vienna wall build

Charly144

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Joined
Nov 22, 2017
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287
Hi guys,

As i am on this forum for some few months now, id like to introduce myself. My name is karl and i live nearby vienna in our own house. I am in renewables business for quite some time now but primarily wind energy.

I am considering getting a pv installed on our house for some time now and will get it done this year. First i planned installing 5kWp but will now go for a 10kWp plant due to a high probability of buying an electric secondary car within the next two years and just 5kWp may suck then. We get subsidies in austria which leads to round about 10k for the 10kWp plant, which is quite ok.

Battery storage is also a topic i am watching out for some time now, also from a professional/job point of view. It is a big topic in UK and GER for grid support and prices come down dramatically. In germany there is a lot of rental models for home pv and newly storage coming up as well.

In austria, we are quite lucky with much lower electricity prices than in germany. We pay round about 20cent instead of 30cents in germany. This is good for us but destroys any business case for storage.

On the other hand i run my cooling system, my irrigation pump as well as my pond pump besides the standard stuff in summer and i have nights where i consume more than 10kWh. I cant run irrigation during the day, because it takes roughly 8h in total and kids are playing during the day in the garden.

Beside that a typical 6-7kWh battery storage is way to small it is already way too expensive.

When googling around i found the diypowerwalls forum and was 18650ed as average joe is saying (i think he is holding intellectual property on that *ggg*)

Cell Harvesting
I started searching for cells and even found a lot of places where they had them but finally they couldnt give them to me due to waste regulations that force them to document the whole process for more or less every battery pack that has to be binned... What i still dont understand why they cant sell them to privates just as used and not as defective...

But finally i found some batterypack repair shops and ebike shops who were willing to give them to me. First 2kWh on defective packs i got for eur 100,- per kWh including shipping which was ok at that time to get started but is not ok in the long run. A second repair shop sold it for 70,- including shipping. And then i found my favourite, an ebike shop who is building its own bikes and also handles guarantee claims themselves. They seem to be quite successful selling bikes because they get back 50 to 60 batterypacks (each 400-500Wh) a year and i got them to give me returned backs for free... *yeah*

Typically the cells are Samsung or Sony high drain cells which are in the area of 2000-2200 mAh. Roughly 90% of these cells were tested fine.

Charging
I started testing with 2 accupower IQ328+ but i realized that it would be taking me ages to test 2000 cells or more. Then i ordered 2 opus but still was not very effective. I started my attempts to build an automated arduino/ESP32 charger but decided to go - from my point of view - for the most effective solution and bought 10 liitokala 500 chargers. Ive got them in china for EUR 13,- each (4 bays) which is slightly more than EUR 3,-for one bay. Attached to a 40Amp power source it started to make fun. I know it is not optimal to use different types of chargers but i took that risk. In total i do have 14 chargers now. In general I dont mind whether the liitokala is testing too high or too low as long as all cells are tested on the same type of charger. Even with my mixed setup of chargers my 80p packs are alle 150Ah (4.1 - 3.2V) +-2Ah, though very fine.

Pre-charging was done on a self built TP4056 10 bay charger. I also did pre-charging with an icharger 208b which is a very cool and versatile thingy, i love it. I also do charging and discharging of 80p packs with it and it works very well. Discharging is done with an external 0.15Ohm 200W resistor setup on a large heat sink.

After first capacity check i put cells in boxes for at least one week and checked voltage again after that and cells that were below 4.15V were charged up again to 4.2V, put in a box aside for longer time and voltage checked again and sorted out when they had again below 4.15. When they had below 4.0v they were binned.

Cell sorting
At the very beginning i was noting the exact mAh on each cell and throughout the process i decided to round mAh up or down on full hundreds. Every test-cycle shows slightly different countings and why not approach it a bit more pragmatic. I was planning to fill my own cell-database but finally didnt do it because it is not necessary for the pure package-building.

Pack building
I purchased the typical 5x4 cell holders on aliexpress and decided to build 15packs each 80cells, where 14 packs will go into my powerwall and the extra one will be a spare one for replacement of one of the 14packs at some point in time...
As a bus bar i am using 3x2.5mm2 threaded copper wire, which you can buy at stores like hornbach as a single wire, which just needs dismantling and drilling. I am having a lot of it lying around from our house-building time.
I do use 0.2mm fuse wire which should be good for 5 amp current and the wire is soldered. Therefore I do use my 60W soldering station with a chunky tip.

I put together the holders for 80p and spread my before in 100mAh steps sorted cells evenly on the 15 packs. I have tested 5 packs now and all of them have 150Ah +-2Ah.

Installation
I will put 14packs next to each other to the wall in my garage with clips and bolt them together in series with M8 screws. I will cover the batteries with a housing to be able to control temperature, especially in winter because my garage is not heated and temp can go below 0C.

Inverter
Most probably I will use the same 10kW hybrid inverter, that daromer is using.

Next steps
- finish pack building
- develop voltage and temperature control with esp32
- develop top balancing with esp32
- develop heating element controlled by esp32
- collect batteries for a further 14s80p setup
- play around with building my own arduino/esp32 charger... :)
 
coming soon ;-)
 
Batrium... i dont know yet... i like the fun of building my own but batrium has definitely a lot of pros

I am hassling with uploading pictures from my phone due to max size of 2mb... pics will follow :cool:
 
Hi,
Here are some fotos of my build. 15packs, each 80p with 150Ah are built. I have built one spare pack for later replacement and will do so for further expansions...

I have just received another 3000 cells from ebike and have just started testing process. But I have to care about getting my own PV on the roof, otherwise it doesnt make much sense;)

In total it will be then >30kWh of 18650s.

And yes, I think batrium will be my choice as a BMS.

I will then have 14sf80p and probably 14s200p. Are there any suggestions how I should combine packs. All of them on one string (14 longmons only) to the inverter or two separate strings which also means 28 longmons or even more spread...?

Here are some pictures of my first 8.5kWh packs. Cool thing, I had enough of the Samsung cells in order to have all packs in the same colour...

Best regards
Karl

image_ejeaxx.jpgimage_gxlrpq.jpgimage_qbjosp.jpgimage_lzcrvm.jpgimage_psbxnd.jpg
 
Good Googily Schmoogily!! Just don't stack them up like Pete did and have them fall on ya :p
 
Will keep that in mind... :D
 
You write, that you easely use 10 kWh on a night. I suggest that you go through all our things, and try to optimise use, as this will make everything cheaper later. For instance: Pumps can be changed to low energi models, ligths can be changed til LED's etc. Fridge and Freezer can be changed to low energy models also. Going through ALL consumption at the property should reduce your power use significantly, thus you should be able to make do with a smaller PV array and a smaller powerwall etc.
The cheapest energy, is the one you don't use.
 
Another option is to add cheap solar panels and connect them to your battery pack via a controller outside of the subsidy. Sometimes you can get the solar panels at a cheap enough price the subsidy "value" can't match it, especially if you install and set them up yourself. What I mean by cheap is close to or below the Chinese wholesale cost, not the European price premium or the 3x - 5x installed price. 80eur for 260W panel, new or nearly new (less than 2 years).

Nice one on the free battery packs, like it.
 
Im having quite large property with golf like lawn which has to be irrigated ever second day. Whole cycle takes 8h with a 1200w pump...
A smaller pump doesnt do it. Rest of my house is high efficiency already...

Regarding panels, I will get a feed in tariff for surplus and thats why Im going for full subsidy. Subsidy means that you get eur 250,- per kwp as an investment subsidy and a tariff for surplus which is roughly 7 cents instead of 4 cents which you get from your energy company. From that perspective buying used panels does make limited sense.

Regards
Karl
 
The one thing to consider is the start load for the 1200W pump as it may be very high due to the water pressure / static head and the 10kW inverter should be ok, but.... Rather than go with a large 10kW inverter I would go for a 2kW GTIL net metering type that allows the grid to take the surge loads and then your inverter provides the steady state energy from the battery pack. This works out a lot cheaper and no risk of your inverter tripping or blowing FET's when you switch two high inductive loads on at the same time.

If you have the ground space, re-work your calculations. Your existing solar can export all it's power (getting paid for) and your non subsidy charges the batteries to drive the 10kWh of pump load. The economics for extra solar need to take into account the higher exports you will get paid for, not just the cost of the additional solar. Incremental solar offsetting 20ct/kWh power load with the solar output price of 4ct per kWh...
 
If his irrigation is installed correctly, the pump only turns on once. After that, it runs the entire time the irrigation is operating. So he's only hit with the load amps during that first start up.
This is accomplished by having the zones matched to the pumps gph/lpr delivery and the use of a cycle-stop. My uncle works in irrigation and seems to always talk about whats going on with it. :p
 
Hi,

I am planning to use the Infini 3phase 10kW inverter in a gried tie setup. The inverter gets data from smartmeter and tries to balance energy consumption from grid to 0. If theres a peak it doesnt matter because it will only short consumption from grid. The whole load of my house is not going over the inverter directly, so no worries... but thanks for the hint

Karl
 
Great, that is the ideal setup in my mind.
 
Had to store away in order to clear up my workbench. My sons trailer did a good job :D


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15x 80p each 150Ah done + 10x80p each 133Ah done, 4 more to go and further >2000 cells tested and ready to go into packs. But still no pv :-(

Regards
Karl
 
Dude! Put an electric motor on that cart! :D
 
Too busy with building packs... :D
 
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