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You guys in the USA have a USA centric view. Its not the whole world. A quick Google search and Victron made $23M in profit for the last year. What other solar products company in the US is doing that? Victron supply equipment to rural communities in 25 African countries alone. Maybe they just...

So many people seem to focus on the price. I can get a "blah, blah for this little money". If you focus on the specification rather than the cash, you would find you are not comparing like for like. None of the prebuilt cheap batteries from China can certify cell origin or grade of cell. Often...

I just left a sailing forum for exactly that reason. I tried to correct lots of incredibly inaccurate posts. Banging your head against a wall. The value of a forum is in the answer they can provide you. The answers need to be correct. If this forum degenerates into the "loudest voice is right"...

Have you seen the size of the homes in Abu Dhabi?

JK every time

We solved out energy problem by renting the solid wall Victorian house out in the UK and going sailing. We are in the Caribbean. We don't need heating, obviously, but all our power needs for electric cooking, hot water and reverse osmosis drinking water, are met by 920w of solar. We can sit at...

What if your systemm is 24v. You want a 3kw 24v inverter and way more battery capacity, say 400Ah at 24v. I can't see anything that compares to DIY

I swapped from being a devoted Apple user to Android. I would never go back. Apple stuff is overpriced. The batteries don't last. Designed for 2.5 years. The cables always fail. They won't allow you to use after makeover charge cables. Protectionist garbage. The EU will be stopping Apple in...

I built a 8s 280Ah, 24v battery for my boat with 200A JK BMS with 2A active balance. Just ordered 8x EVE 105Ah cells from 18650 battery store to build a second smaller bank, also using a 200A JK BMS with 2A active balance. I don't need huge battery capacity but the resilience of two parallel...

We are on a sailboat. It's a 24v boat. Made no sense to build 12v lithium batteries but total sense to build 24v batteries. That's what we did. 2x24v lithium gives us some redundancy. The starter motor is 24v so we have a pair of lead batteries in series for that. Having everything at 24v makes...

The biggest benefit for me isn't the 6000 cycles. It's the fact that I can heat hot water, run the 1.8kw watermaker motor and make 200 litres per hour and cook with the induction hob. I couldn't do this with my lead bank. The solar now makes 20% more output as it never goes off bulk phase. We...

Finally got my 8no CATL 280Ah cells installed in my boat. The system is complete with JK BMS, Victron Smart shunt and Class T fuse. I used 1" cutting board as compression plate material and 6no stainless steel threaded rods. Plastic hydraulic pipe covers the threaded rod. I fitted stainless...

I think if you have a back up only system, then lead can be a good solution. For cycling batteries on a daily basis, it's hard to beat lifepo4

I will balance them anyway. It does now harm. Easy to do.

I would max out solar. My 920w of solar cost a fraction of the price of my 1.1m turbine. Forget what it says on the side of the wind turbine. You will only see 400w in a gale. Most of the time you will be lucky to see 100w. I will not be fitting another wind turbine. Mine is old and when it...

I think the NH00 fuses are also designed to not throw molten metal around. Same principal of an enclosed ceramic fuse surround with silica sand. A very good alternative to class T and a lot cheaper in Europe. About $10 per fuse

You likely had a cell over the threshold voltage that shut the battery down. You can only measure average voltage across all cells. One could be very high and one very low. You would still see an an average voltage that was normal. This is why it is far better to purchase lithium batteries with...

I don't get this. The limiting current draw on most systems is the inverter capacity. Size the BMS for the inverter capacity or if you like, twice the inverter capacity for extra resilience and you are good to go. Why would you size a BMS for the whole battery capacity at an arbitrary 1C? That's...

Mine are installed on a boat. The built in, dedicated battery box has a 10mm clear perspex lid. Once the lid is off there is another clear perspex lid over the cells. You have access to BMS and class T fuse with the cells still being protected by the perspex. Belt and braces but safe

You are the chosen one?

44ft monohull. 920w of solar doing everything whilst at anchor in the Caribbean. We have a diesel generator as back up but very rarely use it. Hydrogenerator for on route. We also have a wind turbine. We cook on an induction hob, make hot water on the immersion heater, make drinking water on the...

It doesn't matter what cells you choose. How you compress them and how you restrain the compressed pack is more relevant. When i recently built my battery, I used CATL cells as they have a great reputation. Largest lifepo4 cell manufacturer in the world. I installed them in 1" nylon compression...

It sounds like failed diodes to me. I had an Hitachi alternator that only put out 8A. It was diode failure or partial failure. New diodes fixed it

It's all pretty academic for me. Since my cells are in a sailboat, they need to be restrained from flying around the battery box. They are 'compressed' as that allows them to be fixed in place. As a bonus, we don't get any stress at the cell terminals. My cells arrived with a data sheet that...

Have you considered liquid cooling? At those temperatures you would benefit from cooling the batteries.

With 900w of solar, I have pushed 362kWh through my Victron MPPT in 3 months!

My 720W solar array has harvested 362kWh in 3 months. My portable 200w solar panels have only been installed for 2 months and not everyday. They have contributed 47kw. All my kit is Victron. We harvest way more kW with MPPT that PWM. We also harvest way more kWh because we use lithium batteries...

The Trojans are kept on float with a Victron MPPT as per manufacturers float recommendations. The generator battery alo under the same set up. A third Victron MPPT provides charging from the engine battery when the engine is running. The Trojans also have Victron battery balancers and Sterling...

That's wasn't the question. May be if you spoke Chinese ?

I just connect the JK BMS and charge the battery. Monitor the cell voltages when you get up near fully charged and see how the balancer gets on. If there are any cells lagging badly behind, connect your charger to that cell. Let the balancer cut off the high cell voltages.