On-grid domestic battery storage

EVandPV

Just scored a pair of 2.4kwh Pylons on fleabay for £1400 with a bit of haggling and a £75 discount code (PRISTINE, runs out tonight). The seller threw in the long cables for £20 too.
Just waiting for the installer to get back to me with a date then will order the Lux ac controller from Think Renewables.

Coastalwatch

EVandPV wrote: »

Just scored a pair of 2.4kwh Pylons on fleabay for £1400 with a bit of haggling and a £75 discount code (PRISTINE, runs out tonight). The seller threw in the long cables for £20 too.
Just waiting for the installer to get back to me with a date then will order the Lux ac controller from Think Renewables.

Is that £1400 each or for the two!

Do you know at what rate they can be charged/discharged at and does increase with each additional battery pack added?

EVandPV

Coastalwatch wrote: »

Is that £1400 each or for the two!

Do you know at what rate they can be charged/discharged at and does increase with each additional battery pack added?

£1400 for the two, 4.8kwh in total.
Max charge/discharge rate is 2.4kw per Pylon depending on the controller. The Lux controller will allow up to 3.6kw with the 2 Pylons.

gzoom

Barely 3 days old and the PW has survived a trial by fire, it really is an awesome bit of kit.

This is our normal electricity consumption profile, car charging at night off peak, than majority of gird energy use when we get home after work.



Yesterday inlaws arrived, lots of cooking, electric heater on in the guest room, white goods running, can you guys guess what time they got to the house .



But thanks to the PW our grid energy use was virtually zero,



Instead currently the house is pulling crazy amount of power from the grid, along with the car charging.



In absolute money terms for electricity its not a massive deal, but I can now see how localised battery storage systems can help to smooth out energy demands during peak evening hours.

It also shows how our own individual actions really has a massive impact on grid demands, but who here is brave enough to suggest to their inlaws maybe they need to modify their electricity consumption behaviour .

The PowerWall it self though is a great product, compared to battery in the EV its going to get far more used!!

Now I need to plan our solar PV expansion .

1961Nick

joefizz wrote: »

Another quick update.
Id dropped pylontech a mail about the rs232 port and comms software/clui access and they have just replied saying that its for their technicians only and not intended for customer use.


No real surprise at that, did no harm to ask though.
The information is available online if anyone was really interested in invalidating their warranty ;-)


For those wanting ease of change on the sofar, its probably worth dropping them a mail asking about possible future menu access/additional feature/remote access etc.

I think they're missing a trick here. There's clearly a load of data available & I'm sure they'd make money selling the hardware & software to access it. If they hosted the platform, it'd give them a considerable amount of user data & also a potential route for software updates/remote maintenance.

joefizz

1961Nick wrote: »

I think they're missing a trick here. There's clearly a load of data available & I'm sure they'd make money selling the hardware & software to access it. If they hosted the platform, it'd give them a considerable amount of user data & also a potential route for software updates/remote maintenance.

Well thats what Id hoped by sending the email. Say no now but go away and think about it...
If anyone else was to email them similar then....

Solarchaser

"Max charge/discharge rate is 2.4kw per Pylon depending on the controller. The Lux controller will allow up to 3.6kw with the 2 Pylons."

Are you sure about that EvandPv?

I ask, because I was under the impression they can do 1.25kw output each, and so you need 3 to do the 3.6kw output from the lux

EVandPV

Solarchaser wrote: »

"Max charge/discharge rate is 2.4kw per Pylon depending on the controller. The Lux controller will allow up to 3.6kw with the 2 Pylons."

Are you sure about that EvandPv?

I ask, because I was under the impression they can do 1.25kw output each, and so you need 3 to do the 3.6kw output from the lux

Yeah the manual recommends 1.2kw (25amps) but the max in the spec is 2.4kw (50amps) and peak is 4.8kw (100amps) for 15 seconds .....

Solarchaser

Yeah, I take that as 25a not what it can do for 15 seconds, not the recommended max tbh.

I'm just slightly concerned you might be disappointed with the performance of the lux using two batteries, as everything I've read says you want to use 3.

As a comparison for the sofar. With 2 batteries. You set the internal software for a max charge and discharge of 50a. So taking a nominal 50v, that's only 2500w output.

I'm sure they could run the 50a each, but I'm not sure for how long, nor how it would do for battery health long term.

I say this as someone who has been trying to wrangle a way to get the lux parallel system and going to 4 batteries between the 2, and it just would seem very limiting.

Though this is all my opinion only... happy to be wrong, not least as it will save me £1500

EVandPV

I'll check with the guy who's doing the install.
I just took it that 25a was probably recommended to maximise battery lifespan and 50a for max performance.
Tbh, 2500w would still be fine for our average useage.