons or 5,451 litres of deionised water. If your water is poor 250ppm, you can only expect 288 gallons or 1090 litres, the filter replacement cost is a couple hundred dollars I believe. Testing the water out of the filter I generally got <2ppm which is acceptable, but that was also with a cheap Chinese tester, so not 100% pure, but pure enough for battery watering. In a survival situation you can also use distilled water which is not that difficult to produce if you needed to.

So how often should I be topping up the water on my batteries, well generally its 5-6 times per year. I have been doing it a little more frequently because I have my float voltage on the high side as well as I had the voltage way up cycling these batteries up. Now that I have my batteries cycled up, I need to dial in my float voltage and charge parameters with the goal of not needing to water any more than 6 times a year. Right now, I’m probably around 8 times per year which is not far off. Seasonally this will change also, I’m in summer right now so my charge rate is high and my usage is low. As I go into winter that will switch around so I’m probably going to leave things where they are and wait and see.

As for how long and how difficult battery watering is? Well it takes me longer to brush off all the crud off the tops of the batteries and unscrew the caps than it does doing the actual watering. I counted around 12s to fill each cell last time, so that’s 120s of water flow over 10 cells. The whole filling process took around 3 minutes. So, doing that 6 times or so a year really isn’t that big of a deal. Even with 40 cells your not talking much in the way of time and effort. And you can automate this process further if you feel the need which I may do in the future. Overall, it’s no big deal really, all batteries have some maintenance tasks even if it’s just dusting them off, replacing them and/or monitoring them closely.

One thing I should mention is when I went to use the system for the 2nd time water would not flow. I figured out a bug had crawled up the gun and blocked the flow of water. I now tape up both ends of the system after use to ensure nothing crawls up there and eventually gets into one of my cells.

 

[jimbo78]

Off Gassing
In my previous post I explained how water is replaced in the cells but I didn’t explain why that’s needed. These cells are a lot like the old-style lead acid battery where they are unsealed, and like the unsealed type battery you had to keep an eye on the water levels in the cells and top them up from time to time. This is because gasses are lost through electrolysis of the water turning it into hydrogen and oxygen. These gasses also have their issues, they need to be vented properly and not allowed to build up as a spark might then cause an explosion.

It’s a good idea to keep your electronics away from the batteries themselves, if you are building something to house these batteries then having them away from any larger structures is not a bad idea. A garden shed with a separate but attached outside cupboard would be ideal to house the batteries as well as the electrical equipment in the cupboard. If any build up of gasses were to occur your electrical system is separated from the gasses and therefore won’t contribute to a bad situation. I would also recommend good roof ventilation and even a fan to suck air into the shed.

If your intending to mount these batteries in a garage or something similar then your going to need to build a battery box to trap and vent the gasses. You may be able to modify the caps to capture the gas and redirect the gas to an outside vent, but that’s a little more complicated.

I believe most of the off gassing happens during the charge side of the cycle. While charging is happening, you can remove one of the caps from a cell and put your ear up to it and it sounds like a freshly opened can of soda. If you have the charge cranked up closer to 17V then you will also hear “Bloop Bloop Bloop” noises which are quite alarming if you weren’t expecting that. This is all fairy normal operation and the way to tell if your off-gassing too much is by how often you need to replace the water in the cells as previously mentioned.

I also mentioned in earlier posts that when I first got these batteries there was quite a metallic acrid smell that came from them. I’m very glad that after a month or so this smell went away and as Hydrogen and Oxygen are both odorless there is no more smell coming from my batteries which is fantastic. Now I don’t know if that smell will return when I replace my electrolyte at some point in the future, or if that smell occurred because of the new plates themselves. But I will be purchasing more cells soon so that smell will return then at the very least.

Thermal Runaway
One problem you may encounter with this battery type is an over charging condition where one cell will lose most or all of its water. This can happen if you leave your batteries unattended which I would not recommend unless you take some precautions to prevent this from happening. Once the electrolyte starts to drop in one of the cells, the cell begins to warm up and I assume the internal resistance starts to drop which causes more current to go into this cell. This then causes the electrolyte to drop further until you stop it or the water in the electrolyte is completely gone which will then prevent further charging effectively shutting the system down.

This is obviously not a good situation for the cell and should be avoided, but the cell can recover from this scenario by simply replacing the electrolyte in that cell and topping up the electrolyte in the remaining cells (if they haven’t dropped too far). This happened to one of my supplier’s systems and he assures me that system is still operating today although at the time he thought he had killed it. The best way to avoid this scenario is to simply turn off the charging system if you intend to leave the system for any length of time.

Alternatively, you can wind back your charge voltages so that only a trickle goes into the cells but there is still some risk in that strategy and you would still need to keep tabs on the system. I would like to find a water level monitoring system and I believe there are systems out there but that’s a future project. It’s sometimes difficult to see the water level through the opaque plastic case so a monitoring system would be ideal. You need to monitor all cells as any cell can become the affected cell. One simple way to detect this scenario would be to have a temperature sensor on every cell and if any cell’s temperature goes outside the range of the rest of the cells then you probably have a problem. So, this problem can easily be overcome regardless.

Temperature
These cells have quite a wide operating range in terms of temperature, and they even work in freezing conditions (albeit at a reduced capacity I believe). According to Iron-Edison the NIFE operating range is

-22F to +140F (-30C to +60C)

That’s just phenomenal, in fact I don’t believe there are any other batteries out there with that kind of operating range! if you live in a frigid environment then this is the battery for you. No BMS to worry about and you don’t need to worry about low temperature cut off either (for the most part), and you don’t need to waste your energy keeping these batteries warm to boot. For me here in Australia we almost never go below freezing when we do however it won’t be long enough for the batteries to get that cold, but even if they do no worries!! Heat on the other hand is more of a problem, and we have had several 40C+ days but the cells themselves never really got much above 30C even while still charging. Simply because the volume and mass of them is so great that it takes ages for them to heat up or cool down.

Carbon

As these go through their cycle they have to breathe with the atmosphere and oxygen is exchanged during that process. However, one other thing that is absorbed by the cells is carbon. You will see a build up of carbon around the vent in the cap as you can see in the photo, and it turns the electrolyte black. Is this what kills the electrolyte over time, requiring it to be replaced? Do these batteries get any greener, you can add carbon sink to the list (if you believe carbon is the devil itself)!

 

[Kameljoe21]

I have seen the systems that auto water, Mostly they are for forklift batteries, They also make them for all types. Even the good old lead batteries, I had 2 sets for 2 12v batteries that I had in my camper, I topped them off every week, Just to make sure.

 

[jimbo78]

Nominal Voltages and Custom Charging Profile
I have already been asked about Nominal Voltages and the reason for asking about this is people seem to like all in one charge controller inverter (like MPP Solar) setups probably more because of a cost issue but also for space savings I assume. The problem however is the voltage range of those systems don’t quite match NIFE requirements, so the question then becomes, can you remove or add a cell or two to match the specifications of the all in one system better. And the answer to that is probably but I was advised against it, and with what I know now I would also not recommend this approach.

I also started with a 12V system which ruled out an MPP Solar based system right from the beginning as they don’t do 12V. But charge controllers are flexible in terms of their battery voltages with most systems supporting 12/24/36/48 volts. So, I figured my charge controllers would go the distance where as the Inverter I will be swapping out as I go up in voltage. I’m not entirely happy with my Epever charge controllers however which I will get into later. Also, the cost of the NIFE cells is quite high compared with most others, so why skimp out on the kit side of things? I always seem to get burnt with cheap Chinese crap, and I never seem to learn my lesson!

You really need a full voltage range in order to utilise these batteries effectively. The problem you face is none of these charge controllers have a NIFE setting, the internal resistance is quite high and doesn’t change much between depleted and charged. Generally, you take a Lead Acid profile and expand out the voltage range somewhat and that kind of works. But in reality, it doesn’t work very well, and here is why. I have already mentioned the thermal runaway in a pervious post and if you don’t keep an eye on your system it will lead to that scenario. But the other problem is there is no way to really detect (using current charge controller methods) how depleted the batteries really are.

If you look at a Victron charge controller and how they work with Lead Acid, If the voltage is low enough, they go into BULK, but before they do that, at the beginning of the day they take note of the voltage and set the absorption timer which will range from 1-6 hours. After that time the charge controller will then go into float. With NIFE that wont work, I recently pulled 11kwh at a rate of 1150w (see below). The voltage got as low as 10.16v and the inverter was set to shut off at 9.5V the difference there is a voltage drop of 0.66V between the inverter and the batteries at a 1150w load (that’s actually not bad considering). Now I was just shy of the rated 12kwh but it was quite a load at a C rate of around 0.1 and if I was able to get the full 9.5V (remote voltage sensing) then I would have gotten even closer. But being able to use 90% of the capacity is still better than the 80% you would get from lithium batteries without shortening the lifespan so happy days.

Now once the batteries depleted after getting down to 10.16V, as soon as the load disconnected the batteries will slowly go back to above 13V. So, if I was using the Victron charge controllers they would see that 13v and think the batteries are relatively charged so they would go right into float charge. With my Epever charge controllers they are even less smart, I set the absorption time and it does that every day regardless. So, the end result is you end up with grossly undercharged or grossly over charged batteries (lots of off gassing) and there isn’t much you can do about it with what we have right now.

Or is there? This really isn’t a hard nut to crack, all I need to do is dynamically set the Absorption time each morning based off how much energy was pulled the night before. Epever doesn’t seem to have any API documentation although I think I could reverse engineer it if I really wanted to. Since their software and support seems to sux I think I will eventually switch to Victron (unless I find a better alternative) and I have already found several github projects for reading data but some also talk about writing data for changing settings on Victron devices.

So, what I want to do is the following, and if any Victron API aficionados are reading this please get in touch. Unfortunately, Victron takes the battery voltage at the start of every day for the Absorption timer. So, in my case if the load has disconnected before that point the voltage will start rising and will appear that the batteries are still full. What I need to do is monitor the voltage over the entire discharge cycle keeping track of the lowest observed voltage then using that as the voltage, set the Absorption timer. Then the standard settings would probably still work with <11.9v 6h, <12.2v 4h, <12.6v 2h, >12.6v 1h. Although I suspect some minor tweaking would be needed.

This will fix both the issue of undercharging when the batteries are depleted and it will also minimise the thermal runaway issue as the batteries will go right into float if they weren’t used the night before. There is a 3rd scenario where the batteries were depleted followed by minimal sun the following day, if the load reconnects and the voltage drops that next night then all good it should drop to the minimum and set the Absorption timer appropriately. But if the load doesn’t reconnect then this obviously won’t be 100% foolproof, but probably good enough in my opinion to work 99% of the time.

Below is the data from a load test I did connecting my 1000w oil heater and fan (resistive load). The solar was turned off at 3pm and the load was also applied at that point.

Hour​	Source (Wh)​	Load (Wh)​		Voltage​
6am	0.00	55.27		13.83
7am	74.74	54.45		14.16
8am	973.52	44.77		15.54
9am	1118.89	40.61		15.95
10am	407.22	46.71		15.38
11am	76.50	52.09		15.02
12am	86.32	48.22		15.03
1pm	119.13	46.11		15.03
2pm	132.74	44.17		15.02
3pm	0.00	925.92		13.50
4pm	0.00	1165.76		12.80
5pm	0.00	1155.26		12.49
6pm	0.00	1152.72		12.32
7pm	0.00	1161.85		12.23
8pm	0.00	1174.37		12.17
9pm	0.00	1123.46		12.07
10pm	0.00	1140.03		11.96
11pm	0.00	1146.45		11.67
12pm	0.00	692.77		11.41

Totals
Source 2.99kWh, Load 11.27kWh

Battery
In 2.61kWh, Out 10.89kWh

Battery Voltage Range
Min 10.61V, Max 16.14V

 

[jimbo78]

Inverter
So, what inverter did I go will? Well when I first started out, I had my cheap Chinese inverter I used from my small 260ah sealed lead acid camping setup. This inverter is supposedly 2500w although like any cheep Chinese device you need to take that with a grain of salt. It has a usable voltage range of 10-15v so in order to use it I had to first disconnect my solar wait for the voltage to go below 15V then connect up my inverter. Apart from the issue of not being able to have my solar and load connected at the same time, the inverter worked quite well with my loads and I didn’t have any issue running my split system.



But obviously I had a huge limitation that I needed to fix so I needed a new Inverter. Since I’m planning on increasing my battery voltage in the future, I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of money as inverters are tied to a specific battery voltage. I decided on Victron as they support a full voltage range from 9.5 to 17v. I went with the Victron phoenix inverter 12/1200 which is able to put out 1000w continuous (I really wish they call it 12/1000 obviously the 1200 represents VA and not output watts but I digress). This cost me AU$550 and anything larger was going to be over AU$1000 which I really didn’t want to spend right now. When I go 24V I will likely get a 3000va (2400w) Inverter and if I go 48V then I would likely go multiple 3000-5000va.



All in all, I’m very happy with my Victron Inverter it’s performing very well so far. However, it is a little underpowered for my load, it will shut off from time to time with an overload error. That is obviously not the inverters fault, that’s me being cheap!! But its an issue I have been able to work around thus far and as this system is still experimental it’s no big deal. The inverter side of things is easy to configure with NIFE, the only critical setting is the low voltage cut-off. The voltage must never be allowed to go below 9.5v and Victron has several settings here to help you dial that in with a regular and dynamic mode. My inverter does not have a remote voltage sense capability like my charge controllers do which would be a much better approach. I see the Victron Multiplus Inverters have a remote voltage sensing port, but I think that’s only used for charging not inverting. I guess for most battery types you’re only aiming for a 50-80% discharge cycle not the 100% of NIFE so allowing for the voltage drop during inverting is far less important.

Voltage Drop Solution
In a previous post I explained that I have a voltage drop of 0.66v (at around 100A or 1100w), which I also said wasn’t bad! Well it’s really not great either with such a low voltage but as you know, I have my cells in a long bank with the negative pole furthest away from the inverter and charge controllers. This means I have a 4m of 70mm2 negative cable, and a 2m 70mm2 positive cable. This is where the bulk of that voltage drop is coming from. When I upgrade to 24v I will have 2x 10 cells with 10 behind and 10 in front. Once I do that the negative and positive will be right next to each other and I will configure everything to get the equipment closer so the cables are no more than 1m in length. So, with the 2 negative and positive cables and a short cable joining the 2 banks the total length should be <2.3m. And with double the voltage I’ll have half the amps which will also significantly reduces the voltage drop. So that will make it much less of an issue and I’ll have more usable voltage range as a result eeking out even more from these batteries.

Covid-19
Well obviously I'm quite happy having a solar based setup that can heat my house as we go into winter. I just unloaded a load of wood which is about 1/3 of what I used last year. This is more than I expected to use under normal circumstances but perhaps i may need some amount of wood for cooking and other purposes. Although I don't expect the power grid to fail, with the supply chain shutdown who knows what parts are no longer available and who knows how thats going to play out over time. So its possible we could see localized power outages as a result of lack of replacement parts but regardless I'm more than comfortable having multiple backup power setups which can be used to to power lighting and fridges also if needed. I have a bunch of solar panels lying around also which I can make use of if I needed to. But like I said I don't expect to need to use my battery setups for that purpose but I'm sure glad I could if I needed to.

As a result I have tested a few other appliances on my Vitcron inverter and the first I test was an Induction cooktop, which has a maximum load of 2100w . Obviously I cant run at full power but when I turn it on it defaults to 1400W and if I quickly turn that down to 900w my inverter will happily power that no worries at all. 900w is a fairly low setting but it does allow me to boil water even if it does take a long time. I only need 600w to keep water at a boil also.

The next appliance I tested was my espresso coffee machine arguably the most important machine of all. The machines label rates this appliance at 1100-1200w. Since however this machine is mostly resistive load I figured it might be a little more forgiving and when I powered it on to warm it up it was drawing 900w (so far so good). After the machine was warm it dropped down to basically 0w. Running the pump with the heater off was 50w and once the heater turned back on after I turned off the pump it jumped to 900w again. Now the big test, steaming the milk, I would have expected 950w but no it just hung around 900w. My inverter didn't complain at all and I'm now enjoying my solar coffee Disaster averted!!!

 

[jimbo78]

Bread Maker

One of the things I managed to purchase before the shutdown was a bread maker! I decided that now would be as good a time as any to give that a whirl. The machine itself is rated to 615w and of course I decided to test it on my Victron Inverter. The machine draws less than a watt at idle and during the kneading process it generally draws between 90w and 100w to run the motor. The biggest load of course in the heating element which is of course is a standard resistive load heating element. When that is on it draws 600w, it also has an incandescent light bulb which is around 15w. So the inverter had absolutely no issue running this and next time I go camping I'll have no issue running it off my camp setup. Mmmm, fresh bread in the middle of nowhere!!!

 

[jimbo78]

Heat Pump
Ok, so here is the last topic of my “show and tell” the Heat Pump I’m running as my load. Well actually I have 2, and no I can’t run both at the same time, it’s a one or the other kinda deal. But that’s all fine and dandy, I have my split system in the kitchen which covers both the kitchen and lounge and I have a reverse cycle window unit in an upstairs bedroom. I only ever need one or the other working at any one time anyways.


The Split System

Well I have a 3.5 - 4kw system which I believe is around a 13k BTU sized system for those who really should embrace the metric world we now live in (hint hint). The split system is probably a little undersized for the space and my inverter is also undersized for this application as well. But I do have other methods of heating so its no big deal and for cooling. Ff it’s going to be a hot day, I turn it on early and let it run all day as I have an abundance of sun anyways. During the summer the batteries really are not needed anywhere near as much, only if I run the AC into the evening which is actually rare here where I live as I’m close to the water and almost always get a cool sea breeze late arvo and into the evening.

Winter however is where the batteries come into their own, during the day I need the batteries to charge while still running the load. I’ve targeted 200A as the ideal charging current as that gives me more then double what I would typically use. As you can see in the split systems ratings however it can consume up to 2450w which is 2.5 times what my inverter can produce. However, under normal operation it consumes 820w for cooling and 930w for heating which my inverter is comfortably capable of producing. So, when does the AC unit use 2.5kw? Well I believe that’s during a defrost mode where it heats the outside heat exchanger when the outside temperature gets below 4C (just above freezing).

We rarely see temperatures here as low as that, and since I’ve been using my split system on battery, I’ve only encountered that once where we had a day of icing rain. I expect as we go into winter, I will see more days like that again, but if I do then its probably a good idea to light the fire anyways. If you live in the US however or colder parts of the globe like in the UK and Europe then this is going to be a much bigger problem for you and your efficiency will suffer as a result. But Australia, no worries mate!!!

The other thing I have done is to force the fan to medium setting which seems to help limit the need for it to draw too much power. Maybe I’m delusional here, but it seemed to keep it running and reduce the load on my inverter which has helped in my mind. When you power on the split system as this is an inverter-based unit (older split systems were thermostat based), it slowly ramps up and down its power use by varying the compressor motor’s speed, which is great for running off a power inverter (no sudden loads). Older style split systems and window units have a single speed motor which is either on or off and can draw huge loads to power on, this can be difficult for your inverter to power. These kinds of loads usually require you to over spec your inverters to handle sudden instantaneous spikes and drops in load, and they are generally more problematic.

The Window Unit

For the upstairs bedroom I have a small window unit which is not inverter based, so the compressor is either on or off. The maximum power draw is 900w but it typically uses 660w cooling and 570w heating. My inverter has no problem powering up this device however it does have problems when the compressor kicks off, causing the voltage to spike and the inverter to shut down. The inverter does come back on after a couple of seconds but its really annoying. I did have the output voltage of the inverter set to 240V and reducing that to 230V did help, it powers down less often now, I could reduce the voltage even lower and that may help but having a higher voltage for my split system I feel is better. So, this is a problem you can encounter with these older style AC units so always go inverter type when you can! But this was a cheep and easy to install unit, so I can live with it for now. I could also add something like a light bulb to the circuit to help absorb some of the voltage difference when the compressor powers down. Upgrading to a larger power inverter may also help in the future but its working for now.


Conclusion
So, there you have my system from solar panel to heat pump. I hope ya’ll got something out of my somewhat incoherent longwinded ramblings, if I have missed anything please let me know and I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have. I’ll continue to check in from time to time and update you on any progress, as you know this is still a work in progress and there is still plenty more to do. The next step is 24V but that’s also a significant monetary outlay as I would be looking at around AU$13,000 for the 10 battery cells and new larger (3kw+) inverter.

 

[Newbyrg]

Dear Will,

So, I guess I need to address your hit piece on NIFE which I thought border lined on irrational hatred. Now I guess you probably looked at these batteries back in the day and decided they didn’t suit a RV installation, and I would agree. But transport isn’t the only application for batteries and many of the parameters you mentioned are simply irrelevant for stationary solar storage.

First off, solar panels are friggin cheap dude!!! What’s the big deal having a few more!! After all think of all the virtue signaling you will get from an impressively large array!! ? If your limited on space then yeah perhaps NIFE is not for you. 35% efficiency? Well that’s not always true and you can get efficiencies closer to lead acid if that’s relevant to you with the right charge profile and setup. But again, for me that’s irrelevant, and even if it was 50% efficient, I’d still consider this chemistry.

Second, yeah, the batteries themselves are heavier and larger, but again for static applications this is irrelevant! If you have a back yard with space for a garden shed then you have the space. You could also stack these vertically along the wall of a garage if you really wanted to. For some this is going to be an issue, I get that, it’s not an issue for me and I suspect it’s also not an issue for many of your viewers.

Third, lets talk for a moment about the disposable razor blade business model. Battery manufactures want repeat business, its not in their interest to sell you a battery that lasts you a lifetime. It is in their interest to sell you a product every 5 years, 15 years whatever. This is why Exide purchased Edison then quietly allowed it to go away, quite intentionally. I don’t want to be dependent on the grid, and I certainly don’t want to be dependent on battery manufactures to fleece me every 5-15 years. My calculation on Li-ion was 9c per kWh when you take into account cycle count and replacement cost, you might as well be tied to the grid!!! (yeah this is the dirty little secret). Also if you’re a prepper then this is the battery chemistry is for you!! Stock pile the electrolyte and a 2nd set of panels and your good for 60 years or more!

Finally Will, I know you’re a big advocate of lithium in many of its different chemistry's, but lets for a moment consider the pending ecological disaster that’s not all that far off the horizon. You may not be aware but less than 5% of lithium is currently recycled worldwide and lithium is extremely toxic. In Australia it’s even worse….

Lithium-ion battery recycling - CSIRO

www.csiro.au

• only 2 per cent of Australia's annual 3,300 tonnes of lithium-ion battery waste is recycled
• this waste is growing by 20 per cent per year and could exceed 100,000 tonnes by 2036

Whats happening with the lithium that’s not being recycled today? Is it being stockpiled? Is it going into landfill?? NIFE is 100% recyclable and the waste electrolyte can simply be used on your garden as fertilizer. If you’re going to virtue signal then do it where it counts, we don’t have to rape the planet but we can choose too!!!

View attachment 6772View attachment 6773

Regards,

Jimbo.

Who is that character?? Does he have any knowledge of these whatsoever or is he just relying on 2 years of experience since he was in high school?
There is so much misinformation about NiFe cells it must be difficult for anyone starting out to get any sort of a balanced review. I would encourage anyone to speak with an electrical engineer or solar accredited tradesman that has some experience with them to provide some balanced information.

Regards,

Newbyrg

 

[jimbo78]

Who is that character??

Hes the guy who owns and runs this site!

Hes a lithium guy, manufactures send him free batteries all the time to promote their product. He's up front about that, but it does make you wonder when he is so negative about other types such as NIFE. The whole purpose of this thread was to provide both data and practical information in an attempt to cut through the BS and FUD. Hopefully I have achieved that.

 

[jimbo78]

Here is an updated overview of my system up until end of March...

We are now headed into winter so usage should now climb.

Month	Source (kWh)	Load (kWh)	Batt Out (kWh)	Voltage	Cycles	ROI
July	26.02	24.99	22.11	16.07 - 10.24	6.15	$7.40
August	228.49	169.3	133.17	16.77 - 10.02	20.35	$47.81
September	288.38	224.36	140.2	16.72 - 9.99	15.28	$68.63
October	366.55	295.02	134.91	16.75 - 10.63	13.1	$92.90
November	326.65	243.76	71.09	16.96 - 10.46	12.78	$80.73
December	173.09	120.27	46.82	16.31 - 12.55	10.3	$40.81
January	160.11	146.95	67.16	16.28 - 12.44	11	$50.06
February	163.08	153.85	88.72	16.52 - 10.12	11.23	$48.93
March	121.42	110.57	61.92	16.37 - 12.44	11.12	$36.97

Totals
Source 1924.01kWh, Load 1555.69kWh

Battery Voltage Range
Min 9.99V, Max 16.96V

Battery Cycles
116.56

Return On Investment
$496.70

 

[jimbo78]

Energy Density

Lets talk about Energy Density of NIFE compared to Lead Acid. I'm obviously not going to compare NIFE to lithium as that would be a futile exercise, but is NIFE really that bad compared to Lead acid?

NIFE Volume (1000ah 12V, 100% usable)
Length 2m
Width 0.4m
Height 0.6m
Volume 0.48m3
Weight 616kg

Lets choose a sealed lead acid...

Camec 12V 100Ah AGM Deep Cycle Battery | CaravansPlus

Delivered Fast | 042885 | The CAMEC Deep Cycle, Sealed Lead Acid (SLA) Absorbed Glass Mat (AGM) battery is ideal for RV & Marine use....more info.

www.caravansplus.com.au

Camec Deep Cycle 100ah AGM Sealed Lead Acid Battery
Shipping Weight: 28.00 Kgs
Dimensions: 330mm(l) x 215mm(h) x170mm(d)


1000ah
Length 0.17m x 10 = 1.7m
Width 0.33m
Height 0.215m
Volume 0.11781 m3
Weight 10x 25.5kg = 255kg

Because of DOD of 50% we need to double this setup, let put a 2nd set on top of the first
2000ah (1000ah usable)
Length 0.17m x 10 + 0.1m = 1.8m (100mm added for structure legs)
Width 0.33m
Height 0.215m x 2 + 0.1 (100mm added for structure and wiring)
Volume 0.315m3
Weight 20x 25.5kg + 40kg = 550kg (40kg added for structure)

Volume 152%
Weight 112%

So in terms of weight NIFE is quite comparable only slightly heavier at 12% more. However in volume terms your going to need much more space around 50% more. But for static solar setups, Volume and Weight is irrelevant for the most part unless your really tight on space in my opinion.

 

[jimbo78]

Wireless Display



As it’s getting cold here now as we head into winter, its quite inconvenient to have to go out into the cold to check on how my system is doing. I decided to dust of an old project I had lying around and repurpose it for this endeavor. I had an Arduino board with an inbuilt OLED display which took me some time to figure out how to drive the display due to no documentation being available. I ended up having to trawl through thousands of lines of code to figure out the appropriate display driver, address and what pins they used for the display. What a pain that’s a day of my life I won’t be getting back any time soon (arg, I hate that crap). Anyways as you can see, I have a nice little display so I decided to dust it off and put it to work.

The board is WiFi enabled and setting up WiFi on these boards is quite simple although I have a hard coded SSID and password for my WiFi network. I also have a hard-coded IP address of my Raspberry Pi I use to collect the data using hall effect sensors and upload that data to my own website. I’ve talked about my Raspberry Pi in previous posts so I won’t go into that here, but in order to make this display work I needed it to run an additional HTTP server and serve up some live JSON data. That was also quite simple adding around 5 lines of code in Node-JS. All in all, the change to both the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi took around an hour and I had it displaying useful data in no time at all, as it should be.

So, I have 4 pieces of data displaying at this time, the top value is in Watts and shows the net amount of power going into or out of the Batteries. So that value can turn negative as the battery discharges. It also does not show current used power. The next 2 values are in amps and show Source Amps and Load Amps. The final value is simply the current battery Voltage. There is one more piece of data I would like to add and that’s battery percentage. However, this is a little more difficult as the only reliable way to do this is to keep track of kwh in and out over the past several days. As I’m not storing longer term data locally on the Raspberry Pi (its uploaded to a remote website), I don’t have an easy means of calculating Battery %.

However, I also have the issue of data loss where the WiFi network or remote website goes down and the data is currently lost. So, killing 2 birds here, I will need to create local storage to keep 3 days data for battery % and also any data that was not uploaded to the website to be uploaded later. So, this will be a future project when I get some time.

 

[jimbo78]

Voltage Drop Fix

We I have finally gotten around to fixing my Voltage drop issue. Now that we are going into winter, I need to have my load running (RC-AC unit) whilst still banking power for later in the evening. However, what would happen is with the load off the Charge Controllers would be pumping in 85A (see below) and I would then turn on my load, the load might take 25A initially but instead of the current the CC’s are pumping going up to around 110A it would actually drop to 60A. So now the amount of current going into the battery was less than half of what it was going in with the load off.

Load Off ------------------------------------------- Load on (Source drops 24A, battery Voltage also drops)


So, what’s going on? Well there are a combination of factors here, but primarily I believe the inverter is adding a large voltage ripple to the wires. The charge controllers see this and most likely throttle back so that the peak voltage doesn’t rise beyond the parameters set. No doubt going into some kind of conservative mode in order to not damage anything. Since the inverter is trying to make a 50hz AC signal that’s going to potentially add quite a bit of ripple to the wires. Unfortunately, I don’t have an oscilloscope to take a look at this but I was able to fix it. There are lots of contributing factors here, like 12V system, mismatch of CC and inverter brands, but mostly a long wire run between the batteries and the rest of the system.

So how did I fix this? Well I had my previous wires I had running from the battery to the board which were a little on the thin side. I doubled that up and used that for the negative pole running to the inverter. I also had a 2nd positive pole cable made up and ran that to the inverter also. So, what this has effectively done is to put the battery smack bang in the middle of the system which allows me to use them to filter out any ripple that is present. It was basically a AU$100 fix and the difference has been quite dramatic.

The main issue here however is the length of cable from the batteries to the board where everything is located. It’s a 4m run on the negative pole and a 2m run on the positive. In a 12V system that’s quite a run and its not really something I can avoid right now, but when I redesign this system to 24V I will keep total cable length to under 1.2m ideally. I may even keep this approach of separating the CC’s from the inverter also whilst also reusing these fat 70mm2 cables. All of that will permanently fix this issue but for now my $100 fix is more than sufficient.

This image you have see before, but as you can see a large load is no problem!! still ample power going into the batteries.


You will also notice a small wire coming off the batteries, this is used to power my Raspberry Pi as well as to sense battery voltage for both my Raspberry Pi and the Charge Controllers Parallel Box’s remote Voltage sense. I moved this to its own lug in order to try and get a better representation of the battery voltage without any pulsing by either the inverter or CC’s.

Charge Controller update

Now that I have fixed my voltage drop issue, I have another issue relating to the charge controllers. Quite often I look outside and there is full sun, however when I look at what’s going into the batteries, I find that the battery voltage is well below float voltage by as much as 2V, and maybe 20A max is going into the batteries. I then power cycle the charge controllers (switch off solar then isolate them from the battery) then bam! 180A now flowing and the CC’s will go straight into Absorption which maintains a voltage above float. This is super annoying and has happened twice now this week alone. I’m not sure what’s causing it, I know we have had a moon this week so maybe that’s keeping the controllers awake? Even so I would still expect it to maintain float as a minimum.

The other contributing factor seems to be cloudy mornings, its as if the CC’s just give up on the MPPT algorithm and decide to maintain the lower charging level despite the sun now blaring at full power. This appears to be something that could be fixed with a firmware update, but I don’t see any way of doing that. I don’t see any firmware files to download on their website or any way of applying a firmware update. I have to now keep close tabs on my system as I have been caught out expecting to have full batteries after a sunny day only find out they haven’t been charged.

So, would I recommend EPEver charge controllers? No! On paper they look fantastic and their price is quite reasonable given what’s written on paper. The paralleling works ok although its not perfect. But sadly, I’m going to have to swap these out and hopefully get some money back by selling them on eBay. I’ll likely switch to Victron unless I find something better in the meantime. Obviously, that’s going to be quite an investment and probably one I will make after switching to 24V. Maybe this is just a bug with 12V systems? But regardless I just can’t trust these CC’s going forward especially as one day this system will become my primary source of power.

 

[Silentpower]

Re carbon formation and electrolyte contamination, would a layer of oil help. Hopefully not a silly question! If they gas so much it appears the electrolyte is boiling, then probably not.....?

 

[jimbo78]

would a layer of oil help

The batteries work by "breathing" and exchanging oxygen. So anything that inhibts the carbon would also likely inhibit the batteries primary function.

 

[jimbo78]

Here is a manual I have, likely written by the Chinese manufacture as its in "engrish".