Solar PV battery options

Programmed my inverter to not discharge my old pack this morning and when I had a look, all cells were fully top balanced by the NEEY active balancer with all cells between 3.651 and 3.653V, these balancers are super good and a bargain for what they can achieve in just a few hours

I was parallel charging / top balancing the new cells since last night. With 3 bench chargers 😂 but this was at least going to take another 4-5 days, so decided feck it, I will let the active balancer do its job so pack rebuilt with the new cells, so now have 48 (30kWh) with another 16 on the way from China for 40kWh. All fitting neatly into an old cabinet (with the back removed for natural convection and a couple inches away from the wall. Quite pleased with the result. Must make up some door / panel for the gap between the doors. Did a reasonable job tidying and taping the balance leads in place, will do a really good job next time as that will be my final pack.

LOL yeah that'll be me finished. Every additional 10kWh adds less value. 20kWh wasn't enough. Needed the 30kWh and the 40kWh will give just a bit more buffer for all round less micro management, no need to train people in the house what to do, etc. I also do expect budget friendly V2H solutions will be on the market in a year or two - that would give extra storage for free as the car is there anyway

Couldn't resist the bargains, the last lot was again only just over €1300 with the VAT not charged. Really hard to go wrong for €130 per kWh for these super sturdy CALB cells

Final plans then are upgrade the Sunsynk to a 9kW single phase hybrid inverter and get 5kwp on my north facing roof (for total 16kwp), another single panel into my back wall string and eddi installed and outputting to immersion and storage heaters. Should all be in place before the start of next winter. Hopefully a lot earlier

Looks good @unkel. Can the neey active balance be left on at all times and continue to balance on a daily basis at fully charged or@unkel is it a case of having to connect it and disconnect after doing the job and do the same again when want to rebalance?

Also are they usually around 100 euro as just had quick look at them there in alexpress?

Thanks Unkel good to know I was thinking of skipping the top balance myself for now as have a Neey, there is an IOS app but haven’t used yet

So I was expecting some cells to go high after an hour or two of 100A charging last night. And they did. I then just switched off charging at the inverter and let the active balancer spend the rest of the night balancing. Did a good job of it, but the battery was obviously not yet completely fully charged when I switched charging off. Will do the same again this evening. I've a lot more buffer now, so I could afford to not fully charge

Nice one, ordered one here last night so should be here in about two weeks. Assume these are wired similar to the BMS. Postive 1 and negative to first cell and then to each positive on cells after that up to 16?

In theory. But I've two issues with the Sunsynk that have not been resolved yet even though getting the latest firmware. One is that I have no way of limiting the charging or discharging power (even though you specify it in the menu, you can even specify it per time slot - but this doesn't work). So when you charge from the grid, it charges at max power (about 100A) continuous.

Thats a nice return

Yep. With all the round trip losses, people need more than they think. And then you are starting to talk silly money if you have to get pre made packs. How much is a 5kWh pre made pack these days retail, at least €2500? Plus a good bit extra for proprietary cables? And many inverters having a maximum number of packs you can connect?

With the CALBs you can still add another 10kWh for €1300. And another and another. And you don't need any other hardware, just reconfigure your pack, you can still use the single BMS / balancer you already had, the busbars and bolts etc. are all included. After buying and selling some previous batteries, I think the 40kWh I soon will have has cost me about €3000

I'd rather a more positive message in my sig 😂

I honestly wish we didn't need these batteries and that the Irish government was a bit more progressive thinking and would have forced a more equitable feed in tariff and smart meter solution onto the utility providers.

"The grid should be our battery"

How's that for a sig?

I think come August when my energia EV tariff expires the sig will need to be: I don't need sex, the government f***s me every day!