Fogstar Home Batteries (Domestic <30kWh ... etc)

ed110220

michaels said:

QrizB said:

Just ordered a Fogstar Seplos 15kWh batt to go with my existing Sofar ME3000. It's all @Solarchaser 's fault for sharing the deal on the recent SolarEdge thread!

Don't suppose there is a blog or community with discussion on how to set up home battery solutions?

I found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3qSFP9MnBA&amp;t=1200s (and some other videos from the same guy useful) because he just covers the stuff you need to know. Off Grid Garage is a bit techy and more for a real enthusiast I think. There's also a Seplos community group on Facebook. Bare in mind he's building the V3 kit, there's now a V4 and I'm not sure how different it will be.

QrizB

QrizB said:

Just ordered a Fogstar Seplos 15kWh batt to go with my existing Sofar ME3000. It's all @Solarchaser 's fault for sharing the deal on the recent SolarEdge thread!

True to their word, Fogstar have delivered in two shipments. I've now got a lounge full of cardboard boxes; four boxes of LFP cells, one large box of box 😄 and a smaller box of odds n ends.

Looks like I know what my project for the coming weekend will be!

ed110220

QrizB said:

QrizB said:

Just ordered a Fogstar Seplos 15kWh batt to go with my existing Sofar ME3000. It's all @Solarchaser 's fault for sharing the deal on the recent SolarEdge thread!

True to their word, Fogstar have delivered in two shipments. I've now got a lounge full of cardboard boxes; four boxes of LFP cells, one large box of box 😄 and a smaller box of odds n ends.

Looks like I know what my project for the coming weekend will be!

I see they have changed the case. When I built the V3 I had to leave out quite a few of the spacers between the cells, otherwise there would be a gap under the corners of the top plate and the corners would bend when screwing it down. Other than that it seemed straightforward.

Netexporter

Fogstar Black Friday sale now on. Even more bargainaceous.

Solar Battery Storage | Fogstar UK

QrizB

Netexporter said:

Fogstar Black Friday sale now on. Even more bargainaceous.
Solar Battery Storage | Fogstar UK

That ~40kWh IP56 outdoor rack for £3500 does look tempting, but honestly I don't have any need for it!

Also £3500 is more than I'd usually spend on a used car, let aone a rack of batts

My single 15kWh Seplos Mason will need to wait a bit longer before it gets a friend.

Netexporter

QrizB said:

Netexporter said:

Fogstar Black Friday sale now on. Even more bargainaceous.
Solar Battery Storage | Fogstar UK

That ~40kWh IP56 outdoor rack for £3500 does look tempting, but honestly I don't have any need for it!

Also £3500 is more than I'd usually spend on a used car, let aone a rack of batts

My single 15kWh Seplos Mason will need to wait a bit longer before it gets a friend.

You fell for it, too! That price is for a half-filled outdoor box. You have to select for the full monty version.

QrizB

Netexporter said:

QrizB said:

Netexporter said:

Fogstar Black Friday sale now on. Even more bargainaceous.
Solar Battery Storage | Fogstar UK

That ~40kWh IP56 outdoor rack for £3500 does look tempting, but honestly I don't have any need for it!

Also £3500 is more than I'd usually spend on a used car, let aone a rack of batts

My single 15kWh Seplos Mason will need to wait a bit longer before it gets a friend.

You fell for it, too! That price is for a half-filled outdoor box. You have to select for the full monty version.

Hah, they know how to lure in suckers like me then!

The ~15 kWh indoor units are £1500 or less, and I'd guess are more reasonable for most people.

JKenH

I was wondering about the legal and insurance implications of installing one’s own grid tied battery. I imagine @QrizB and @Solarchaser have the appropriate levels of qualifications to self certify any electrical work but in the event of, say, a fire any non-competent installers might potentially find themselves in a tricky situation. It’s one thing knowing how to do the install but another complying with regs. There are a number of electrical installation jobs that I might possibly consider myself competent to undertake but I would need someone to sign them off. As an example, I could add a spur from a ring main which depending on location might fall outside LABC regs but should still be signed off by a competent person. If I were to add a spur in the kitchen, although only requiring the same level of ability from me, it would be notifiable to my LABC unless I had it signed off by a qualified electrician.

Solarchaser

Things are different in Scotland, but id imagine in England and Wales you would need a spark to connect you to the CU and ensure your rcbo's are small enough to protect your wiring and your wiring was big enough to take the potential load.

Domestic electrics are pretty straightforward tbh, it's generally single circuit (ev charger for instance, or oven)
Parallel circuit (lighting generally)
Or ring circuit which is basically a Parallel circuit with a return (sockets).

Everything is a single voltage too. 240Vac

Id argue that if you wanted to be by the regs, you would get a spark to wire up your inverter on the AC side as most of the DC batts are 50V, and when it comes to it, doesn't really matter if you have 1 x 50v battery or 100, as they still have to go through the inverter which is wired by the spark who will (we hope) ensure the correct level of wiring, isolation and rcd /rcbo protection.
I could be swayed by an argument of the spark also being responsible for installing any DC isolators, but id struggle to see the need for a spark sign off on the 50V DC side after isolator.

My lux inverters are the same ones which started with i think 6kwh each and now have 30kwh each.

I'm sure that my installations are electrically sound, I mean, my kids live in this house, right?? whether an insurance company would decide I was legally competent, I couldn't say.

When i rewired my house as part of adding an extension I got a spark to come and do a full test at the end with a few grands worth of fancy test machine to certify all was good, it was required for the final sign off.
However that spark told me that I didnt have enough earth in the house, and I needed to connect all my radiators and plumbing to it as that was my main earth, or something to that effect.
He advised I should fish out the earth's I had just cut on twin and earth cable going to double insulated potlights/downlights (as they only took connections to live and neutral) and reconnect them all too, so as to add to my earthing capacity.
I believed him, and conveyed that message on here and was basically told it was a load of tosh, the earth comes from the supply.

Why bring this up, because I feel qualified and competent are not the same thing, and that works both ways around.

Ectophile

Solarchaser said:

Things are different in Scotland, but id imagine in England and Wales you would need a spark to connect you to the CU and ensure your rcbo's are small enough to protect your wiring and your wiring was big enough to take the potential load.

Domestic electrics are pretty straightforward tbh, it's generally single circuit (ev charger for instance, or oven)
Parallel circuit (lighting generally)
Or ring circuit which is basically a Parallel circuit with a return (sockets).

Everything is a single voltage too. 240Vac

Id argue that if you wanted to be by the regs, you would get a spark to wire up your inverter on the AC side as most of the DC batts are 50V, and when it comes to it, doesn't really matter if you have 1 x 50v battery or 100, as they still have to go through the inverter which is wired by the spark who will (we hope) ensure the correct level of wiring, isolation and rcd /rcbo protection.
I could be swayed by an argument of the spark also being responsible for installing any DC isolators, but id struggle to see the need for a spark sign off on the 50V DC side after isolator.

My lux inverters are the same ones which started with i think 6kwh each and now have 30kwh each.

I'm sure that my installations are electrically sound, I mean, my kids live in this house, right?? whether an insurance company would decide I was legally competent, I couldn't say.

When i rewired my house as part of adding an extension I got a spark to come and do a full test at the end with a few grands worth of fancy test machine to certify all was good, it was required for the final sign off.
However that spark told me that I didnt have enough earth in the house, and I needed to connect all my radiators and plumbing to it as that was my main earth, or something to that effect.
He advised I should fish out the earth's I had just cut on twin and earth cable going to double insulated potlights/downlights (as they only took connections to live and neutral) and reconnect them all too, so as to add to my earthing capacity.
I believed him, and conveyed that message on here and was basically told it was a load of tosh, the earth comes from the supply.

Why bring this up, because I feel qualified and competent are not the same thing, and that works both ways around.

If you have lights, you're supposed to run an earth all the way to them even if the light fitting is double insulated.  Because light fittings can be changed, and the next one might not be double insulated.

Your main earth should be either the supply earth, or else an earth rod (or equivalent) if you have a TT supply with no supply earth.  Using the cold water pipe went out in the 1960's when water companies started using plastic pipes.

The rules over bonding plumbing have changed over the years.  There used to be an attitude that enything made of metal, that didn't move, should be bonded.  That's disappeared from the more recent Wiring Regulations, but some old-school electricians probably still do it.  It's still the case that "extraneous conductive parts" (metal things like pipes that come into the house from outside) should be bonded back to the main earth terminal.