My Sketch of my possible upgrade. Gonna get a quote.

[Higher-Ground Farm]

Lots of new goodies, gonna be expensive. Before anyone says anything about the parallel battery wiring, the expense to go to a larger a hr pack would have tripled the cost. Any critisismsm will be welcomed! I have been off grid for about 7 years now, and am taking the leap up. There may be some additional wind energy to help with winter, but this is the basic meat of the system. I am looking for a good conversion kit for the AGS portion of the system. I have never used AGS and not sure if there are problems that I won't see coming.

Thanks.
Harold

[sdold]

It looks like all of the batteries are wired in parallel for one big 6V plant. Is that really how it's going to be wired? You could have two parallel strings of 48V each instead.

[Higher-Ground Farm]

Cross tied 2 strings of 48v was my intention, OOOPS! made a giant mistake. Thanks.

Edit: added the updated sketch without the cross tying.

[Sunking]

Your drawing shows a 6-Volt battery plant to start. Not sure how you came to the conclusion a larger battery is 300% more expensive. To start if you parallel batteries, you cut your battery cycle life by 1/3. I know you have not accounted for that.

It appears you want a 48 volt 850 AH battery string right? I see you are looking at 16 units of Rolls S-550 batteries. Depending on where you purchase them unit cost is roughly $375 x 16 = $6000. That works out to $147/Kwh of battery capacity. The Rolls S550 is a 4000 series battery with a warrant of 24/60 a 4 to 5 year battery.

If you look at say a Trojan L16RE-2V is a 2 volt 1110 AH battery. Has the exact same warranty 24/60 and exact same $147/Kwh cost an dis another solid 4 to 6 year battery. However unlike your proposed setup will last longer because because it does not require parallel arrangement. More capacity that you have but still works with 4680 watts.

If you want a 10 year battery like a Trojan IND17-6V 925 AH battery is a rock solid 10 year battery. Unit cost is $1125 x 8 for 48 volts @ 925 AH = $9000 which works out to $202/Kwh or 25% higher then two already mentioned above. However long term cost is much lower than the two above. Not to mention a brute of a battery made to take abuse and spend its life in a Partial State of Charge. No other Pb battery can do that. Trust me your battery will be in a PSOC most of its life.

So i have no clue how you came up with 300% higher.

[Higher-Ground Farm]

Thanks, that's the feedback I was looking for. Great catch.
S550 - 16x369=5904
L16RE - 12x439=5268

You are the best.

[Sunking]

Thanks, that's the feedback I was looking for. Great catch.
S550 - 16x369=5904
L16RE - 12x439=5268

You are the best.

You are welcome but LR16RE does not mean anything without the rest of the model number. All L16RE means is the physical jar size, and the plates are heavier. What Voltage and AH capacity are you looking at?. I was referring to LR16RE-2V a 2 volts 1110 AH battery and at 48 volts is 24 units. They cost more because they have more capacity than the S550. You need to determine the Watt-Hour cost of capacity to compare. Both the Trojan and Rolls cost the same $/wh.

If it were me wearing your shoes. I would be using the Trojan Industrial line up

[Higher-Ground Farm]

Yup miscalculated again.
L16RE-2V is a 2 volt 1110 AH -- 24x439= $10536
Trojan IND17-6V 925 AH -- 8*1634= $13072

So about double or so more expensive. but capacity will be superior in a lot of ways.

Thanks for checking my math.

Harold

[Sunking]

Harold shop around. I did a quick check and got prices much lower.

[Higher-Ground Farm]

Canada is a bit of an issue.

[extrafu]

Canada is a bit of an issue.

I feel your pain! From the research I have done, solacity.com seems to have very good prices in general, and Rob is a class act.

[Higher-Ground Farm]

Yup, not many options in Canada.

[Sunking]

Canada is a bit of an issue.

That explains a lot. By chance o you live near the US Border with a large US city?

Good luck and kudos for doing homework. Rare event hear. There are some fools who drop $30K and do not want to know anything about it.

[Higher-Ground Farm]

I suppose with NAFTA I could get batteries in the US if they are US made. I did the math on the weight of the batteries, 2800 lbs wow. I will have to trailer them in my big trailer either way.

Thanks for your help.

[Mr4btTahoe]

To start if you parallel batteries, you cut your battery cycle life by 1/3.

I've never seen this before.... for a new guy, can you explain why that is the case? You can PM me if you don't want to get too off topic.

[SunEagle]

I've never seen this before.... for a new guy, can you explain why that is the case? You can PM me if you don't want to get too off topic.

I am not sure where SK got the 1/3 lower life figure but more than likely he is correct. IMO that 1/3 might be on the low side of the early death of the battery system.

The simple explanation is that with multiple parallel "paths" you run the risk of uneven charging and discharging across each battery cell. That will result in one or more batteries having issues and causing the entire bank to lose it ability to generate the number of "cycles" posted by the manufacturer.