From your video, it look like your battery bank has a switch to disconnect the battery. That would isolate the battery from the victron power in unit. Switching out the battery negative cable isn't required?
Are you using the breaker for the batteries or for solar panels? I think you said solar, but look like battery. Your battery voltage would be max at float or absorption, so those original switches should be okay. Continous rating is 275adc, intermitent is 455adc, cranking is 1250adc and voltage rating 12vdc to 48vdc. As long as your battery is not exceeding 275amp, should be okay. If you decide to disconnect, turn off the load first and you will never see arching. Regardless of what breaker or switch you use. There is a proper shut down proceedure. You should never feed the solar directly to your batteries, use the victron distributer with the shunt with appropriate disconnects. We also use victron power in system. Each battery has it own disconnect switch & our power in has a fuse for each battery. It only take a few bolts and nut and fuses to add fuse system to the power in unit. Can be done under 10 minutes or less and no exposed connectors. I only watch this video, so perhaps i missed your setup. Using the power in bus bar, and equal length of cabling for each battery is essential, otherwise you will have inbalance, one battery working harder than other, etc. Look like your battery cabling is random lenghts? When calculating cable guage, count total lenght of both plus & minus to determine amperage. Also, both lines should always be the same total length. For myself, I always go one step higher than needed. For example if #2 guage is adequate, I go to 2/0 cabling. @simplyoffgridlife
OMG. So you don't know enough about LFP cells in advance when you start building a battery and making a video! The 3.2V pole voltage is NOMINAL and the cells are fully charged at 3.6V and their absolute minimum is 2.5V... And another thing: 3.2V does not tell you the degree of charge of the cell with close to sufficient accuracy, because except at the extremes, the pole voltage of the cells changes VERY SLOWLY with the degree of charge growing up. You need a BMS device capable of measuring millivolts, which guarantees that the current charge is determined with sufficient accuracy. Why am I wasting my time watching this? Because I have imagined that videos are made expertly. But apparently I'm wrong.
That's incredible the cost of electricity $1000 Euro's a month. Solar is a great option your lucky that don't have problems with building code in regard to DIY battery's and solar panels. Here in the US they have so much regulation around solar makes it very expensive to install. I believe lot of that comes from the electric utility who are against rooftop solar although they don't say that publicly.
Funny that plastic peeling my wife came home with a new company iPhone and all day she left that plastic over the screen she wanted to wait until she got a screen protector. She came home showed me the new phone first thing I did was rip off that plastic like pulling a Band-Aid off. She wasn't too happy with me I was like "What I thought you forgot to remove that".
I saw a post on DIY solar forum just recently got a quote for 18 kw in panels and 40kwh in battery storage off-grid with a transfer switch was quoted $175-180k USD by a solar contractor. You can see why so many DIY systems out there he even got his permitted by the city cost him 1/3 of that. I found solar racking is not all that much more then Unistrut these days. Uni-strut used to be cheaper not anymore at least here in the US.
Your very lucky co-worker he was standing on much shorter ladder hanging Christmas lights on a 10 foot roof eve he lost his balance fell broke his back vertebra. The only good luck he had was didn't damage his spinal cord, but he did puncture the spinal area caused the fluid to leak out. He was in a body cast for several weeks if anyone knows how itchy a arm cast can be can you imagine being in a full body cast. I took a ladder class as part of safety training for my employment some good safety tips such as all extension ladders have to be tied off so they can't fall down. You can find these tips online or watch some videos they might seem overly cautious it only takes one fall off a ladder end up paralyzed rest of your life, or worse.
I suggest wearing rubber gloves when handling these. The reason is they are heavy and that blue plastic can be slippery I know someone who dropped one and damaged it put a nice dent in the corner. It might have worked he didn't want to take a chance on a damaged battery. I put on some rubber gloves gives you lot more grip I carry them with one hand on the bottom. It's easy to get excited and try to go too fast then end up dropping one.
It pays to do your own research instead of copying other RU-vidrs. It's not the cell manufacturers fault you chose the wrong cells because you copied someone else
I like this instruction video. Suggestion to use 4 newton metres as Andy from YT Off-Grid Garage found that some studs on batteries strip their threads which is a world of pain to fix. He has tested some EEL battery boxes as well and that is why I bought them. Also it's a good idea to cover the cells you are not working on so they cannot short when something accidentally falls on them. André in Sydney
Absolutely inspiring video, thank you for all of you hard work and useful info. I am also living in France near Cahors and have decided to go the solar route but cannot definitively find our what the actual rules are. I know that as a self install you are limited to 3.2kw. But does this actually mean 3.2kw per phase (I have 3 phase so is this 9.6kw)? The other thing I can't find any official info on is, that if you decide not to feed back any power (zero) to the grid do these limits of 3.2kw even apply? You comments on these points would be greatly appreciated.
I was instructed by Seplos not to do it this way, because you will be assembling a battery pack with fully charged cells. The safest way is to connect them over night in parallel as you have done, so they balance out on the nominal voltage of 3.20v and then assemble them into the pack. Plus the cells need to clamped to prevent swelling. Once everything is connected you start the charge under a controlled conditions, meaning the BMS will monitor the pack, fuses will help to stop any problems escalating, and via the software you can control the top charge voltage i.e. 3.65v as the max for each cell, and charge up the pack that way. This needs to be done in a controlled environment i.e. fire blanket on hand, and smoke detection system, and so on. Once fully charge, you then discharge down to the lowest voltage as recommend by the manufacture. Then you charge the pack backup to fully charge state at a level of your choosing i.e. 3.60v or lower to make a 100% charge battery packs. Then the battery pack is ready for every day use charging and discharging between 20% and 80% will ensure a long life. If you like I can send you the instruction manual that Seplos sent me. Cheers Ken in Wales.
put a bit of leccy rad tape to mark positive, on everything, have a rubber mat to lay on top of those cells - too easy to drop something onto the terminals - double check volts in your balance plug before you plug it into the bms - safety first
Good to see another lady spark, theres not too many of us around. Anyway, very interesting and informative video. So glad to see you kept the bloopers in, thank you
Give the lady space please. These so called know it alls always hating on others. She has clearly said she is still learning. You can still give good advice without being condescending. Most of us are self taught and got better as we gained more experience. And yes making mistakes is part of the learning experience. Hats off to you madam. You are doing an amazing job. My advice to you is dont listen to the naysayers. Do a lot of research, consult and take every available precaution because electricity is dangerous! That said. Take it in your stride and have fun!!!
The problem is, people who are learning shouldn't be giving on advice on such things or making instructional videos telling people the process for setting up such a large system which can go wrong if things aren't done correctly.
SARAH, We are proud of you and enjoyed each stage of your Solar Project & looking 👀 forward to the next phase! Wow! 100 kWh of batteries 🔋 is a huge storage & more roof panels!
How can you recommend a product you bought from Aliexpress, which you have not tested, or even know anything about? Are you familiar with short circuit current, and can estimate how big it would be for your batteries, thus calculating what breaker you need? I can tell you if you have a short circuit that breaker will not help, the arc will not be put out and your wires are going to melt.
Assembling my first battery i wore gloves, covered everything and watched with the thermal camera every 5min. On my second battery i was confident. So no gloves, everything open and then i kicked my tools with my foot and was lucky it fell down beside the battery and not ontop.
haha that was interesting. I'm glad you didn't screw those yet..it was close one.. and yes you have to be very careful ofc if there wasn't any permanent damage it is fine. short or such is not a problem. as it isn't likely to happen with just normally placing those bus bars. So that is fine. Ofc these experiences are very good for personal growth. We will learn a lot by doing something wrong. With luck not catastrophic bad..just bad :)
EG4 server rack . batteries, welded buss bars. grade A cells . 100/ 200 amp hrs. pro assembled. BMS readout and rs484 link. $1,500 delivered newest ones have heater and fire suppressors.. no sparks needed. signature solar in texas.. good product. add a victron smart MPPT...or 2. for redundancy and multi arrays... thanks
Hello Sarah, one thing I would suggest the next time to build a battery is to wear protective glasses, as those spark were flying everywhere, and you only have an eye once! The fire brigade recommend fire blankets for battery fires as well, so make sure you have some to hand. Plus at the higher voltage junction I would also recommend wearing gloves. Otherwise great video, and good that you included your mistakes. I had a similar one, when one of the small balancing terminals shorted across, and nearly welded itself to the cell terminal. I too have fitted NEEY to my Seplos Mason battery packs.
Personaly I would have taken all the panel cables through the roof and done all the connections inside the roof. If you have a panel go faulty how to you test for it when the penels are in series?
I suppose you may have the smaller torque wrench now, but many choose not to have and do their small domestic jobs without it. I used to torque threads with ordinary wrnch by applying approximately the force required to reach the recommended torque. For example, if you need 6.4 Nm, you force will be 6.4N at the arm length of 1 meter. Then, suppose you have your ratchet wrench handle 20 cm long, and suppose you apply your force in half of your hand width from the handle tip, so you will apply 6.4N*(100/15)=40N, i.e. about 4 kgf. You can either use your feeling or use a hook scale to apply the force needed. That's it. So you will never overtighten your nuts and, hopefully, never undertighten them too
