Aquions How low can I go?

[bcroe]

Aloha Living Large,

We are back to 100% This morning at 7:45am went from 25% to 26% then achieved full charge at 5:04pm. Sun came out, had some clouds then some good sun in between 10am and high noon. Have the dehydrator running all day.

Do you only run the dehydrator with good sun? Bruce Roe

[Living Large]

Aloha Living Large,

We are back to 100% This morning at 7:45am went from 25% to 26% then achieved full charge at 5:04pm. Sun came out, had some clouds then some good sun in between 10am and high noon. Have the dehydrator running all day.

What does this have to do with my comment you replied to, which observed that it would take your generator 8 hours to charge the bank from 50% to full?

You have 3x the sun I do. You spent $90K+ on a solar systen and have POCO to turn to when the sun doesn't shine, and your generator isn't running yet. This is like Fantasy Island - no connection with reality for most people.

[OffGridHawaiian]

Do you only run the dehydrator with good sun? Bruce Roe

Aloha Bruce Roe,

We run the dehydrator when we have too many bananas. Dehydrator uses 600W.

[Living Large]

What does this have to do with my comment you replied to, which observed that it would take your generator 8 hours to charge the bank from 50% to full?

You have 3x the sun I do. You spent $90K+ on a solar systen and have POCO to turn to when the sun doesn't shine, and your generator isn't running yet. This is like Fantasy Island - no connection with reality for most people.

This reminds me of the lyrics, You've got to ac-cen-tu-ate the positive, eliminate the negative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZUmAbi0Vm4

Look out for the in-between.

[OffGridHawaiian]

What does this have to do with my comment you replied to, which observed that it would take your generator 8 hours to charge the bank from 50% to full?

You have 3x the sun I do. You spent $90K+ on a solar systen and have POCO to turn to when the sun doesn't shine, and your generator isn't running yet. This is like Fantasy Island - no connection with reality for most people.

Aloha Living Large,

Sorry about that That's right, But was trying to point out that it took 8 hours to get to 75% even though we had more than the 5500W rated output of the Honda EU7000is of sun yesterday.

Something is strange on the graph At 5:01pm we were at 80% then at 5:02 jumped to 100%

Is it the batteries? Is it the Battery Monitor?

As I explained before, the only reason to be hooked up to POCO is because Honda does not have the wiring harness available yet. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THIS!!! As soon as we can hook up our generator the better and then we will cut the line. But until then do we really have a choice? Our guest house would not have made it through the night at 8%. Maybe we could have made it since the Battery Monitor might be giving us the correct information since the batteries are not FLA's???

That was the only time we had to flip the switch in the 3 months since we have installed our system. We have had a week of terrible weather here at "Fantasy Island". We have been running only batteries and sometimes we get down to around 12% in the morning. During the day we can get back to 30%, then we make it through the night again. WITHOUT flipping the switch. We still have to wash the sheets and still need to be able to have lights and keep our guests happy with the microwave, hair dryers, induction cooking, 4 refrigerators, and 9 rooms full occupancy plus my wife, her mother, and myself. We haven't had to change our lifestyle and still use our Jacuzzi and Sauna and the guests still leave the lights on even at 30%.

We decided to try the Aquions because these Key Battery Characteristics,

High Performance: Avoid costly downtime and battery replacements

Very high cycle life
Usable depth of discharge (DoD): 100%
Extremely abuse tolerant
Ability to stand at partial state of charge
Self-balancing
Wide operating temperature range
Minimal degradation

Unparalleled Safety: Inherently safe chemistry

Not flammable, explosive, or corrosive
No dangerous or toxic components

Sustainable: Simple, abundant, nontoxic materials

Environmentally benign materials
No corrosive acids or noxious fumes

Suitable for deployment globally

Excellent Economics: Industry-leading total cost of ownership

Low acquisition costs ($/kWh)
Better value than lead acid or lithium ion
No regular maintenance
Little/no thermal management
No active management required

So far I feel they are working for us. Won't know how long they will last till they die, but will keep everyone posted.

[OffGridHawaiian]

Yesterday jumped from 70% to 100%

Conext31415Summary.jpg


Hey Sunking, can you explain what's going on with my boat anchors?

[Willy T]

As I explained before, the only reason to be hooked up to POCO is because Honda does not have the wiring harness available yet.

It would be silly to ever give up your POCO connection no matter what you do with the generator. Even at a $1.00 a kwh, it would be the cheapest you'd ever buy. You should set it up to charge your batteries. Even with the Generator use a transfer switch so you could use either.

Something is strange on the graph At 5:01pm we were at 80% then at 5:02 jumped to 100%

Is it the batteries? Is it the Battery Monitor?

Your battery monitor has perimeters programmed in it, voltage, time, ending amps. Monitors are all a little different. Once the Perimeters are " Met " usually the SOC will reset to 100% and the system will go to float. That can be good or bad if your really not reaching to 100% level. Before the perimeters will work you have to have the capacity and charge efficiency programmed correctly. It can be trial and error to get it to work correctly and it's hard to get them to stay accurate on a year round basis.

One that is jumping 20-30% would concern me, because then your discharge could be off by a lot also.

[SunEagle]

It would be silly to ever give up your POCO connection no matter what you do with the generator. Even at a $1.00 a kwh, it would be the cheapest you'd ever buy. You should set it up to charge your batteries. Even with the Generator use a transfer switch so you could use either.

I believe he is "cutting the line" due to the demands of his POCO. Apparantly they want the OP to fund a major equipment upgrade. I don't know the cost or specifics of the hardware upgrade but the OP feels it isn't financially worth it.

[Willy T]

I believe he is "cutting the line" due to the demands of his POCO. Apparantly they want the OP to fund a major equipment upgrade. I don't know the cost or specifics of the hardware upgrade but the OP feels it isn't financially worth it.

The OP wasn't clear if he had a construction pole or a old undersized entrance on the property that he was using to connect to the grid. I know of a couple systems that share a old 30 amp boat dock entrance as a grid charging option, it's not much, but better than a generator. POCO would not upgrade the poles or lines to the property or across it to service new construction.

[SunEagle]

The OP wasn't clear if he had a construction pole or a old undersized entrance on the property that he was using to connect to the grid. I know of a couple systems that share a old 30 amp boat dock entrance as a grid charging option, it's not much, but better than a generator. POCO would not upgrade the poles or lines to the property or across it to service new construction.

From what I have read there are some new rules by the POCO's in Hawaii. They won't allow anyone to have a PV "grid tied" system unless the homeowner has "smart" inverter hardware that can perform voltage and frequency control/regulation so it can help keep the grid stable due to power fluctuations caused by RE generators.

This is what I think the OP was talking about that the POCO wanted him to spend money to upgrade his equipment before they would allow him to have a permanent Grid Tie which he doesn't want to do.

Of course this is only my assumption and there may be another reason.

[Sunking]

Yesterday jumped from 70% to 100%


Hey Sunking, can you explain what's going on with my boat anchors?

First thing I can see is your Schneider Monitor is not properly loaded to match the battery voltages. Note what happens at 17:00 hours:

Battery voltage drops instantly from 58 volt to 54 volts when a load turns on. That is OK and expected from a battery with a high internal resistance. So I do no thave a problem with that.

What I have a problem with is at that exact same time SOC jumps up from 80% to 100%, exact opposite of what the battery voltage is doing. These batteries 100% SOC is 60 volts, and on this graph you never reach 60 volts. At 17:00 hour sis your highest voltage of 58 volts, and you SOC reads 80% which is close. But then a load turns on and voltage drops to 54 volts, but SOC goes up to 100% which is NONSENSE.

The other hint is at 08:00 battery voltage shows roughly 47.5 volts but SOC indicated 20% which is again nonsense for these batteries. 20% should be around 40 or less volts.

If i had to guess I would say your monitor is using a FLA algorithm getting confused with out of range voltages. Clue here is 47.5 volts correlates to a FLA battery at 20 to 30% SOC. Not certain what 47.5 volts is on Aquion batteries, but a heck of a lot higher than 20%. Common Sense will tell you that because 100% = 60 volts and 0% = 30 volts.

So far I have not found any charts or tables from Aquion plotting SOC to voltage. Having said that not sure they would be a lot of help because with a battery with such high internal resistance, voltages are pretty much useless to determine SOC if the battery has any charge or discharge current flowing.

Only way I can see to monitor these beast is with Coulomb Counting and even that is problematic with such high Peukert losses. For lack of better words you got a BAM on the loose in a Submarine.

[paulcheung]

From what I have read there are some new rules by the POCO's in Hawaii. They won't allow anyone to have a PV "grid tied" system unless the homeowner has "smart" inverter hardware that can perform voltage and frequency control/regulation so it can help keep the grid stable due to power fluctuations caused by RE generators.

This is what I think the OP was talking about that the POCO wanted him to spend money to upgrade his equipment before they would allow him to have a permanent Grid Tie which he doesn't want to do.

Of course this is only my assumption and there may be another reason.

I am not sure if Hawaii power company require the OP to purchase such amount KHW to stay connected and the fee for stay connected.
In Jamaica, the commercial customer has to pay $9 US and the household customer to pay US$3.10 to stay connected. I am not grid tie but I use the grid to assist when I have bad weather or cloudy days (which is almost every day where I live.)

I use the old automatic switch which came with the old 20KVA genearator that die few years back, I since purchased a smaller generator. The switch will go back to the grid once the inverter hit the low voltage shut off. and once the battery recovered it turn on back the inverter and the switch change back to solar. I also have a pair of 4mm wire that connect the inverter to the grid VIA a sub-panel switch on and off with a breaker to charge the battery when is needed. The OP could do the same if power company don't charge too much fee to stay connected.

[paulcheung]

I calculate that for S20 (don't know how S10 differs), it would take 8 hours to charge the 24 stack bank 50%. The Eu7000is is matched to the size of this system, assuming the residents aren't using more than roughly 1500 watts continuous during charging by genny. Charging should be roughly 3900 watts, and the genny appears to be good for 5500 watts continuous.

Personally, this lengthy run time is unacceptable for my use, in my location. YMMV.

Living Large,

I have read most of your post regarding your off grid planning, If I were you, for 7 KWH daily consumption, I would get 4000 watts panels and a set of 8 Trojan IND17-6volt batteries and a 6000 watts generator along a Xantrex XW6848 inverter. You only need to run the generator for 3 to 4 hours for every three days in bad weather.

[Amy@altE]

I recommend adding a shunt-based battery monitor to measure actual amps going into and out of the battery bank. Rather than using voltage as a state of charge indicator, counting the actual amp hours would be more accurate. Schneider just came out with their battery Monitor, which would tie into the XANBUS and communicate with the rest of your equipment. http://solar.schneider-electric.com/...ttery-monitor/

[OffGridHawaiian]

I recommend adding a shunt-based battery monitor to measure actual amps going into and out of the battery bank. Rather than using voltage as a state of charge indicator, counting the actual amp hours would be more accurate. Schneider just came out with their battery Monitor, which would tie into the XANBUS and communicate with the rest of your equipment. http://solar.schneider-electric.com/...ttery-monitor/

Aloha Amy,

We have one of those monitors and we can see the amp hours. Going back over our last couple of months, seems like we never made it to 59V but we are at 100% SOC and 1000Ah.




BattMon31616.jpg