An Proto-Teach Éireannach

[Scruff]

SPARWEB:  Had to put my Moderator hat on. Much as I get the joke and the sentiment, we can't publish that.  I tried to come up with a replacement that captures all the "nuances" of your original.

 
Totally understandable Sparweb, I had a feeling that'd invoke the powers that be. Fair play for the light hand. Shoulda went for flippin' gra$$holes I suppose.

I forgot to mention the battery isn't covered under warranty and after you jump start it by externally powering it with a CC PSU you have to reinsert and hold some combination of buttons of the FLIR for an amount of time (power + left I think 10secs) before it'll charge the "new cell" again..I dunno the specifics I just kept fumbling with it until the lightning strike reappeared on the battery icon.

[Scruff]

Keep ya on yer toes SparWeb... ...I'll understand it this post self-destructs

[Mary B]

Sounds like some of the slot machines I had to work on... early computer based machine that used a hard drive for the game storage. Slots take a beating, pounding, shaking etc. The hard drive was hard mounted to the cabinet. ZERO vibration protection. We were going through 3-4 drives a year per machine at a cost of $3k per drive(had to pay for drive+ software each time).

I finally got fed up and designed a shock mount for the drive that could withstand a 5 foot drop(we tested on partially damaged drives, one or 2 games of 10 corrupted) ten times in a row and not skip on data read or crash the heads into the surface. I went through a LOT of G-force indicator tubes testing. But once in those machines ran for 4 more years before being obsoleted due to picture tube unavailability, things used a massive 35 inch tube mounted so the long dimension was vertical.

Replaced zero hard drives after that. Manufacturer paid me for the shock mount and incorporated it into all exiting and new games. Now they use a SSD so sock mounting not as critical. Just enough to prevent mechanical damage. Weird part is they had mounted the CPU cage on a decent shock mount system... used very flexible cabling so nothing was transmitted into it.

[Scruff]

I can usually tell from about 2 weeks of use whether the engineer who designed the topology of a device used the product themselves for their prescribed application and revised it to accommodate the findings or not.
This is of course crediting the companies in question with lack of foresight as opposed to manufactured obsolescence and integrating mechanical/electrochemical fuselike wear items.
My printer has been telling me to change the toner for the last 100 sheets. Toner cartridges cost more than printers...why is that?

That's one of the things that bother me the most about off-grid hardware. When it's blatantly apparent it was designed and built by urban gridders in a high-rise metropolis contriving to imagine what the applications demand. QED show me a lead-acid battery charger that's not MorningStar and delivers a specific gravity of 1.275 or better.

I'm pretty hard on them because well, it's hypocrisy or willful and sometimes harmful negligence to me, often purported to be the thing it can't deliver but nobody tests it because of marketing tribalism. I get to be sanctimonious because everything I build does 100% rated 100% duty and I'll just keep blowing up hardware and calling manufacturers posers and charlatans until it can.

Then there's the shytehawks who are either lying or are blatantly ignorant proclaiming things like grid-tied batteries are 100% unity and a viable solution (as opposed to a product of economically subsided factors combined with PR and a lack of performance data). They're something else entirely I stopped bothering with.

There's a simple approach to engineering we can all follow. Instead of inventing/reinventing the wheel.
Find something useful and improve it.

[Scruff]

I just noticed Eric over at Nordkyn Design who I'd believe to be a pioneer of LiFePO₄ akin to what Hugh Piggott is to wind has made an update adding charging advice.

The subtext I believe is much the same as I've been discovering.
ie. They're expensive bleedin' silly things, too finicky and complicated for no tangible difference in performance from what we had....(if he wasn't so heavily invested in making it work anyway)

I particularly like this remark he made:

"Fully-engineered commercial solutions simply ignore it and charge the battery to full whenever possible. This maximises reserve capacity – which the end-user notices and appreciates, reduces battery life expectancy – which the end-user only discovers too late down the track, and eventually brings in more business, because it means re-purchasing the proprietary battery with integrated BMS. This is why the very high cost of these systems tends to translate more into superior performance while they last than actual value over their lifetime."

[SparWeb]

Scruff
I never got Father Ted. I'd rather just sit in the corner and mutter "girrrrrls"...

[Scruff]

Twas a bit hit and miss alright...

[JW]

Hysteria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXjyoArp3ZE

[Scruff]

If yer serenading me JW your chances of success are way higher with steak and beer..

WuPoG likes her new fans and airflow inversion. The electronics heat is escaping, I haven't broken an internal air temperature of 30°C on the latest version. I tell ya listening to a 4kVA genset purring beside you at 40dB smelling great as she does never gets old. I'm still tweaking so I have to crack the lid every cycle to adjust for empirical parameters that got lost in the transplant so not a conclusive figure yet.

The battery heat is another matter. The LiFePO₄ cells that are enclosed in aluminium shells, stacked with an isolated 5mm air gap and are smaller than most are gaining 5°C per hour at C1. They're thermally stable below C4...what's that? Yes same as lead...well you can push lead to C2.5.

I must do a snag list about LiFePO₄ with the extensive list of special snowflake conditions.
The irony of swapping to lio-ion because users can't maintain lead is amusing. All you need to do with lead is charge them to specific gravity 1.275 once a month.
Now you might spend 5 years buying chargers, testing them and chucking them in the bin to get there but that's not the battery's fault and we oughta take it up with the charger manufacturers.

Eh...I'll do it for the laugh...it'll be a while, there's so many of them.
I might as well do a no BS version for lead too. It seems people think you can charge & discharge LiFePO4 faster? Haha...not sustained without a liquid thermal management system you can't....or well sure you can but you'll do untold damage in the process.

[Scruff]

I gorra call from a client thuther day. They were scaling down operations and lost a storage facility in the process. They called me to see if I was interested in taking possession of the complete electrical works of a LED set installation I built for them because otherwise twas going to silicon heaven.

I said "You betcha!"



24v Meanwells, 12v/24v PWM drivers, data interfaces, multi-core cable, connectors, enclosures...woo-wee...jackpot!

Inspired by my haul I decided there was nothing for it but proof of concept the lighting control system for the Truck.

What I have is enough for a:

Native 24VDC dimmable lighting system capable of powering 12V dimmable fixtures.
32 independently controlled channels with percentile proportional control of each channel.
7 recallable scenes from a single point of control consisting of those channels recorded at preset states or looks.
Master dimmers per scene.
2 way switched (upstairs - downstairs arrangement) with the central controller acting as a third soft-off point of control.

..now that I think of it...I'll need more lights...non-dimmables too.

Mwahaha..

[Mary B]

I miss the days of being able to scavenge electronic goodies... local electronic manufacturer has gone to full recycling, nothing goes in the dumpster anymore. I used to get huge heatsinks for free with just 4 or 5 screw holes in them, cabinets with a few holes that I could re-purpose... and tons of switching power supply electronics, boards they obsoleted loaded with FET's, drivers...

[Scruff]

I've never seen E-waste facilities with dry storage. Items go into the waste pile with a blown fuse or a shorted FET and they get to the processing plant months later completely ruined from being left in the elements for precious metal extraction and landfilling.
It's a lot like how we tell our children plastic bottles become new down-cycled plastics but the reality is if they make it passed the collection company mixing it with landfill waste then recycling means it's a cheap hydrocarbon and it's destined to become atmosphere after pushing steam into a turbine impeller.

I'm amazed how many people think incinerating plastics for lecky is legitimate recycling. 

[Mary B]

Tuesday at 1 is when they tossed the electronic goodies... so be waiting, dive in LOL

[tanner0441]

Hi

Gone are the days when you could remove the case from a piece of equipment and unsolder or cut the leads from a tag strip test them a pop them into a box or drawer. Now everything looks the same a bit bigger than a grain of rice with no markings and most things that are marked it is a code because the things are too small to get the full number on.  I have 95 little drawers with SMD components in and to coin the words of a song "they all look just the same."

Brian.

[Scruff]

I had a happy client in for the last two days for some van electrical mods and fitments.

You see this half of a 440Ah flooded lead acid battery we just installed hydrocaps on?



Maintenence constists of putting one end of this in a bottle of water.



..quick connecting thuther end to the line on the battery & squeezing it about 5 times twice a year.

The system can deliver C2.5 discharge



Alternator hits the peg at C4.5

Rain, hail, snow, ice, sun consistently..without de-rating...

Yes LiFePO₄, that is a

[bigrockcandymountain]

It can't exactly freeze or it will wreck the watering system.  Otherwise looks almost boring it is so effective and well done. 

I love the battery connecting straps.  Looks like they would handle 1000a pretty easy. 

[DamonHD]

I like the battery straps too, but ... immediately my glass-half-empty H&S voice starts talking about "what happens if a spanner drops on that lot?"  B^>

Rgds

Damon

[Mary B]

I like the battery straps too, but ... immediately my glass-half-empty H&S voice starts talking about "what happens if a spanner drops on that lot?"  B^>

Rgds

Damon

Why I wrapped mine in heat shrink tubing! I don't like sparks when I am working in the battery box! They make heat shrink in some monster sizes.

[Scruff]

It can't exactly freeze or it will wreck the watering system.  Otherwise looks almost boring it is so effective and well done. 

Arah I reckon there's intrinsic mechanical fuses built-in. In the unlikely event that happens then it'll probably push past the float valves and internally displace a coupla millilitres of electrolyte. Or it'll blow off the red rubber stop caps and spill H₂O not H₂SO₄.

I suppose time will tell although in my experience live-aboards rarely freeze. It's happened to me twice, once in Ireland and once in Germany. The bigger issues were defrosting the buthane cylinder over a wood burning stove and demounting a freshwater tank after cutting the submersible pump wiring off the vessel because it was fossilised inside.

I love the battery connecting straps.  Looks like they would handle 1000a pretty easy.

Leftovers from the solar racking angle ali.



Strictly speaking bar doesn't have a rating because it's unlikely to melt.
It's 4mm x 40mm so 160mm² CSA aluminium with an equivalency of 95mm² copper making it 250A rated to 90°C in 30°C atmospheric. The heatsinking to a water evaporatively-cooled lead lump oughta grant another 50A any day of the week.

"what happens if a spanner drops on that lot?"  B^>

Not much..look closer.

Besides what kinda spanner are you talking about?

Why I wrapped mine in heat shrink tubing! I don't like sparks when I am working in the battery box! They make heat shrink in some monster sizes.

Yurp. Gold Star!

The ground is wrapped in clear.
The 6V & 12V bars are double-wrapped.
HD, clear, glue-lined 4:1.

Here's the rest of the set



Nobody pulled me up on not cross-loading the battery cable feeders? I only realised I overlooked that looking at the hydrocap pic last night. They were cross-loaded, then the hydrocaps fouled the cable run so I swapped the ground takeoff...I have been losing sleep over it. 

[DamonHD]

The ground is wrapped in clear.
The 6V & 12V bars are double-wrapped.
HD, clear, glue-lined 4:1.

\o/

[Scruff]

Remember this pic way back..page #2



I got to wondering...those harmonics. Are Schlicktron building them into the inverters or is it a defeckedive unit?

Being the generous kinda guy I am I gave them an opportunity to defend themselves:

Here's a different pheonix, on a broader scale.



They're building them into it!

I just checked the datasheet



..What's the least you can do?



What do the Swiss do?

[Scruff]

WuPoG can maintain 100% duty with an electronics temperature <25°C



LFP raising 10°C per hour at 1C there's nothing I can do about short of a hydronic active thermal managment system other than operate her at a 20% duty cycle...ffs... ...does it never end with these lifepoo yolks?



I'm derating her so I can move on with my life. 20% duty cycle. Max duty 3 hours continuous @ peak load in ambient 10°C.

On the bright side...

How noisy is a "silent generator"?



@ 7m!? aren't most things referenced at 1m?

Ok..whatever...

How noisy is WuPoG @ 7m (max load)



What? Yes, dB is a logarithmic scale...

[Scruff]

Paranioa had me pull Lead-Fi apart. I was suspicious that she's too good.
That the batteries weren't balanced and that was why she exceeds capacity rating. I did mismatch breeds of 10Ahs batteries and was concerned one side of the pairings were being disproportionately discharged.

I got this far and found a disparity of ± 200mV between pairings and nothing consistent to warrant pulling it apart further and rearranging.



I added a centretap interlink and now she's ±40mV pairings.


I built this as a commission.



Plug and play camper PWM Solar kit.




Cheap and Cheerful all the way.




Custom €0.20 Maxi-Blade Fuse Holder

[Scruff]

An interesting document landed in my inbox today. Hard to find I'll say..



Ask yourself if cells (chargers more specifically) are to be derated at high and low temperatures to prevent lithium plating.
ie. irreversable harm that reduces life expectancy.

One symptom of this is spontaneous combustion if charged below 0°C

and manufacturers are protecting their "drop-in replacements" against self combustion but not harmful charge rates....neither are most "li-ion compatible" charger manufacturers.

..Is that good enough?

and

How accurate are laboratory produced cycle counts compared to real life results?

[Scruff]

I made a graph of that

Popular belief would have one believe
Bad <  0°C < Good



Taking my little camper as an example. If I threw away my FLA battery and got one under half the capacity for over twice the price, if I limit my alternator to 50% it's current output then I can use a "faster more efficient" variant about 3 quarters of the year...where do I sign up?


PS.  I use the most aggressive charge rates in Winter..go figure!

[bigrockcandymountain]

I had to look up the Ecopulse controller. They don't sell it on this side of the pond.  Looks like a good unit.

  Have you ever tried the Midnite Brat? It is a 30a pwm too.  It has no lcd.  I have had great luck with the two I have in service.

I like the brat for it's enclosure mostly.  It is almost waterproof.  Keeps all the dust out.  People tell me morningstar has a better charging algorithm but i can't really prove that either way. 

I know the $10 chinese ones have an exceptionally poor charge algorithm. I wrecked quite a few batteries before I clued in to that one.  Turns out an extra $100 for a charge controller that doesn't trash $600 batteries is money well spent.

I'm glad you are doing the side by side lithium vs lead testing. I see lots of people buying the simpliphi brand LiFePO4 batteries including a friend not long ago.  I looked hard at them when i set up my system and the literature definitely makes them look good.  Time will tell how they work for people i guess. 

[Scruff]

Hi BigRock

I had to look up the Ecopulse controller. They don't sell it on this side of the pond.  Looks like a good unit.

It seems a scarcity here too. I picked up two cheapies over the years I had earmarked for the camper truck until I ran the PWM vs MPPT Irish edition and decided I was done with PWM (unless it's a diversion controller). I bought a SunSaver MPPT and a ProStar25M MPPT for what I sold those EcoPulses for..Mwahaha...Winter solar shopping folks...bargain town!!
I had the current powerplant battery on trickle with an EcoPulse with 110Wp solar and a Victron 15A 12.5A mains charger for oh 3 years I'd say. The battery is souper healthy.



The Ecopulse typically handed the Victron it's bottom every day.

Pics taken at same time:



Floating



Bulking
They are pretty good for the price. Programmability at the unit means I don't need a laptop with a €30 RS232 interface and a €30 RS232 to MS Canbus interface to program it.
Autocycling display is a pain and drives me demented. I also got them to admit the SOC splash screen is a glorified voltmeter.


 

Have you ever tried the Midnite Brat? It is a 30a pwm too.  It has no lcd.  I have had great luck with the two I have in service.

I haven't tried any MidNite stuff. other than their DC breakers which are rebranded CBI with a higher rating and a lower certification. (ETL not UL)
This guy turned me off midnite because he was so right about everything else 7 years ago.
I also didn't eat humous for decades because it had a funny name...turns out it's pretty good.

I like the brat for it's enclosure mostly.  It is almost waterproof.  Keeps all the dust out.  People tell me morningstar has a better charging algorithm but i can't really prove that either way. 

MS are fanless the small ones are potted the mid to large are conformally coated.

It depends on what you are into. I think there are more featured, more powerful and more efficient controllers than MS. However I have never seen another charger breach 1.27 SG in a month of Sundays. If lead dies because it's not charged, and MS are the only charger I know that charge all the way well...I've spent a lot on disappointments.

You can't fool a hydrometer. That's how I benchmark chargers. If they pass benchmark on flooded I trust them with AGM.

I know the $10 chinese ones have an exceptionally poor charge algorithm. I wrecked quite a few batteries before I clued in to that one.  Turns out an extra $100 for a charge controller that doesn't trash $600 batteries is money well spent.

Amen that.
People often ask me for recommendations.
I source a good value used MS.
They ask do they need to spend that much?
I reply wouldya put cheap tyres onna sports car?
They usually buy the cheap one.
Then a MS soon after. Sometimes batteries too.

Besides I hunt them on Ebay most MPPTs I pick up used for peanuts. They're super reliable. When I pull the data I find they are hardly used. The Souper Charger's MPPT 60A used to charge a 12V battery with 300W...
..I stole that one I tell ya..

The first two digits of the serial no are the year of manufacture.

The best one was when I bought a SunSaver MPPT on Ebay from a guy. He later popped up on a forum. I showed him my solar log file. He told me I was doing it all wrong and how to improve it. Then I told him it was the data I pulled from his controller....no reply...

I'm glad you are doing the side by side lithium vs lead testing.

I see people recommending chargers.
I ask what the hydrometer says. They balk at me and say there's an app for that. 
We call that foxes guarding the henhouse where I'm from.

I see lots of people buying the simpliphi brand LiFePO4 batteries including a friend not long ago.  I looked hard at them when i set up my system and the literature definitely makes them look good.  Time will tell how they work for people i guess.

It's my considered opinion that if you're above 50° North the answer's lead, load or grid.

People aren't getting all the facts.
Plenty think a battery and associated hardware is unity efficiency.
That 6k cycles is attainable.
That lead dies as opposed to being killed by charger neglect.
And that lithium plating graph I posted earlier looks like this.

[Scruff]

Ever seen a 19 way mains connector before?

6 x 3.5kW single phase or 3 x 3.5kw 3 phase.



There was a day...back in my prime I could wire 200 connections in a sitting...




...and get every one in the right place too...

 




















Still got it! Narf, narf, narf!

[Scruff]

We've surpassed the point of expiry of WuPoG V2.0

V2.1 is thermally stable except for the lifepoooo chemical heat under stress...which is non-linear...50% duty has less than half the heat build-up as 100%. Situation band-aided and device dererated.


I'm currently running parallel operating (not series like everyone puts hybrids) 24hr baseload offset.



She's ac coupled, charging from solar at 500W back feeding the rest to the dwelling, when the sun sets she sends 300W to the dwelling until dawn.

Payment projection, not including replacing two extremely expensive inverters: never at this gig.

 

[Scruff]

I got to thinking...seeing I've but 62kWh through this machine testing alone...on that meter (version 4 I think) so likely double since inception.



For simplicity let's say it's 62kWh. That's 25cycles.

CALB claim a respectable 2k cycles unlike a lottov "you'll-never-prove-it" artists claiming 3k to 6k in extremely optimised, constrained and unrepeatable conditions to non standard (70% not 80%) cut-off points.

Well 62kWh is about 4 cycles for my power plant.

[Scruff]

Payment Payback projection, not including replacing two extremely expensive inverters: never at this gig.

I was wondering how long to run this experiment. It's a less lucrative form of cryptocurrency mining. Sure it works. I'm using more homebrew power. I'm making an additional ~€0.40 per day over what I would be. After the 20% round trip losses on state-of-the-art ultra-efficient inverter-charger losses.

So let's see...

18 Cells to 80% DOD
57Ah *18 * 3.24V * 2000 cycles = 6648kWh extracted over the lifetime ...1.6MWh lost to transistor heat sinks
1kWh from the utility network = €0.16

By end of life that battery (10 year investment) will have earned €1069

Bargain! Before I factor, time, hardware. Etc...



And just think the world coulda not wasted the energy taken to make the battery and the rest of the supporting hardware and still have gotten that 6.6MWh + 20% on the Network if I just didn't bother with the battery at all. 

Test ended.
WuPoG passed. My green creditials failed!

Grid-tied batteries...system efficiency reduction devices!
Not green, not viable, not even neutral.

Don't you love it when it'd be better for everyone had you done less!


Feck competing with utility fo a game of soldiers.
I'm taking on diesel powah!

[Scruff]

Behold the latest innovation from the Irish ProtoHouse!

In keeping with our unrivalled time-honoured tradition of building state of the art hardware from cheap Ebay orphans, job leftovers and stuff lying around the place.

She's not the most powerful...but she is the most fully-featured.



I'm ~€150 into this machine;

She's a 25A 12V/24V autoselecting mains/solar hybrid.

She's got....
Adjustable Current limiting.
Voltage-based Load Control.
Dawn-Dusk-based Load Control.
Remote Heat Sinked Temperature Compensation.



Sadly lacking any tail current feedback absorption end threshold that would make a unit like this immensely powerful MorningStar...shockin' omission isn't it?!...
Data logging.
On-board meter and programmable at the unit.
A not auto-cycling display (because professional tool!)
Remotely Sensed and fused B-Sense



Croc Clip Lamps



Stowable Cables





Cascade startup with array isolation protection.



Variable Input Control



Solar/Mains Auto ChangeOver with priority to Mains.



100% Duty Continuous Capable up to 40°C

Passive Cooling.
Charges Lead-Acid to 1.275 SG and beyond (you can't buy that).
LifePO0oo compatible (no other charger offers temperature proportional charger derating to mollycoddle yer precious snowflakes).

Now, why does a fellar with ~ 400A of chargers need another charger?



I'll explain later...

[Scruff]

I've been thinking about this AC coupling thing and considering this modern trinket grid-tied battery fashion going on. I'm looking forward to returning to DC-coupled systems to be honest.
Sure AC coupling is a universal translator but hear me out...

DC coupling is about 98% efficient to a DC load.

Please excuse the ballparkometer (current clamp)







That's a 25% efficiency loss to put energy into a battery.
It'll be another 10% to take it out again.

So my 10 panel array has 3.5 panels feeding system losses.

Meaning that in order for a battery to beat giving power away to the utility network for free, the battery would have to also be free...and the hardware to use it...and the install costs and even then only viable if I'm incapable of using > 80% of the power I produce. (rounded up as nil sum gain because the DC solar panel had to be changed to AC somewhere in the system to use it in a house)
Say X is the power I can use on demand and Y is the total produced - X - 20%
Extrapolate payback expectancy of Y against investment cost to recuperate it.

And another thing.
If I'm not at home in the daytime and my 2kWh battery is recuperating energy that I can use at night instead from my 4kW array.
...Ok so 4kW array = 12kWh < 20kWh per day, battery = really expensive so best get a small one.

10kWh < 18kWh exported anyway because battery is full...great stuff!