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Renogy Lithium 100Ah vs 200Ah

mitchk1303

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Joined
Feb 3, 2020
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Hello all, right now renogy has some sales on their battery that I want to take advantage of. I noticed that they have a 200Ah Lithium. I want 400Ah and will save money getting two 200Ah batteries vs 4 x 100Ah batteries. I was just wondering if their was any downside to this other then adjustability. I noticed on the website that shows 2000 cycles for the 200Ah vs 4000 cycles for the 100Ah. This make sense to me since obviously it comes out to the same amount of Ah discharge. But I saw the life cycle is 5 years for the 200Ah vs 10 years for the 100Ah. Not sure why the life time would be different? Maybe they are assuming you are doubling the amperage use with the 200Ah battery? Anyone have any thoughts on this?
 
I have found inconsistencies on the Renogy website. For me it was if the male MC4 connector leaving the solar panel is + or -. Different documentation form Renogy said different. A multimeter did not lie.

I seem to remember a Eve 280 being tested and showing twice the life, but I think the longer life test was done at half the discharge rate. Perhaps the 200 was tested at soemthing like 1C and the 100 ah at .5C.
 
A couple of observation having bought the 200Ah version.

They are big! With hindsight I would have found it much easier to place 2x100A in my Camper van!

I find the built in BT BMS monitor does not display the same available capacity as via an external shunt based monitor (an Aili)
Especially when the BT app reports the battery is 99.1% i.e. 198A available, it can stay like that for ages whereas the Aili will show the batteries still got another 10-15A to go before getting back to 200A. when the full capacity (as indicated by the Aili) is finally reached then the BT app also say 100%

The BT connection is annoyingly intermittent, The DC home app connects as and when it feels like it sometimes!
This behaviour is worse on my older Ipad, but not so frequent on my Android phone.
 
I have the AiLi shunt because it is the cheapest thing out there. I’d go with what the renogy shunt says is accurate. I doubt that’s perfect though. It’s more important we have a good idea our batteries are charged than have a scientifically accurate soc.

I think the AiLi would read fuller than a programmable shunt, because the settings input should have things that account for charging losses that you can tweak. Tail Current on my Victron shunt is adjustable and when I lowered it, the soc stopped jumping from 84% to 100% and read accurately.

Only easy thing to do is to watch the charging voltage and look at the charts. When you’re battery is full, you will have hardly any current going in. That’s how I knew my Victron shunt was way off. I saw there were still 20 amps going into the battery which supported that it was not at 100%. I changed that tail current and it was fine.
 
A couple of observation having bought the 200Ah version.

They are big! With hindsight I would have found it much easier to place 2x100A in my Camper van!

I find the built in BT BMS monitor does not display the same available capacity as via an external shunt based monitor (an Aili)
Especially when the BT app reports the battery is 99.1% i.e. 198A available, it can stay like that for ages whereas the Aili will show the batteries still got another 10-15A to go before getting back to 200A. when the full capacity (as indicated by the Aili) is finally reached then the BT app also say 100%

The BT connection is annoyingly intermittent, The DC home app connects as and when it feels like it sometimes!
This behaviour is worse on my older Ipad, but not so frequent on my Android phone.
I know a few people who regularly need to re download the renogy app, it's buggy as hell ? they seem to have forgotten it exsistance cos they never seem to fix any issues with it, my BT2 screen has never matched with the app or my aili monitor, or come to that my multi meter.
 
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