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/diy/ - Do It Yourself

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2508350 No.2508350 [Reply] [Original]

This is a cross-thread from >>>/g/89908091

Red pill me on BLUETTI and similar hardware.
I live in Portugal, a good place to produce solar power and where energy costs are very high.
Why shouldn't I just buy pic related and run my house out of that, avoiding 90% of the electric bill?
I also get the benefit of having power when the nukes start flying.

Any anons here have similar setups?

>> No.2508369

>>2508350
The big issue with these is capacity. Pic related, and similar, will run flat quickly, and may be limited to far less load than your appliances.
I’m looking at the EcoFlow Delta Pro as one that has enough output for use in a small cabin.

>> No.2508372

>>2508369
They go up to 5000W and 18,432Wh.
That's plenty for my house.

>> No.2508398

>>2508372
Those are good capacities.
Can you carry one to a charging station for an electric car to fill it up when solar is not strong?

>> No.2508407

>>2508398
Its trailer-mounted and detaches from the house using an app command.

>> No.2508440

>>2508350
>Why shouldn't I just buy pic related and run my house out of that, avoiding 90% of the electric bill?
There is nothing wrong, and in fact its a good idea.
The problem is that hardware is cheap chinese junk
They will work for their intended purposes, powering some shit at a campsite a few times a summer

You run this shit routinely, it will not last very long at all.
It may or may not even pay for itself.

Building your own solar and battery array is more expensive, but it will last a million times longer.

>> No.2508447

>>2508350
Are you doing this in hopes of saving money?
>yes
Then don't buy shit tier chinesium inverter and batteries in a normie box
>t. normies make me mad

>> No.2508567

>>2508350
Buy a bigger and better quality one and sell the excessing power back to grid.

>> No.2508586

I have Victron Energy parts, they're like Apple: Hopelessly overpriced but they have working QA. Their stuff also takes a good amount of abuse.
Also, you can get used parts, add some cheap, ie. chinese batteries and solar panels and you're good.

I'd really recommend thinking about the things you can run without an inverter, so you don't habe to have it up all the time. These things eat amps while idle. I run my router, computers and TV and some lights from solar with a relatively small setup this way.

>> No.2508590

>>2508567
Europe is cucked, at least in Germany I can't do this without a ton of red tape. Plus, I'd only make 6ct/kWh, while paying 33 to my supplier.

So I'm building a dump load for my excess solar energy. 100Wh/l of water is pretty cheap imo.

>> No.2508609

>>2508440
>>2508447
>cheap chinese junk
Why are you assuming this is chinese junk?
It has 4 years of warranty and they're advertised to 3500+ cycles to 80% capacity and 6000+ to 50%.
That means if I fully charged/discharged them every single day (probably not gonna happen), I would still have 80% of the battery 10 years from now.

From my electricity bill, this would pay for itself in 5~6 years.

>Building your own solar and battery array is more expensive, but it will last a million times longer.
I know how to build a PV array, but I know nothing about batteries or even how legal that is around here.

>>2508567
>sell the excessing power back to grid
Not worth it. They pay very little for that. Better to just store it myself.

>>2508586
>Also, you can get used parts, add some cheap, ie. chinese batteries and solar panels and you're good.
Doubt I'll have those options here in Portugal.

>> No.2508668

>>2508350
Anything in a nice plug-and-play package is probably vastly overpriced, and you have a good chance it's meant for campervan/casual use rather than 24/7/365 for years and years. If you want a real residential solar install, do a real residential solar install. There are many videos on jewtube on the subject, Will Prowse has a bunch of specific examples, you can also build your own battery bank for a fraction of the cost of those plug-and-play ones, but you have to know what you're doing.
>>2508372
There are a ton of caveats to that 5000W. They're not supposed to run anything like an AC, heat pump, fridges, pumps, anything with induction motors. It's a complicated subject and I don't feel like making the same writeup in every thread, go watch jewtube videos. But if electricity is very expensive where you live, you can buy an overpriced plug and play thing and still probably get ROI.

>> No.2508671

>>2508350
>Why shouldn't I
You are going to electrocute every dog within 3 square miles. You are gonna die OP.

>> No.2508841

>>2508668
>They're not supposed to run anything like an AC, heat pump, fridges, pumps, anything with induction motors.
I've seen a lot of youtubers doing just that. As long as the wattage is enough, all is good.
Are you talking about the power factor?

>> No.2508849

>>2508841
I'm talking about startup current. It's not like it never works, but you're exceeding the ratings the device was designed for. A 5000W induction motor would extremely likely blow these 5000W inverters immediately, because a 5000W induction motor can temporarily draw 20-25kW on startup. Ideally you should be using a low frequency inverter. A small split AC can work on the 5000W Bluetti because they have 10kW surge, so in that regard you're just overpaying compared to the $600 solar inverter that can do the same. As a rule of thumb for induction devices, you need to oversize the HF inverter's peak load by a factor of 7.

>> No.2508860

>>2508849
Aight, that was useful information.
Thanks anon!

>> No.2509679

>>2508849
>oversize the HF inverter by a factor of 7
HF’s stuff isn’t that bad and I’m tired of pretending it is.

>> No.2509701

>>2509679
Just in case it's not a joke, HF here stands for high frequency, inverters that don't have a big fat transformer core.

>> No.2510943

I'm very interested in DIYing something like this with lifepo4 batteries. The difficult part for me is distinguishing between chinkshit and relatively decent equipment, I'm not interested in the most expensive parts.
Was thinking of starting with a 100ah lifepo4 and maybe later add another. Apart from matching their voltage before adding a second battery would it make charging more complex?

>> No.2511012

>>2510943
If you already plan to expand to 200, just start there. Generally the bigger the physical battery, the better the price/Wh, plus there's the cost of the BMS. You shouldn't pack new cells into a used pack, just make a separate pack with its own BMS, then you can parallel them.
There are reputable dealers that buy known good cells and resell them, in Europe it's NKON, I don't know what the burger one is called, you can find it if you look around. For burgers a lot of the common prebuilt battery packs from Amazon are reviewed on youtube with a teardown, so that's a viable route as well.

>> No.2511036

>>2511012
I was planning on buying a fully built lifepo4 for plug&play reasons. I should have specified I meant potentially adding a second prebuilt battery, not individual cells.
I've messed around with a few 18650s before, I guess I'm a bit apprehensive about dealing with these comparatively giant batteries. It's probably not smart for me as a novice to handle building a 200Ah+ battery from individual cells.
I did manage to find a UK seller of EVE cells, 4x 3.2V 105Ah for £400 as opposed to £600+ for a fully assembled battery which does make it tempting.

>> No.2511053

>>2511036
Well you have to add at least $70 for a BMS and maybe $50 for miscellaneous shit, not including tools you may or may not need, like a big crimping tool. But 4x105Ah for 400 is crap, I bought 230Ah CALB cells at 110 each from NKON, though they were B-grade. They currently have 88A for 50 and 187Ah for 85, those are the kind of prices that make it worth /diy/ing. And B-grade should be just fine, only that you have to manually top balance the cells.
As for building a battery, the BMS is the big thing you have to get right along with the BMS settings, that and lots of fuses with the right ratings. There's a lot of material on youtube, that auzzie faggot with the accent has a good breakdown on BMS settings and how shit should be set up.

>> No.2511065

>>2511053
Those cell prices were A grade, they sell B grades too, definitely overkill for me. UK also suffers shit prices in general for anything imported, it'll never look as cheap as when you price it up in Dollars.
The same website sells Daly BMS which I've seen lots of people use so I'll just stick with them if I end up building my own.
I'm also missing most of the smaller things you mentioned, fuses, wire, heatshrink etc which starts to add up.

>> No.2511067

>>2511065
Daly BMS are not good. Out of the cheapo brands, JK has the best BMS, the ones with the 2A active balancer. Their customer support also vaguely exists.
But yeah, if importing adds up too much extra costs, you might as well buy a pack. There are probably some fusing requirements if you parallel them, but otherwise it's definitely not a big issue. Though you're still going to need all the cabling stuff to hook them up, unless you get the cables made at a shop.

>> No.2511073

>>2511067
I've seen the occasional JK BMS on UK websites I'll keep that in mind. 95% of the components are inevitably chinese components of varying quality, I wasn't expecting customer support for anything.

>> No.2513751

>>2508350
Portugal must be the Hipster Homestead paradise of Europe. Euro-Mexico, basically. Many channels on YT of Gringos starting off-grid Air BnB stuff.

Bluetti is ok and you can get additional batteries to expand the capacity. Pricey, but everything clicks together and looks tidy. Only issues I've heard of are the display screen spazzing out and a few firmware issues, but nothing major.

DIY Solar with Will Prowse is a YT channel with lots of reviews. I'm looking to do something similar and have been using his channel the most.

>> No.2514208

>>2513751
>Gringos
Really, it's been hell. We're full of tourists now.
We need to build a wall to keep the Americans out. What a mess.

>DIY Solar with Will Prowse
Gonna check it out, thanks.

>> No.2514216

>>2508609
>Why are you assuming this is chinese junk?
Because its literally chinese chunk made by a ODM manufacturer

>> No.2514233

>>2514216
What pre-assembled stuff do people typically buy when it comes to this?
I don't want to mess with battery chemicals.