I just finished setting up 30Kwh with a BMS for $4,300 (this price already includes Shipping costs). Not only that, but the 32 cells were brand new, A-grade CATL 280Ah cells - the best of the best, and shipped by an American company, located in America. Amazing deal!
Batteries are from Battery HookUp. They were assembled for a project that never made it to production, so battery hookup has stacks of these 280Ah CATL cells which have never been used (they dissemble the packs, so they do have Epoxy on them, but that is not a big deal). It's a fantastic deal for brand new , grade A, CATL cells.
There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary installation. Maybe not, but the wall mounted configuration I opine, is much cleaner and stable especially for anyone even close to a seismic zone. Question: Since these feed an inverter with at least ~ 120V AC inverter, is there any need for an equipment bonding jumper, so all the metal cases and enclosures remain at the same potential in case of a fault; thus, providing a path back to the source? Even ~ 54 Volts DC in those high Ampere discharge rates I imagine could be shockingly dangerous 😂. I don’t have much experience with commingled systems, and there may be very good reasons for keeping them isolated.
Great video and awesome review, David! At these current levels I am glad to see you use your IR camera to look for hotspots. But you might consider investing in a good milliOhm meter to make sure that your connections are tight and wire resistance is balanced.
That overload capability is great. It means that you could load-shed a big load (like a shower) by measuring the current actually being drawn from the inverter - you have enough time for a contactor to operate to drop the shower if someone starts a more critical load.
OMG ! It has been a while since I’ve watched the channel and I was surprised by the beard and hair! 😮. You are now a match to my 19-yr old son, except he is 6’7” tall and has red hair and beard. But otherwise, you’re a match. 😂. Love your channel and wish I had your skills. My son is mechanically inclined and thinks RU-vid is the new classroom. I will turn him on to your channel because your videos are well developed and your explanations outstanding. Please keep posting! 😊
You take apart most batteries. It would have been interesting to see the internal construction and vibration considerations as you were touting the external features. Thanks. Love the channel and I think you are doing a great job for your family. Happy Fathers Day
Discover has (for years) had a video out dunking on SimpliPHI showing the robust internal construction of AES build versus that of the less-capable SimpliPHI. All-said, I have a stack of nine SimpliPHI 3.5/48's because the Discover AES was not on the market back when I researched and purchased... There is an extreme voltage sag from SimpliPHI modules when pulling full load on the system at less-than 40%-30% SoC. Unfortunately it is time now to expand the inverter capacity (and so too the storage capacity) and I have to make a decision about whether to buy more SimpliPHI modules to match the existing open-loop system design, or re-invest in a new battery array to gain closed-loop operation. It's exciting anyhow that home energy storage battery technology has progressed so much in the time since just before Discover AES arrived to market - I wonder if Discover has any plans to update with greater energy density for the AES platform?
You don't have to do one or the other. For example, if your new inverter system will require, say, 250A, then you could buy 2 Discover batteries (rated for 260A continuous). They can be paralleled with your existing SimpliPHi bank at a central bus bar. The closed-loop communications of the Discover will talk to the inverter. The SimpliPHi still will be open-loop, but expand the capacity. I'm wiring this up now with my existing EG4 battery. Same concept. The Discover battery does the talking.
Plus rivets where you aren’t in studs would be a good option Or could have put mounting plates on before putting plywood up with nut serts on back side or through bolt with large washer, small recess optional on mounting board or wall No worries about battery position relative to stud positions as long as you secure your plywood to studs correctly I work on RVs and have to put mounting plates in and secure mounting plates Dry fit with cardboard the size of your batteries and make sure you have room for wiring
Looks like in the summer they will introduce ELEMENT ESS Battery basically looks like SOK or EG4 batteries. Just waiting for the UL certification. Looks like they will have a rack for up to 6 batteries and also have outside racks for these. Brief description manufactured with the highest-grade cobalt-free LiFePO4 cells.
Thanks for sharing the great testing as always! Do you have any experience with Epoch batteries? (I think they’re made or at least based, in Atlanta, GA)
Love your content David; Side note I always get a kick out of your thumbnail subscriber photo vs what you look like now. Looks like a guy with just hopped on Grateful train 😂
Excellent review and commentary. I have one XW6048 and 3 Discover 7.4 running a small farm house. It is a golden combo and I wish I had more. Batteries are built like a tank and the inverter can handle anything you give it.
quite solid specifications, let alone the fact that actually overcome the expectations (over 200 amps lasts a minute which is wow) for me 1C charging is a great thing even though I wouldn't use it, a 0.75C charge and a maximum capacity of 85% should keep it safe and healthy along the entire lifetime
David this was another super informative video from you as always. I being older have a problem with the metric system if you know what I mean lol. Help us old folk out by giving both to us please. As for cost it is expensive, however, you pay for what you get in quality by the looks of it. Have a super blessed week.
some people might think these are to expensive @ close to $5k each(about $150 for shipping), but for what you get its prob a better deal than others. This is the first Ive seen these, they seem rock solid, safer than Lipo, and should last a long time. Only thing I'd like to see is maybe a small screen built into the battery so you can check there current conditions real quick.
I hope you continue to improve and teach what you're learning in your path to net zero. I loved the pace, information and test you're providing. Not too technical, not too shabby. Subscribed.
Well I'll tell ya what you need to get. Well it depends on the size of your house and how much current you are using or area of country. It all plays a part. For starting out you need around 20k or more in inverter power. I have 26k. Need around 200,000 watt hours of Lithium. And around 30KW of solar panels. Reason being is when it's winter and cloudy for days on end you panels produce next to nothing. You need a big battery bank. Also a genny would be nice.
I'm really enjoying your work, David. Of those who specialize in this sort of technology, you seem so possess a kind of humility and sincerity that most of the others lack. Your presentations are explicit and straight-forward and easily understood by the ADD-Afflicted amongst your audience.
Hello DTG, I got news for you, we tried the newest EG4 18K-PV 48 V and it's awesome. The easiest installation ever. This beast with 4 Discover AES 48V (6650 AH) is all, I'll ever need. Thx Dave, I hope you get your hands on one and try it.
@@DavidPozEnergy No DTG, I'm too shy to do so. You will love this beast, you don't even need a combiner box with this hybrid system. And it's only $5,999 compared to Solark 15K, $8,000+
@@DavidPozEnergy That would've been a dream come true. You're my hero Dave the Great!. You've so many tools, I wonder if you knew how many. I live in NJ and collect used panels and batteries for people in Africa where millions of people can only afford one 50 watt solar panel or one 100 watt panel for an entire family. So having 2 (100 watt panels) is being ahead of many. My biggest dream is to be able to set up a website that will collect used solar equipments for them. ( 99.99 of all solar batteries in West Africa are 12 volt They usually get the used ones from Europe instead of the new ones). Electricity over there like in Europe is 220 Volt. Thx Dave the great for all your efforts. Wishing and your family the best.
@@DavidPozEnergy if you ever wanted to set the batteries up a Schneider or whatever system all on 1 board, I can purchase 5 to 10 of them from you and put them in my homes. 110 and 220 outlets with a honda generator if need be. All I'll do is purchase the batteries too, from you and set them up. Maximum 20 to 40 panels (230 watts or 600 watts) 2 discover batteries per system
Impressive for sure I sure enjoy true plug and play as we know it is not common. I like that second panic look at the battery when attaching the wire that is one we all need to do every time to make sure our colour code is correct lol. Cheers on another great video.
Hi David, I wanted to thank you for your efforts in making this great content. I am very envious because I live on the north side of a steep mountain on a completely wooded lot. There is no solar panel sized area of my property that gets direct sun more than 5 hours per day, even in peak summer. So solar is out for me. Also Tomatoes ;) Still lots of fun to watch you do it.
Your welcome. Thanks for recognizing the huge effort it takes to make these videos. I'd love to live on a mountain side, so I'm envious of that. Perhaps a wind turbine could work for your site?
Wow, I live in a cabin surrounded by SWAMP. 😂 Since you live high up, you might want to look into electrostatic motors. (Note: this can give 24/7 low levels of power all day!) For the higher you are up the more power you can get! (With enough wires, you might be able to farm 1000 Watts or more! All due to height!) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_motor
@@marlonlacert8133doesn't the atmospherics static, get pushed up from the mountain? I'd probably say yes and no. Yes because of the ground. And no because of wind.
I hope the wall mount works but with two batteries mounted on 24” OC studs you’re only going to catch one stud. The 400lb load may pull the ply layers apart or allow the screws to pull out of the ply. You might consider some horizontal strips of steel, lag screwed into your studs 24” OC behind the ply, and bolt through the back of the steel and plywood to mount the batteries into the 16” OC holes as designed.
True the weight pulling on the threads may separate the layers of his 3/4 plywood but did you notice that those lag bolts have at least a 1/2 in shoulder on them so technically there's only a little over a quarter inch of thread engaged in that board! Hopefully that chip board behind it is really strong!
I looked up the specs on that battery and it's about 200 lb which is about equivalent to 14 KW hours of lithium iron phosphate cells. It seems that for that weight this battery should be capable of much more output than 7 kilowatt hours.
David you are the one that led me to Growatt and now this. The enter key of my SPF5000 ES refuse to work, now the inverter can not enter settings mode. The most annoying thing is that I bought 5pieces from Dubai and I am in Nigeria.
Hello DTG, you're the one I always go to when I want to be sure of anything in the solar world. Many people I know only swear by Solark 15K over Schneider XW Pro. You have the final word. Thx
Why was the little timer you added on the bottom @13:30 ish, running so slow? It would show 1 second change every 2 seconds? The video timer showed 13:24 when you started the test and 15:22 when the test ended. Meaning the test ran right at 2 minutes. The timer you had on the bottom of the screen only ran 58 seconds.
25:31. There is a major issue with your lag bolts going into the plywood, in that they have a shoulder section without threads that looks to be at least 1/2 of an inch long, and may be closer to 3/4 of an inch. The result is that the bolts are relying mostly on friction between the smooth bolt and the plywood instead of having the threads engaged with the plywood along the entire length of the bolts. They will likely hold for a period of time, but will likely eventually work themselves loose. Far better to use either more #10 or #12 screws, or the specified #14 (1/4 inch), as long as they all have threads along the entire length of the screw body. This is a somewhat common mistake that I have seen equipment installers make when bolting to thinner substrates such as plywood. 2/0 is plenty big for the paralleling jumpers, since they only carry 1/2 the load, and a 2/0 75º conductor in free air will carry 265 amps, enough for a 12 kW inverter at 48 volts.
From the other comments here, it sounds like that 7.4 kWh battery costs either $4600 or $7300. Where I live (NC), 7.4 kWh of electricity is worth about 80¢ (retail price). A good LiFePO4 battery should be good for about 5000 charge/discharge cycles. So, over its life, that battery might store a grand total of about $4000 worth of electricity. So the battery costs a little more than the retail value of the electricity that it can store. That's actually pretty good for batteries.
Thank you for reading through some of the comments. I agree, it's a fair price, but not a bargain. But, this battery has the UL listing which some of the less expensive options don't.
The high current capacity of these batteries is pretty amazing. I'd like to see them offer a high voltage version, like 400 volts. That way it would work with the Dcbel Energy r16 DC power manager, which wants 400 volts DC nominal.
Why didn't you use just the Xan bus? You could save one terminator and the Schneider system would see each battery individually, including charge/discharge rates, right?
So they cost about $4200.00 each? I went to their website. Looks like a third grader or a scam artist built it. One of those sites selling you a book for $9.95, but if you pay $29.95, you get three books and 14 OTHER "bonus" books.. Anybody who won't tell you a price on their website doesn't get my money. If I have to call and talk to a salesman, they are overpriced. Love the video and how you explain everything.
Where the positive and negative terminals are, I'm wondering if there is a non-electrically conductive, but thermally conductive material they could use, to keep those points cooler. Seems like an opportunity where the big red and black pads are.
Excellent review David. Reminds me of Snap-On versus Harbor Freight. Some very nice batteries. That said they are large, heavy and expensive compared to SOK or EG4. Roughly 2x the weight and 4-5 times the cost. 192lbs for 130 amp/hour at 48v for a van/truck/car is really, really heavy compared to other options. That said, they are very, very nice batteries.
Most important elephant in the room on this fathers day is BRAKE THE HABIT of TOUCHING TERMINALS some day you might get bit and it will kill you it scares the poop out of me when I see someone talking to a camera while touching the terminals. I have 39 years experience as a electronics and design engineer. It starts out with "it's only 12 volts" or "it's only 24 volts" then "it's only 54 volts" . Try going to a funeral with a friend laying in a casket face reconstructed due to part of it blown off from touching a terminal. And the crushing grief from his fiance and family dealing with " it's only ? volts"
Never heard about this company before, but they look amazing! Great review. Having now looked into the company, I see that they are in the process of releasing a server rack battery called Element. Hopefully they will send you one for review 🙏.
QUESTION - while the batteries in the video carry the name "7.4" the label mentions "48V 130Ah". As V*Ah=Wh and Wh/1000=kWh, with those two numbers we get 48V*130Ah=6,240Wh -> 6,240Wh/1,000=6.24kWh. If, out of those 6.24kWh 80% is usable, then we end up with ~5kWh effective capacity per battery, not 7.4. So the question with all this is, what's the story between the 7.4 and 5?
I was a little confused at first. After reviewing the manuals for use with Schneider, I found my answer. 7.4kWh. This is the grand total of the cells inside the battery housing. Meaning, the cells used in construction total about 144Ah. 130Ah: This is 90% of the total. This is what the BMS will tell the Schneider Inverter it can use. The idea is this, when the battery and inverter have set up closed-loop communication... The battery will tell the inverter to shut down at low SOC (state of charge). But, the battery remains on. This means that when the sun comes out the next day, the MPPT charge controllers can still turn on and begin charging the battery. If the battery were completely turned off the solar wouldn't be able to being the charging. That reserve % in the battery allows this to happen, and extends the cycle life of the battery. Note, this LiFePO4 battery has a nominal Voltage of 51.2V, not 48V. Think of the "48V" on the label more of the category of equipment you can use.
FYI enjoy it for the little time they gonna work, Discover used a cheap BMS and at least here in PR they have a high failure rate and you can find a lot of them on recycling centers in the US.
I'm wondering if the steel case is to contain lithium battery fires and or explosions. I've seen lithium fires take out aluminum, but I believe it's burn temp is around a thousand degrees F below mild steel melt temps. Maybe these are the safe case alternative. Personally I prefer the highly underrated super capacitor battery method, charge and discharge is better and the lithium bond isn't there to go rogue.
I'll never buy from a company that wants all of my information before they'll even tell me what something costs. I can appreciate the quality of the battery but if it's 10k a pop it should be awesome. Bring that in at a decent price point and you might have something but from my experience today trying to cost them I will never be a customer for this company. Great review up to the 28 minute mark where I went to cost them. Didn't watch beyond that because nothing else that's said will make any difference. Even if you tell me what you paid for them or what I would if I wanted one. Please do not take this as a slam on you. Great review, shady practices of the reviewed product is where the failure is.
You're confusing your expectations with why the prices aren't listed. That company doesn't sell directly to consumers. They let their distributors display their own prices
It would appear that there are no prices on their website. Any company that is not willing to publish prices, even a guide price, loses me as a potential customer.
I thought I would ask if you know the answer to this question. I have a off grid 240 volt electrical panel powered by two LV6548 (SunGold Power) inverters. Since they are the my new grid, can I add 7 - 215 watt 240 vac Enphase micro inverters to my off grid electrical panel with damaging my main inverters?
i took some time to look at these in quick detail. My thoughts are firstly that i don't like that they are have passive bms in the box. Wondering what your thoughts were on their inside control as well or rather wondered if you checked on it. Cheers..
Looks like straight out of a battle ship tough (just toured the USS Missouri). Even painted the right color. I will have to go for a lesser one due to cost but these are beasts. Very nice.
>>The batteries reviewed in this video were provided by Discover Battery at no cost. No cash payment was made for this review. That's not a "disclaimer". It's a disclosure.
Steel boxes are to contain the explosion and fire of the honking big batteries. Do you have them in a separate bunker with a sprinkler system, halon Gas, not water.
You did awesome job explaining the step by step setup, thank you again for another outstanding video. The company that sells this battery however have no listed price, instead they want people to contact them for pricing, that's very shady. For that reason I simply will not have appetite for their product.
They don't sell direct to consumers, only wholesale pricing. There are several distributors in the US that sell these and I've seen pricing about $4500. But, it will vary quite a bit from one supplier to the next.
It seems these batteries are really heavy for the amp hour size. Was just looking at some cells about the around 100ah size and though they didn' have a case and bms, they were around a hundred pounds for 16 cells. Weight can be a factor for the RV user. Still looking for lifepo4 cells from a trusted place at a reasonable price.
To fix the double cable adaptor not to break add an extention cable n make a spot on the wall somewhere to hookup the double conector n it will be out of the way
Id see them in 12v capacity so I could add as needed ! Some people just don't need that much power, like my wife and I ! We are pretty frugal with power usage !
Geek info at my level. Nice Vlog. Would have been good to know the life time of Battery? See if I can look it up. Its only money. What will be the price of Batteries in 5 and 10 years time.
