Solar project thoughts.

Not really a thoughtful comment, but impressive! Very neat install. If there was a previous thread on this , I missed it, I'll check. Im curious on the batteries.

How are you planning on monitoring and balancing the individual cells? I see no BMS so assume you will just manually keep an eye on things.

Might you want a disconnect switch between your solar controller and the solar panels, just in case you ever need to work on things in between? I guess you could just cover the panels to reduce their voltage to zero. I gave myself that option in my measly 200 watt system (yours is truly impressive!).

Steve

Holy smokes, what a bank of batteries and you probably need a bank to buy all those!! What type batteries are you using and what's the weight on all of them? How many total watts do you have for solar panels? I can't help with wiring or monitoring needs but we have some pretty knowledgeable people on this forum when it comes to solar, BKA being one of them. Nice project!

Are the batts in the basement? awesome system.

Need details on batteries.

thedavidzoo wrote:
How are you planning on monitoring and balancing the individual cells? I see no BMS so assume you will just manually keep an eye on things.

BMS is a pretty varied term. I have spent more time studying various battery management/monitoring systems than all other aspects of the build combined. In the end I decided to bottom balance the cells vs an active battery management system.

There is plenty of debate regarding bottom balancing vs. Top balancing (BMS) but these battery cells and bottom balancing have been around for many years with great success in electric car conversions, boating and off grid homes. There are a few of us using them in RV's as well. It is good to go through the exercise of your own research before making any decisions.

I am still open to a good battery monitoring system. There is system out of Australia that looks pretty cool. It keeps track of the cell voltages and can be set up with an alarm or relay to trigger a shut down of the bank.

In addition I will have a Victron battery protect in place that will shut the bank off if bank voltage gets too low. The inverter also has low voltage shut off. My main concern is drawing the bank too low by accident, leaving something on inadvertently.

LFP batteries have a long flat discharge curve with very abrupt tails on the ends. By setting conservative charging and discharging limits and staying safely away from the last bits of capacity should keep me fairly safe. Of course I will be checking voltages on a regular basis manually as well

Steve 83406 wrote:
Might you want a disconnect switch between your solar controller and the solar panels, just in case you ever need to work on things in between? I guess you could just cover the panels to reduce their voltage to zero. I gave myself that option in my measly 200 watt system (yours is truly impressive!).

Steve

There is a blue sea 187 series circuit breaker located between the panels and the solar charge controller. This circuit break is designed to act also as a switch. It is the yellow device on the upper left in the picture of the control dash I posted.

thedavidzoo wrote:
How are you planning on monitoring and balancing the individual cells? I see no BMS so assume you will just manually keep an eye on things.

It appears to be just a mock up with the guts to comes.

Not sure what 'battery wiring dilemmas' means.