Greetings from Cura?ao

[Michel]

Hi Everyone!

I'm excited to say that I'm joining this community! I live on the beautiful Caribbean island Curaao, part of the Dutch Kingdom. Obviously we have an abundance of sun throughout the year. As a child I was always playing around with small electrical components building and soldering small devices and playing around with old 12V UPS/Alarm lead acid batteries.
About a month ago I came across an article written on Jehu Garcia's electric VW Samba. I was fascinated by his battery bank and continued to watch his and others video's on youtuberegarding the 18650 batteries. I was so much so fascinated that quickly brought some tools and batteries to play around with:

• 2 lots of 99 18650 2600mAh cells from Alarmhookup on eBay. (sold out unfortunately)
• iMax B6
• Zanflare C4 (based on Jehu's recommendation)
• A bunch of holders

My dream is to eventually be able to completely power our householdusing solar power. Over here we have something which is called a "solar tax" which basically means that if your system is grid tied you'll have to pay the utility company a fixed fee per kW solar capacity per month as a sort of standby and grid fee. This has made it less attractive to invest in solar panels here on the island, which is nuts knowing how energy we could be generating sustainably.
Going (completely) off-grid will be a workaround, but means I'll have to invest in battery capacity.

Challenges:
Logistics:
Living on an island has it's benefits, but also it's challenges. Logistics is slow and expensive. Although it's quite easy to have cargo shipped through a freight forwarder, it takes at around 3 weeks to arrive here on the island. Aside from that I found out that we have to pay a whopping 27% on import duties on batteries!

Our electrical grid:
We have kind of a unique electrical grid. Our grid consists of a 3-phase 127/220V 50Hz. Our house thus receives a Neutral feed, and three lines. L+N makes 127V 50Hz and L+L makes 220V 50Hz. All our house's outlets and appliances are evenly balanced over the 3 phases. This means that I have I'll have to Invest in a three phase inverter system, OR completely rewire our electrical distribution box to make it a single 220V 50Hz phase (almost all appliances used in our household are 220V)

As I'm typing this introduction I'm testing cells: I'm charging 6 in parallel using the iMax B6 then running a (normal) capacity test on the Zenflare to get a capacity rating on the individual cells. Afterwards I'm using the iMax again to (dis)charge them to storage levels.
I've come to realize that this requires allot of patience But I'm hoping this will speed up the process a bit.
Until now I've had an average of about 2300mAh per cell.

Our house is quite energy efficient, our monthly energy bill is around 200kWh a month. I'm using a EOL product Ubiquiti mFi to monitor our energy usage on some appliences to get a better idea on how much energy is being consumed and when. On average our Fridge comsumes about 1.5kWh per day. I'm also monitoring our electric water heater and airconditioning unit. The waterheater consumes around the same as the fridge is per day, and I'd like to have it replaced with a solar heater, but I'm afraid that'll be a big investment. We hardly use the airco unit, but if we do It'll use around 3kWh overnight.

Obviously the 198 cells I brought aren't close to enough to power the whole household. But I'm going to have to start small and scale. My first objective it to power the fridge using solar. Right now I don't have solar panels, charge controller and an inverter (other than a small 110V car inverter). So there's still allot for me to invest in.

I will require some knowledge and feedback from more experienced members on a range of subjects, so I hope I've come to the right place!

Best regards,
Michel from Curaao!

 

[DK100]

Hi and welcome.
I Think you will find, that the project cost will be much lower if you do all you can to reduce your consumption. It's allready low, but maybe fridge can be found i an A+++ version, which uses less energy.
Also change all lights to LED, if not done allready. Cooking can be on gas / propane etc, and thus leaving you with the waterheater as the biggest load.
In the long run a solar hot water heater on the rooof with electric assisatance in the tank, will be much cheaper for you than more PV panels and more batteries.
Regarding batteries - there must be PC reprirshops where you can source used laptop cells?

 

[Michel]

Hi and welcome.
I Think you will find, that the project cost will be much lower if you do all you can to reduce your consumption. It's allready low, but maybe fridge can be found i an A+++ version, which uses less energy.
Also change all lights to LED, if not done allready. Cooking can be on gas / propane etc, and thus leaving you with the waterheater as the biggest load.
In the long run a solar hot water heater on the rooof with electric assisatance in the tank, will be much cheaper for you than more PV panels and more batteries.
Regarding batteries - there must be PC reprirshops where you can source used laptop cells?

Agreed. I believe our house is already very energy efficient, taking in account that we live in a warm tropical climate. All lights are LED based, our fridge, airco and washing machine are inverter models. The dishwasher is A+ as well.

I still need to pass by a local repair shop. Take in account though that the island and economy is small so I won't be able to rely on a significant amount of batteries from local repair shops.

Thanks for your suggestion/feedback!

 

[DK100]

Then you have optimesed as much as make sence for now.
Look for solar collector and tank for hot water. It is a no brainer at your latitude.
Regarding batteries. Put small ad in local newpaper, where you offer people for instance 1 Doller/gilder for a used laptop battery. Visit also local recycling yard and talk to them. Other possiblility is local shop for power tools. Gets old akku in when folks need a new.