Solar PV battery options

The only way I would ever even consider buying a commercial / pre made battery is if it is the smallest you can get and if the install is giving you the SEAI grant. And if I didn't have the time nor the inclination to DIY.

It's simply not for everyone. There is something to say for a system that is owned by someone else who will fix it when it goes wrong, etc. This will of course cost you significantly more and could easily double or treble the payback time of your entire system

This may well have been covered earlier but have you folk advice on installing a solar pv system without a battery now but when batteries improve sufficiently adding a battery to the system. How realistic feasible and cost effective is this approach?

Not seeing a crazy amount of support for the top shelf 🤣

Hi Graememk, are the CALB batteries on PWOD 'A' rated vs the Prismatic EVE's which always seem to say 'A or B' rated on PWOD just wondering on the CALB quality?

I understand you don't need to compress the CALB's vs the other ones as per your pic.

You must have a driveway full of EV's for 40KWh 😄😄

With the cold weather we had this week, wondering if anyone that's hammering the batteries for the 2-3 hour window at night if they saw a drop in charge rates, have seen it go down as low as 7c in the attic but charging at 15A for 9 hours they don't complain 😁

Didn't notice any issues with mine but last night only needed to bring them up 30% to full as was cracking day of production yesterday so were full at the end of the day.

They are in a battery box surrounded by 125mm solid insulation so that would help massively, plus insulated the shed they are in also in the summer but only with 50mm insulation.

No drop off in charging other than the usual when it tapers off approaching full.

Inverter temperature never really dropped below 20c with it being -4 here last night and checked battery temps on BMS and sitting around 13c.

Ideally would like battery charging window longer than three hours and thankfully seems to be going this way with energia now going to four hour window with theirs.

For 7c per kw at night with pinergy though I'm more than happy for batteries to charge at what the inverter is rated for and well below the maximum that these cells are rated for charging at. It is similar to your own setup and most people's in daytime when the sun is shining your batteries will be charging at maximum rate in the day in summer. Wouldn't consider that hammering the batteries either though 😃

Yep not happening with a solis alright 😃15 mins at best of 100a and then 70. Still undecided on moving to a sunsynk yet due to some little issues with family members one. Plus at the minute the Solis is more than capable but will decide after seeing how rest of December goes.

Insulation is definitely needed if in cold attic or shed alright and no bigger test to it than this week

Yeah quite annoying I can't get live values (including temps) directly from the BMS, I can use a serial cable to connect to the dyness but they only provide a crappy windows app and it only gives values of the pack currently connected to.

If only there was a way to connect the COM port to my HA server (usb to serial cable I already have) and actually read that COM port data directly into HA since solis BMS data is useless.

Not on the COM port, I think that uses that serial communication protocol, probably something similar to the pylontechs

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/serial/ this would be ideal but not sure if they use their proprietary protocol inside that .net app they sent me.

I have a DHT sensor right beside them which probably gives me about the same readings.