yeah thanks!! as per our conversation on the other thread I have changed all of the parallel connections to much thinner cable with a fuse, I should have the video up today. thanks for your comment!

Morten Mortensen b

yeah lol, the irony of it all ;)

Hi mate, thanks for your great comment! They are vented. yeah, both my electrician and the manual for the inverter say what you have just told me. I was just wondering if it would be enough to vent the room. I will build a box for the batteries. I am already looking into how to get my battery monitor to turn the fan on when the batteries go over 29 volts and I will vent it straight through the wall. Just wanted to see what you guys thought. Its funny because my inverter manual says dont mount the inverter on top of the batteries, but then it also says keep the cables as short as possible and under 6.5ft (2m)... Do you think this means 6ft to the busbars or 6 ft total run from inverter to busbars to battery? Thanks again for your suggestions and the support!

total run if you can. Not more than 10 I would say.. Your safe up to around 10 no more tho. Feet that is lol.. I just run mine on a timer I got off ebay. Mine is a 12 volt setup. I would not just go off volts if you can.Best to run the fan from when the bats are charging to when they are not, I have seen in the past guys do that and it works the trouble is when the batts get older the may vent a lot sooner and after you add water that mat mess with the timing. So best to just run from sun up to sun down.. That is just me tho. O and Bats are like us they like to stay 72 to 80f year round. Sorry for spelling in the ER eick and IV in my arms/hands and just not the best at it lol. Your welcome. I have videos of my setup if you would like to see. God Bless

yeah great, it is a lot easier to just run it on a timer. I have also seen hydrogen sensors for the arduino which I might try and play with in the future. I have subed to your channel and will check out your videos tonight. thank again for your help.

Those 6-9 feet max cabling length are based on using much thinner gauge cables than Mandela man are using and I don't really think you can bluntly say that a cable msu not be more than x feet long without knowing what's the loading of that cable is and how much voltage drop you are prepared to suffer from using a too thin cable. In this case the a 1 meter length of 75mm copper wire will have a voltage drop of 22mV with a current of 100A across it so I think we can safely ignore those '2-3m max' wire length recommendations! :-P You can have a wire as long as you want / need as long as you do your due diligence and check the voltage drop across if with your max load and as long as that's acceptable for your application then go for it...

Hi Kasun, realistically these batteries tend to last 5 to 10 years depending on how often you cycle them. I discharge my bank about 10 - 15% everyday so Im hoping for 10+ years.

10y + great news to hear. thank you. 😁

that is very theoretical though. I really have no idea ;)

@daro2096 Hi daro, I oversized the battery bank so that the batteries would last longer and in the climate that I live in I hardly ever have to run the generator. In fact I have only run the generator twice in three years and that was because the bank went under 80% and I wanted to run a big wet brick cutter on a day that it was cloudy. the battery bank is generally fully charged by mid day.

I have updated the wiring, check out my latest video. but basically I would have to remove all the wires to check individually although you would probably see it with the SG as you pointed out. I check both regularly. thanks for your comment. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/q7Fnepmhltuqnnk.html

I didnt short circuit this battery bank. The wiring on this was done correctly although not the safest because it isnt easy to fuse those big wires. Here are the changes I made and final update on my wiring: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/q7Fnepmhltuqnnk.html what is it exactly that you want to know, i dont understand your question but it might be answered in the update video.

Hi mate, do your batteries charge equally, the way you have them set up or do you have to equalize them very often? Im just wondering about my set up because of the comments from DIY TESLA POWERWALL about my system being dangerous in case of a short circuit because of all of the parallel leads. thanks!

I talked to my solar guy and he says DO NOT wire the batteries that way. they will short circuit and cause all kinds of problems. we talked about using like a large bus bar and running cable from that bus bar to the terminals which will give you that better more equal charge you are looking for. if fact that's what he did with his. I will sketch it out for you and send it to you.

Hi, I have the three battery banks connected to a large bus bar. the batteries wont short curcuit "because" they are wired this way but if there is an internal short there is a big problem because there is nothing to stop it. Im going to follow DIY TESLA Powerwalls advice and change the large parallel cables for small ones and fuse them individually. Its funny because if you look in the rolls battery manual it says to wire them up this way and doesnt mention fusing or problems with shortcuits etc. But thank you for looking into it and getting back to me, I really appreciate it. and please send me that sketch, would be interesting to see..

cool you got it down. what email should I send it to. mine is azhothomestead@gmail.com

Hi mate, I updated my wiring and now have no prblem getting to my caps for filling. I also made all the wires much shorter. check out my update video. hows your bank doing? we are almost a year in and so far so good with mine.

Thanks for all of the info. Will be useful for others coming by here. I am aware of most of that info but designed my whole system around my charge controller. I have a tesla chargers s80a24 charger. I have been following John Bedinis (r.i.p) work for a long time and decided to bite the bullet, buy the charger and see how it went. They have slightly different ideas on how lead acid batteries should be charged and have very good results in making battery chargers that bring batteries back from the dead. Everything from selection of solar panels to battery bank etc revolves around the charger. Im offgrid and not a big fan of one string of batteries which is the case in most 48volt systems. If one goes you lose the whole system, no redundancy. I essentially have three individual banks, so could have two fail and still have power. Also making two strings @48v would be more expensive than the extra cost for wire In regards to efficiency, my system is over sized and I live in a place with 300 days of sun a year and panels get full sun all day long. My batteries are in float as of about 11:00 so efficiency isnt an issue. totally the opposite, I run around turning everything on(washing machine, air purifier, heating/aircon etc) once the batteries hit float to use the energy and spare the batteries. If i move house and build another system in the future I would probably go 48v and use midnite classic along the lines of what you describe. this system was designed around what I though best at the time and so far so good.

Ok makes sense based on the 24v charger. Tho i have looked up the tesla charger 5 and can't seem to find much info apart from the main website and a couple of very bad youtube videos. I can't find a single person that has done a detailed review on it, opened it up, shown what's inside and how the charger is built. Which worries me abit. My first thoughts after looking at the website and watching the video are, is it made in a guys garage?. After looking at the write-up on the site, does it do anything close to what it claims and given the free energy stuff in a book he talked about it makes me think, is it really doing anything special inside the unit? or is it just a transformer and a few leds. Maybe I am wrong but when there are no reviews for a controller that has been around for years v3 to v5 thats a worry. is the unit any good? and how does this Telsa charger compare to a good brand MPPT, I would love you to do a video on the charger itsself given you have one, Take the top off or the side and video what's in it? That would be very helpful, and i am sure it would be a handy video for many others that have googled the product. :)

one string of batteries vs two yes for redundancy you would need twice as many batteries but that's not such a bad thing. It would mean the charge cycles would be reduced and the batteries would last much longer. Your very lucky with so much sun :) I am from New Zealand and in the winter with my 20 panels there are days where i don't make anything more than 4kWh, however the next day is normally better so it's not too bad. Sounds like your house engery use is low which is good and will help with your current setup.

yes i had all of the same worries and suspicions for the same reasons. But I decided to take a gamble and go for it. I had to pay extra for it too because I live in Europe so had to pay import tax on the thing which wasnt cheap. It is made in these guys garage lol. Its all hand made. I have opened it up and will do a video on it soon. So far it is charging the batteries as they say but I dont have any loads on the batteries at the moment. Soon I will have an electric fridge and freezer and will get a better idea of how well this thing works. Will keep you posted.

Yeah, we are really lucky here in the Med. Lots of sun, good temps all year round. Never really gets too cold, but gets pretty hot in the summer. Its a small house. About 80sqm. All of the lighting is l.e.d, we are going to buy A++ fridge and chest freezer which use surprisingly little energy, something like 30 watts each. Thats an average but still pretty good. We have got an ozone generator for our washing machine, so we can wash all of the clothes in cold water and so it only uses like 300watts. We have been living with two 300watt panels and 2 x 250AH 12v batteries in series with a 30amp charger for a year. that ran the lights, internet water pump and washing machine. I think we ran the gene twice last year when it rained for 3 days straight which is very unusual. I think this is definietely one of the best places in Europe to do solar and the place with the stupidest laws.. We have takes on grid tied systems that make it not worth selling back to the grid and then takxes per KW produced wherether you are selling to the grid or using it for home use. its bonkers. Not off grid though.

not if the only way current has to go, is through a battery with higher resistance to get to the lower resistance battery. This way there are a lot more pathways to be able to skip the battery with the higher resistance. as far as I understand anyway ;)

Yes, but if you connect 3 batteries and a tomato it doesn't matter how many leads are tied into that tomato, the current will still flow to the batteries first.

no they are not, dont buy one. mine broke after 2 days and the company wouldnt take any responsibility for it. they are made in someones garage...

Hi John, thanks for the recommendation. I dont really know very much much about batteries. LEarning on the fly, so I keep a close eye on my batteries. I will be making some changes to the battery cables soon and will have to rewire the bank so will give them some time to settle and check them individually. I generally check the specific gravities once a month and refill with water. How is you battery bank set up and how deep have you been discharging them? 4 batteries dead in 3 years definitely sounds like you have some major issue. They should be under warranty, contact your supplier to see what they say. thanks for your comment!

My bank was eight 38Ah SLA yassua's so I couldn't check specific gravity, but were were set up as a single string with positive charge on one end, negative on the other and discharge the other way around. I got them from a back yard distributor and I'm now thinking they may have been end of warranty old stock to die so early. and, I failed to keep the receipt, so nill chance of warrenty unfortunately. on the plus side, I got them ridiculously cheap at the time (heh, the old adage of you get what you pay for I guess) as for DOD, I only had a working inverter for the first year and never took them below 12.2, so only 20% discharge, and after the inverter shit it's self, then only ran LED lighting, so they've had very little real use really. so what killed them in reality? no idea. I've just learned it's best to really check on them individually once in a while. my charger is a Epsolar 2215bn which is an entry level actual MMPT charger, which from all I've seen and read, are pretty good for the price.

Thats a shame. Yeah hard to tell why batteries die, but with SLA's they probably just ran dry. Have you popped that caps of to check the water levels? You might as well you have got nothing to lose and if they are dry you may be able to get a bit more life out of them. Those SLA batteries, from what I understand are the perfect example of planned obsolescence. They stop you from doing exactly what you need to do to keep a lead acid battery running.

I now see that they are agm batteries? I thought they were just the sealed lead acid type. Are you running 8 parallel batteries for 304AH @ 12volt? from what I have read, most manufactures recommend to not go over 3 parallel strings, so that might have be the problem. I ran my house on 2 x 12v @ 250AH to make 24v for a year. You can get big 12v batteries fairly cheap now. Mine cost me 200€ a piece and they worked perfectly. So you could effectively remove all of your issues by buying two new batteries run in parallel that would remove the headache and problems of having to deal with 8 batteries running in parallel.

yes, I popped the caps off and checked, a few of the cells were a little low but not under the min line and all are clear without sign of cell damage or anything. so no obvious sign of reason of failure. no, the models I have are standard wet cells not AGM. yes, I was running 8 parallel batteries for 304AH @ 12volt yes, eventually I may buy new batteries if I come across an inverter worthy of having for the right price. for now, I'll just run these on the LED strings and small batons in the house until they die completely.

that thickness of wire comes in that colour in my region. watch my most recent video on my battery bank, things have changed since then. I explain most of what is going on in the video, what is it that you dont understand?

I have now changed it and will be putting a video up soon. All of the parallel cables between the three different banks are fused so I can just remove the fuses to trouble shoot. Do you have anything to do with the Surrette company? thanks for your comment.

Yes

ok, great. Its strange because in the Rolls Battery manual(page 9) it says that this may be the best way to wire the batteries but doesnt talk about fusing or problems in trouble shooting. Maybe that info should be updated.