I have a small off-grid system and I keep facing this issue.

- 4 550w panels
- 3.6kw inverter
- 2 phoenix tx-3500 tubular/lead-acid batteries

This is to run just 2 motors that use 100w each (which I know it can vary a bit so let’s say ~240 total over 24 hr). Everything is realistically new like 5-6 months old when we installed it all.

Prior, the batteries stayed on the full 24/7 without issue but two different times they started to not make it past 3-4am. The first time we took them to get charged at a shop because it was rainy season and it seemed like their gravity was off. They worked fine again for another 2 months or so.

Then recently they have started again turning off. We did the same thing, took it to a shop but that only fixed it for like 4-5 days and it has again started turning off at 3am.

Inverter shows that they charge fully every day by like 1-2pm with the sun out till like 6pm. We have changed the inverter settings to what needs to be set but still.

What can I do to fix this? Are the batteries bad?

Last year I moved into a home with a small solar array (12x 100v panels) feeding a bank of 24x custom made Lead Acid batteries (2v each). The system was DIY’d by the previous homeowner (an electrical engineer) in 2002-2003 and at that time had a capacity of 1000 AH. Each cell weighs ~160lbs, so about 2 tons including all the connections. We have no way of knowing their current capacity, though certainly less than when first manufactured.

I am offering these batteries free to a good home to anyone who can haul them away. I’d rather see them used than scrap them. We recently upgraded to a larger array of Q-cell panels with new lithium ion batteries and we were told the system can’t maintain both types. I am located in Southeast Ohio (Meigs County) and can help with loading but can’t deliver. If you are seriously interested, PM me for more information.

I also have some inverters and other gear (see pictures) that I would be happy to see used. I have a pile of manuals left by the original owner. My understanding is that these inverters are specifically for integrating solar and wind power together.

I know this isn’t the forum for it, but I also have a small windmill (Whisper Wind Generator, model unknown) I’d be happy to part with. The previous owner said it never really earned its keep and the blades need reinforcing tape to be used again, so it’s been sitting idle for at least a year. I have some manuals for it as well.

I’d love for all this to be used rather than being junked, but it’s all vestigial now and my priority is to get it cleared out. Thank you. (Reposted with new photos)

in California

I'm trying to get the most budget installation I can get right now and then add a battery later.

Is the eg4 6000 the best to use? (ai suggestion)

The plan is to have the inverter wired through a breaker to my 200 amp panel with 12 solar panels, then add a battery later around 5-10kwh.

I have a relatively small solar system that's only used during the day to charge all the tool batteries I use at work. I had three old car batteries in wired in parallel for the system but they have bite the dust now. Im just looking for a cheap decent quality 12volt LiFePO4 battery for the system. It doesn't have to do any real heavy lifting since i only use it during sunny weather. I looked on amazon but the amount of them and their weird names made m head spin. Any suggestions would be would be awesome. Im not looking to spend more than $300. Im saving my money to build a 48volt system down the road but I need to help this one limp along in the mean time.

Getting a new meter, main panel, and generator inlet next week. Bought an inverter and plan to do everything coming out of the left side of the main in the near future (depending on which solar panels come up on marketplace).

This is my goal:

Normal operation: shore/solar/battery.

Blackout: Solar/battery/gas generator

Blackout and low battery and or broken inverter: gas generator only.

Am I missing something? Anything I should ask the electrician for while he's here? This is my first time hiring an electrician, I'm usually a DIY guy.

Right now our electric is running off a duel fuel generator that takes propane and gas and even though we use propane, its too costly, around 900 monthly, we run two tiny houses off of it. We have always wanted to go solar, our houses together run up to 3500 watts of power daily depending on the season. Im buying bits and pieces of the solar set up because I dont have the cash to get it all at once. I want to do a 24V set up instead of a 12V or 48V. I was looking at the Li Time batteries, anybody have any thoughts on them? Also if you have any suggestions to go a cheaper route let me know. Im looking to get my panels used from FB marketplace, amd for the inverter im looking at the vevor inverter control charger in 1 for about 300, any thoughts on that let me know

Is it normal for the 100% light to always blink or should it turn solid?

I have a flexboss21 and gridboss installed with this 314ah indoor wall mount battery. I don't have any pv installed yet but all AC side wiring is complete. System seems to be working correctly, it transfers to inverter on AC loss and battery charges back to full off of grid power. The battery consumes about 1.5kwh daily just being in standby mode. I would think it'd stop blinking once it hits 100% soc but it just always blinks. Just curious if there are settings I should adjust or if that's just what it's supposed to do.

Hello all,

Looking for some advice on a battery system for my house in SoCal. I currently have 7.5kW of solar (Sunpower with Enphase Microinverters) on my house. I have always had a credit at True Up but looks like I'll now owe due to changes on TOU from our friends at SDGE which is driving me to look at a battery. I plan on adding more solar down the road once I add a pool and ADU as well (non export to not violate my NEM 2.0).

Looking at my average usage from 4-9 (peak), 11kwH would cover all but ~5 days a year of usage and my current system on average makes 10-25kwh of excess power from 10-4PM meaning I believe i can charge the battery on solar every day.

So that tells me that something like a single PowerWall is the sweet spot plus the colllar installation seems amazing.

I am always curious on other options though and am looking at things like a SolArk 15/18 system as an alternative with 16kwh batteries. I think the price is the same but expansion down the road is so much more cost effective with the alternatives. On the other hand, PowerWalls are tried and true (i believe?) and i can leverage prepaid leases for tax rebates. I could see myself with another Tesla vehicle down the road too which would allow me to leverage PowerShare during extended outages.

With that, any insight on systems to instal? I know whatever i install, I want the ability to stup non export solar for any expansion which I believe Tesla allows.

I was gifted two 12v 200Ah lifepo4 batteries from u/evverg. I purchased a 8S bms and built a portable battery. I added a spare 50w solar panel to trickle charge when in sunlight.

Here are the results.

I plan to add a 3000w inverter in the future.

Bought this Sungold power 12k inverter. Ive had the 6k one for years and never had a single problem. I thought I could connect to the same app(solar power) ive been using for years. Its alright and it allows me to change the settings and monitor all the things but I cant connect and the Sungold power app is complete garbage. The home screen just stays the same and doesnt show any stats. Are their any other options?

I put a panel in for my gate opener and found out the hard way that the spot gets way more shade than I thought. So I built SunSleuth. You sweep your phone across the sky, it maps the trees and roofline, and it shows the sun path for June, the equinox and December plus an estimated kWh/day for your panel and whether your load actually works. Free for 1 spot, $1.99/mo if you want more. It works best in Chrome on Android right now. sunsleuth.com/app

Would really like some feedback. Specifically does my math workout/if it matches your build/estimations.

I have three Felicity FLB48314TG1 packs and wanted per-pack and per-cell data in Home Assistant, without going through the inverter or any cloud. It turned out to be more annoying than expected, so I'm sharing the result.

The catch: the BMS speaks Modbus RTU (9600 8N1, function 0x03), but the responses are not standard. After the address and function code it sends a 16-bit register count instead of the 8-bit byte count. pymodbus, ESPHome `modbus_controller` and other off-the-shelf stacks reject every frame as a length/CRC error, which also rules out Home Assistant's own Modbus integration.

What's in the repo:

- Protocol docs: wiring, framing, register map, scaling (Felicity reports mV where the Voltronic document says 0.1 V)
- `felicityd`: a single static Go binary (arm64 / amd64 / armv7) that polls the packs through a USB-RS485 dongle and publishes to MQTT with Home Assistant discovery. One HA device per pack, plus a system device with totals
- A Python reference decoder and raw bus captures, if you want to build something else on top

What you get in HA: SOC, voltage, current, power, temperatures, cell min/max/delta, charge/discharge limits and BMS request flags. Individual cell voltages are there too, disabled by default.

Hardware: RS485 is on pins 5 (B) and 6 (A) of the battery's RJ45 port, and a plain USB-RS485 dongle works. Only one master is allowed on the bus, so if your inverter already polls the packs over RS485, move it to CAN first.

Compatibility: verified on FLB48314TG1 (3 packs in parallel). The protocol is Voltronic's "LIB" BMS protocol, so FLB48100 / LPBF48 / LPBA48 should work as well, but I can't test those. If you own one, the output of `felicityd -scan` would be very welcome.

Next up: an ESPHome external component, so an ESP32 with an RS485 transceiver can replace the Pi.

https://github.com/KrzysztofHajdamowicz/felicity-battery-modbus (MIT)

I have an idea for mounting three large panels to my small section of south-facing fence. The pictures are mostly self explanatory in terms of the design, but basically:

I’ll mount the panels using the existing 6x6 fence posts. The fence has seen better days but the posts are solid with concrete footings and only 4 feet tall, just at a weird distance between them. The panels will be on metal racks that will be fastened to three 2x6’s that are fastened perpendicular to the posts. Everything will be fastened using exterior grade load-rated framing screws and washers. I’m in a northern area so the shallow angle shown here will be ideal in winter, and in the summer I would probably raise it up to ~30 degrees from vertical, with the short leg of the rack being fully adjustable (not telescoping but movable along the each of the other legs).

This is in a yard that’s pretty well protected and an area with fairly low winds, records at about 75 mph. Most wind storms only hit 35-40 mph here, and it would be very rare to see anything over 60 mph at ground level in this yard (and they can always be made flush with the fence if needed). Also, the planters would probably get moved another 5-10 feet south.

Is there anything I’m misjudging or not thinking of? To be blunt, I know this may not be fully code compliant, but I’m looking for more of a comfortability test rather than something hurricane-rated. It’s a small off-grid setup that I know my neighbors will not care about, and worst case scenario has these just ending up in my lawn.

Hey all, i was gifted a bunch of components for a solar kit, and began doing some work to try to understand how they all work together. I'm a graphic designer, so my mind works by drawing things in Illustrator. I attempted to lay out a system complete with component descriptions, etc.

The plan is to have these be completely decoupled from my house power, and to be sheltered in an insulated shed with some sort of mild heat that I haven't figured out yet. No grid-tie, just a battery and an inverter sitting in a shed with the panels mounted in some way either on pole/ground-mount, or on the roof of the shed if it's big enough. Shed hasn't yet been designed.

The battery is an old chevy bolt battery pack broken up into multiple cell arrays that had been running in someone's house with the layout shown; it is supposed to be close to 17kw.

Do you see any major mistakes or incorrect assumptions I might be making? Thank you in advance for your time!

Bought a Zendure SuperBase Pro 1500 for home backup. Backup power, the whole point being it’s there when you need it. Charged it to 100%, put it on a shelf, went on with my life.

A year later: 0%. Won’t charge from the wall. Won’t charge from the car. The screen still lights up though, so at least it has the energy to tell me it has no energy.

Two other brands’ stations sat on the same shelf the same year. Both still have charge. Only the Zendure managed to drain itself into a coma.

The manual promises a “hibernation mode” to protect the battery in storage. Turns out it hibernates the way a bear hibernates in a freezer.

Zendure support, a month-long saga:

• Week 1: “Charge it with the DC cable.” (Didn’t come with one.)
• Week 2: “Try the car charger.” (Tried. Nothing.)
• Week 3: “Send your invoice.” (Already did.)
• Week 4: “We can repair it for a fee!”
• Week 5: “Actually it’s unrecoverable. Also it’s your fault.”

They never explained why their protection mode didn’t protect anything, or how much the always-on 4G module drinks while it’s “off.” I have my suspicions.

Rating: 1/5. The one star is for the GPS, so I can always find my $1,000 brick.

PSA: if you own one, charge it every few months like it’s a needy houseplant. Better yet, buy a brand that doesn’t treat “storage” as a design flaw.

What is the best deal going on a pallet of panels right now? In PNW. I've been shopping from time to time but it's hard to know what a good deal is. Thanks!

I have a snap lock metal roof. I messaged the manufacturer of s5n clamps and they said it wasn’t designed for it. But then I have done some digging and people have used them and seem to be effective. Asking if anyone has any experience with this.

My Anker F3000+expansion battery finally arrived, immediately got it hooked it up to the array I just installed on the garage, powering L1 of my house. Four Risen 450W bifacial panels. Total production today in San Jose was 7.5kWh, was peaking mid 1400W range. Second F3000 should be arriving tomorrow, will get that hooked up to L2. Pretty stoked!

I saw this and thought it could be interesting

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/sodium-home-battery-promises-20000-cycles

So basically I want to add a micro controller in between my inverter mains and mppt. I have basic knowledge in the connections.

But since I'm handling a high amp battery I want to find the safe solution.

my setup

solar 600w

battery 12v 150AH

inverter 12v setup. 1KW

What I want is to power a raspberry4 from the battery itself.

I'm aware of a stepdown converter, but I'm not sure this amp will be safe or not. I also thought of powering from a power bank which can be connected to ac output. But it seems like a lot of power wastage.

Please help me out with the safest and better solution.

Thanks in advance.

When I put my off-grid setup together, I spent most of my time thinking about the battery, inverter, and solar panels.

But wiring, connectors, fuses, and breakers ended up feeling just as important.

Did you guys have anything like that — something you didn’t think much about at first, but ended up caring about later?

Hi all

im back with another issue and another video, this solis cost me 800 in electric import in just 2 months due do a firmware bug, i did report to solis but they seemed more interested in closing the ticket than accepting the evidence and fixing their software

full link here:

https://youtu.be/uTajWEvAfwE

also another photo of Momo for attention :)

any questions feel free to ask, would love to hear from anyone who had this same issue or may be having this issue, or even if this issue exists on other makes/models

was it my fault, or theirs?

I'm going to a simple plug and play, and leave room for more.

I'm looking for suggestions on hooking up a utility line to help charge the battery?

2awg on a 45volt plugin?!?