Hello,
Found this forum and have been lurking for a while. I'm looking for a sanity check:
I have a hybrid solar system that's about six years old.
- It has 48 150W panels for around 7kw output
- 3 Xantrex (Schneider) MMPT60-150 MPPT controllers
- 2 Xantrex (Schneider) XW4548 Inverters master/slave (4500W each)
- Originally 16 6 volt batteries in two series of 48V each
- "Deka Solar" batteries, I think 370AH @ 20 hour rate.
After doing zero maintenance on the batteries for five years, the system completely failed last year. I removed some obviously failed batteries and was able to make one string of 8 not-completely-dead batteries. This brought the inverter back up, but it doesn't seem to be running at full capacity, and I have about a minute and a half of battery backup.
I need the backup less than I did when we bought the system -- the power grid is better, we put our water tanks for our well up a hill for gravity feed water, and we have a wood stove for heat/cooking. So we really just need to run lights/fridge/tv for convenience. I have a potable generator for extended outages for refreshing the water tanks or cooling down the fridge Honestly if I were to do this over again, I would have gone grid-tie/generator.
My question is if I can get new batteries significantly smaller than my original installation. My main concern is making sure the inverters are running efficiently in grid-tie mode, some amount of battery backup is a plus. I'd like to use 8 6 volt Trojan T-105RE's (225AH @ 20 hour rate). There's a Trojan dealer nearby where I can get the batteries.
Will this work, is there anything I'm missing? This gives me about a 1/3 of the backup capacity of my original system, but I'm good with that if it gets the inverters working reliably again in grid-tie mode. The manual for the inverter just says at least "100 AH" for the batteries.
Found this forum and have been lurking for a while. I'm looking for a sanity check:
I have a hybrid solar system that's about six years old.
- It has 48 150W panels for around 7kw output
- 3 Xantrex (Schneider) MMPT60-150 MPPT controllers
- 2 Xantrex (Schneider) XW4548 Inverters master/slave (4500W each)
- Originally 16 6 volt batteries in two series of 48V each
- "Deka Solar" batteries, I think 370AH @ 20 hour rate.
After doing zero maintenance on the batteries for five years, the system completely failed last year. I removed some obviously failed batteries and was able to make one string of 8 not-completely-dead batteries. This brought the inverter back up, but it doesn't seem to be running at full capacity, and I have about a minute and a half of battery backup.
I need the backup less than I did when we bought the system -- the power grid is better, we put our water tanks for our well up a hill for gravity feed water, and we have a wood stove for heat/cooking. So we really just need to run lights/fridge/tv for convenience. I have a potable generator for extended outages for refreshing the water tanks or cooling down the fridge Honestly if I were to do this over again, I would have gone grid-tie/generator.
My question is if I can get new batteries significantly smaller than my original installation. My main concern is making sure the inverters are running efficiently in grid-tie mode, some amount of battery backup is a plus. I'd like to use 8 6 volt Trojan T-105RE's (225AH @ 20 hour rate). There's a Trojan dealer nearby where I can get the batteries.
Will this work, is there anything I'm missing? This gives me about a 1/3 of the backup capacity of my original system, but I'm good with that if it gets the inverters working reliably again in grid-tie mode. The manual for the inverter just says at least "100 AH" for the batteries.
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