Solar: the good, the bad, the cutting edge and the bare bones

Al, I called the number on their web page and never got through. I don’t really care where they are located anymore, but I suppose it’s important to be correct.
As usual, caveat emptor.

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Bruce,
I am sorry you had a bad experience with Battery Hookup. I respect your opinion, I really want to like them, and hope they succeed with their responsible recycling business model. I may order something minor and see what happens.
Edit: I will treat them like any other random surplus vendor, expecting mixed results. :cowboy_hat_face:

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Thanks Mike,
I appreciate the kind words.


I bought this “new” from them as well. It is a 100ah LiFePo battery pack. It has worked well.
I guess the advice I want to give is:
Don’t expect customer support. Be careful reading the advertisement.

I am currently purchasing a number of CALB batteries “new” from eBay sellers. I am trying to follow reviews from eBay, Reddit, and the DIY electric car forums. So far, so good. We are at 60v with another 84v to go.

Good shopping to you!

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Because I spent the money, I would try to revive them. It can be pretty dicey so like in a protected area, and it may not work at all given how long they have been sitting. :slight_smile: The other option of course is try to sell them to a recycler to recover the lithium which has gone way up in price. :slight_smile:

They probably went under voltage and into ‘sleep’ mode, and a lot of chargers won’t try to charge them if they are less then like 2.5v.

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I would concur with that. I have revived drill battery packs using a dumb charger rated at bellow the pack’s full charge voltage hooked directly onto the cells bypassing the bms. The bms then Woke up and allowed me to use the regular charger. There are a whole lot of chemistries and bms parameters out there though and thermal runaway is a definite thing so perhaps not a bad idea to just recycle it.

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@Pelletpower


No sun today but this is yesterday about 2hrs after dawn .
I really have to get the gps out. This phone compass app isn’t making a lot of sense.

The magnetic compass has a 12° to 30° declination here, depending where on the property you are standing… prolly a big chunk of float copper lurking below the surface.

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Start digging for your retirement then :grinning:

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The panels are typical south? And you change the angle of course?

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The panels in the picture are winter panels. Facing south and tilted a bit beyond vertical so they don’t collect snow. They are part of a system to keep our Swedish machine ready to move snow.

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Yes, a beautiful Swedish machine. And you have some kind of monster roaring around too. For the last decade we only know snow from pictures (exception was a few years ago, it was lying for maybe one or two weeks, not like your place).

Ideal system for flexi tilt angle. Mine is all on the roof 20 degrees from horizontal except five panels on the wall. The dayrecord was 133 kWh going to the street :grinning: :grinning:Tsjing tsjing, easy money for as long as this system last.

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Ah yes, thanks for your kind words, about our Volvo.
Yes, panels on roofs are probably the least expensive way to go.
We have to explore different mounts here because of how much snow falls. I always forget how little snow the rest of the world gets. There may be piles of snow yet, hidden deep in the bushes.
I built a grid tie system for a friend and have heard nothing but complaints. Apparently, the utility only gives him a credit, no check. I think he would have made more money by taking his investment and buying dividend stock of the natural gas pipeline company that feeds the powerplant in Green Bay Wi.

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They are only required to give a credit and not a check, and they don’t even have to give full credit in Michigan thankks to the governor. But the credits do add up. In some parts of the UP have some of the highest rates in the nation.

You need to invent a panel mount system that floats on snow… or get some of the old firetowers or telephone poles to mount them on.

what is the typical accumulation about 8-10 ft?

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It looks like 275 for this year. 12" in May!

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Stumbled over this guy. Very interesting if you go off grid with serious power. Not for my peakshaving but might be of interest for the off gridders.

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I saw this one… That is a lot of capacity. I think I prefer the ones that break the pack down into segments. That one is a high voltage battery for house support. Honestly if the car companies could just add a single outlet the wayford is doing it that would be awesome for solar and backup.

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The Ford F150 Lightning has a 240v 30a outlet. I think Chevy electric silverado will as well which gives at least some chance of charging a stranded vehicle as well as allowing you to use 240v power tools on site. Both companies have systems for home integration and storage.

California has a mandate for solar plus storage for all new houses. As always, it is cheaper to design it in, then to retrofit.

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Sean is it a must install or the watered down “solar ready” one we have here?

I don’t know. I didn’t really look at their regulations. They must include solar, and then they added a storage component to it. I am not sure it is in effect yet.

To be honest, it would be about the best thing california could do for themselves. Although it is a pain to deal with if you are a builder and adds cost if you are the buyer, and all the architects have to change all their rubber stamp house plans. Housing is so expensive there already it only adds a few percent to the total cost.

The issue california has is brownouts and they have been trying to deal with those for decades, and they have some overloaded circuits. It is cheaper to mandate houses have at least some of their power especially with their ev mandate coming online.

Plus because of the housing shortage, it includes all their low-income housing they are proposing to build that was backed by the federal government so the feds would have to kick in part of the cost because it is part of the regulations so they would get additional money.

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My personal belief is that there should be no new net metering without a storage element to keep the grid in balance. Peak shave ng out west is making it economical to do storage and all the new inverters are programmed for it so it is the future. Here “solar ready” refers to a beefed up truss in the roof to take the panels and a panel able to take the capacity. There is also an EV ready component that mandates wiring installed to garages able to take a charger in the future.

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Big difference is that you can use old standerd batteries from a car. No fussing around with cells and bms. I build a 10 kWh LiFePo4, it is fun and it works how it supposed to. Plan is to have a 100 kWh batt. No way I am going to spend the time and copper on that one. That aint no fun anymore. Little woodgasgenerator with it for the dark months and we can go off grid. In my opinion the way to go.

Car as a battery? That is fun too, not practical. Ask yourself why Tesla doesnt. Remember that that is the company that changed the automotive. No compromises.

So if the biggest petrol country in the world is changing there is really no way back😃