On-grid domestic battery storage

Solarchaser

EVandPV said:

Solarchaser said:

Well today's update is pylontech cable arrived, and after installing 4 apps I finally have.... a screen full of gibberish for my 8 originals, and f all for the new 3000, it's too dead to talk humph!!

Crap, that's not good.
Think I mentioned this before but I read somewhere else that a guy managed to get a similar battery back to life by hooking it up to a charger and trickle charging it at 1 or 2 amps for a while. That got the voltage back up to a level that his inverter recognised and was able to charge properly from there.

Yes mate you did, but where do I get a 50v charger.. or a 16v charger come to that.

I'm tempted to jury rig my battery drill charger, but I think that might end in tears lol

Electricsaver

Hi All,
I am looking for advise as to whether it is worth it to purchase a battery,  to add to my 1.62KW  PV system with 12 panels situated on my garage roof.  The system was installed back in 2011 so I benefit from top rate Feed in tariff.
I have been offered to have a Sofar HYD3600 Hybrid bundle with Pylon battery US2000 (2.4 Kwh) for £2500 all fitted.   They say that my savings will be on average £45 per month.
I have many reservations especially during the winter months with very little sunlight to charge the battery. 
Also will it reduce the amount that I receive from the feed in tariff?
By the way I live in Southern England (Fareham). 
Your views would be much appreciated.
Walter

EVandPV

Solarchaser said:

3 battery modules all supposed to be 18v I guess or similar, all at 6V.

Stripped down a little more

Edit they are 3.2v cells squished together in a row of 10 so I guess doubled up at 16V

That makes sense, 3.2v x 15 cells gives you the 48v.
So it looks like each of the 3 packs will be 5 cells at 3.2v giving 16v as you say.
Those yellow connectors look like xt90 connectors for Lipo batteries and the white connectors look like the balance cables.
I'd say your best bet then would be a Lipo charger and set it to charge a 5s Lipo battery at 1amp.
Something like this ..... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Haisito-Charger-Professional-Multi-functional-Intelligent/dp/B0831G245T/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=Lipo+battery+charger&qid=1614414282&sr=8-6
Which of course you can send back if you no longer find you have a use for it. 😉

EVandPV

Actually, just noticed that charger has a LiFePO4 setting so that might be the best mode at 5s and 1amp.
Basically, any mode that gets the packs taking a charge will do.

EVandPV

This is worth a read too ...... https://www.instructables.com/Restoring-over-discharged-LiPo-Lithium-Polymer-bat/

It says you might need to set the charge mode to nimh or nicad depending how low the voltage is in each cell.

Solarchaser

Electricsaver said:

Hi All,
I am looking for advise as to whether it is worth it to purchase a battery,  to add to my 1.62KW  PV system with 12 panels situated on my garage roof.  The system was installed back in 2011 so I benefit from top rate Feed in tariff.
I have been offered to have a Sofar HYD3600 Hybrid bundle with Pylon battery US2000 (2.4 Kwh) for £2500 all fitted.   They say that my savings will be on average £45 per month.
I have many reservations especially during the winter months with very little sunlight to charge the battery. 
Also will it reduce the amount that I receive from the feed in tariff?
By the way I live in Southern England (Fareham). 
Your views would be much appreciated.
Walter

Hi Walter my advice would be to never talk to this company again.
A hyd3600 is expecting maybe 4kw of panels, having under 2kw will mean it will likely be less efficient than your current inverter.
A 2.4kwh battery could in theory save you 2kwh a day, so that's around 30p a day, and in theory then £9 a month.

The company isn't project solar by any chance?

Starfrog

Solarchaser said:

Electricsaver said:

Hi All,
I am looking for advise as to whether it is worth it to purchase a battery,  to add to my 1.62KW  PV system with 12 panels situated on my garage roof.  The system was installed back in 2011 so I benefit from top rate Feed in tariff.
I have been offered to have a Sofar HYD3600 Hybrid bundle with Pylon battery US2000 (2.4 Kwh) for £2500 all fitted.   They say that my savings will be on average £45 per month.
I have many reservations especially during the winter months with very little sunlight to charge the battery. 
Also will it reduce the amount that I receive from the feed in tariff?
By the way I live in Southern England (Fareham). 
Your views would be much appreciated.
Walter

Hi Walter my advice would be to never talk to this company again.
A hyd3600 is expecting maybe 4kw of panels, having under 2kw will mean it will likely be less efficient than your current inverter.
A 2.4kwh battery could in theory save you 2kwh a day, so that's around 30p a day, and in theory then £9 a month.

The company isn't project solar by any chance?

I agree that sounds a lot for just a battery and matching it with your solar array is not ideal. If you are looking for a return on your solar panels then a battery will not be ideal as you may end up waiting a long time for any ROI but if you have some money to spend then maybe its worth it to gain every last drop of production from your solar at least that way you get some benefit in the evenings, I’d also look at going onto the octopus energy tariffs as that would give you benefits as well. Your 12 panels appear to be individual 135 watt units which is low by todays standards if you get good coverage on the garage roof with them then you might benefit with updating them as they price of solar panels has come down and the watts have gone up. I personally have 12 solar panels with each one having 455watts output 

Solarchaser

EVandPV said:

Solarchaser said:

3 battery modules all supposed to be 18v I guess or similar, all at 6V.

Stripped down a little more

Edit they are 3.2v cells squished together in a row of 10 so I guess doubled up at 16V

That makes sense, 3.2v x 15 cells gives you the 48v.
So it looks like each of the 3 packs will be 5 cells at 3.2v giving 16v as you say.
Those yellow connectors look like xt90 connectors for Lipo batteries and the white connectors look like the balance cables.
I'd say your best bet then would be a Lipo charger and set it to charge a 5s Lipo battery at 1amp.
Something like this ..... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Haisito-Charger-Professional-Multi-functional-Intelligent/dp/B0831G245T/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=Lipo+battery+charger&qid=1614414282&sr=8-6
Which of course you can send back if you no longer find you have a use for it. 😉

Mate that's awesome,  I didn't even know there was such a thing. 
It looks like the kind of thing I'll find many uses for, like my nicad drill who's batteries are poor, and as time goes on, as I start to accumulate more dead pylontech's.

Well, I suppose I should see if it works first.
Fingers crossed though

Solarchaser

EVandPV said:

This is worth a read too ...... https://www.instructables.com/Restoring-over-discharged-LiPo-Lithium-Polymer-bat/

It says you might need to set the charge mode to nimh or nicad depending how low the voltage is in each cell.

Going by this, with my cells being around 1v ish, it's likely they are permanently damaged, which is a shame.
And when you think about it being a £1k + Battery, you would expect it would be able to guard itself against that at 2 years old.

Well I guess we shall see how they respond.

mickyduck55

Electricsaver said:

Hi All,
I am looking for advise as to whether it is worth it to purchase a battery,  to add to my 1.62KW  PV system with 12 panels situated on my garage roof.  The system was installed back in 2011 so I benefit from top rate Feed in tariff.
I have been offered to have a Sofar HYD3600 Hybrid bundle with Pylon battery US2000 (2.4 Kwh) for £2500 all fitted.   They say that my savings will be on average £45 per month.
I have many reservations especially during the winter months with very little sunlight to charge the battery. 
Also will it reduce the amount that I receive from the feed in tariff?
By the way I live in Southern England (Fareham). 
Your views would be much appreciated.
Walter

I had a system installed just over a year ago for 4 times that storage at about double that quote.  Way too expensive and I would say that small storage will not be a great deal of use. One big advantage with larger storage is being able to use smart tariffs as offered by Octopus.  In winter I charge my batteries with electricity at 5p a kW.  My usage is about 15 kWh a day so in winter 9 from the  battery some from solar and some imported from grid at about 14p, in winter I probably save £1 a day.. in summer probably £2 but I would probably have saved £1.20 anyway just using solar generated during the longer days.. very rough figures

The storage offered to you would not even get me through the night in summer.  I really like my system but it was a decision not made by any ROI, like you I am on a good FIT so decided to spend the money generated on battery storage.