im back

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campingnut
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Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2014 4:30 am

im back

Post by campingnut »

Hi Im Dale - some of you know me from other forums. I just discovered I joined this forum some time ago but somehow forgot about it! Does anybody else do that? If you don't use it you lose it. Ive been waiting for five years for my old batteries to cark it and Ive begun a new battery while Im waiting. I have 4 CATYL cells (aluminium covered in blue plastic). I will be using older tech (PL40) with 400 watts of solar to charge these babies. I believe they are more energy dense than the older ones but of course not yet proven if they will last as long. I dont like pushing anything when Im starting at a forum but I want to thank T1 Terry and Will Prouse for their dedication to help rvers in an honest and genuine fashion. I will be using a phone programmable 200 amp BMS as a last line of defence if anything with the PL40 fails. My biggest draw will be a victron 300W inverter that cuppa reccomended to me years ago and is still going strong. I doubt if i will get a draw over 30 amps at this stage. We will see how things go. The guy who sold them to me has had them in a car doing 3C when accelerating up hills and has now done 30 000 km. So my fraction of a c shouldnt strain them too much.

As an after thought can an alarm from the PL40 trigger a changeover relay to switch my solar power from the pl40 to an element in my hot water system? Narva make some nice changeover relays. Can anybody confirm that a old suburban and take a 1 inch BSP element?

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Water-Heati ... SwRyRa49Uf
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supersparky
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Location: Home on the beautiful Gold Coast for a while.

Re: im back

Post by supersparky »

Hi Dale, Welcome back. I will go look at my Suburban and check the thread size. Someone with more ELV experience than me will be along soon to answer your changeover relay question.
Edit
It sure looks like 1 inch BSP. There is a good video on YouTube from 'how to Bob' the shows how to replace it. Are you going to use a 12 or 24volt element?
Cheers
David

David and Terrie with Bandit the travelling companion
2006 Winnebago Alpine
Recently retired and loving it.
campingnut
Posts: 27
Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2014 4:30 am

Re: im back

Post by campingnut »

Hi Dave -good to see you. I will be using 12 volts 200 watts. So thats about 14 amps at 13.8 volts -id like a smaller wattage one but this should suffice. Im learning about relays - Narva have a good page on them and SSR - Crydom have some great stuff on them but they are expensive. One new range of Crydom relays only work between certain voltages so they work as a low voltage disconnect. One cuts out at 12 volts but it only starts at 12.5 - pity that isnt 13.8 volts. I might take some of this to another topic.
BernieQ2
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Re: im back

Post by BernieQ2 »

G'day Dale been wondering where you have been..good to see your still playing with the lithium batteries .
I now have a Victron 100amp in the caravan...will be a write up on it soon .
Bernie .
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T1 Terry
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Re: im back

Post by T1 Terry »

Welcome back. Yes, I discovered I'd been a member of a Prius forum when I went to join 3 yrs after I originally joined :lol:
Are you sure they are CATYL cells or CATL cells. If they are CATYL cells, can you post a link please?
Things to watch out for with aluminium cased cells:
1) Add electrical insulation between each cell and anywhere it can make an electrical path to the body negative or another cell. The cells plates become conductive to the aluminium cases after a while, if you are lucky only one set of plates will do so it does not create an internal dead short, that is rather spectacular if it happens.
2) Be sure to strap the cells together in compression and make sure the strapping and end plates are strong enough to hold the pressure yet not come into contact with the aluminium cell cases
The aluminium cases will bulge just like the plastic case batteries, thing just become much more dramatic if they touch each other or the vehicle body. A fellow member of the Adelaide branch of the Australia Electric Vehicle Association used aluminium cased cells in his Prius PHEV battery pack. He did insulate between the cells using that BBQ sheet material and it worked for a while. But the cells started to bulge, even though he had a very sophisticated BMS system he built himself that very closely monitored charging and individual cell voltages as well as balancing between cells. The bundling method he used was not strong enough to hold the packs compressed, one cell touched the body work, the arc blew a hole through the metal floor of the wheel well where they were mounted, creating a path for more air to enter the fire, and burnt the Prius to the ground. The vehicle was just parked, not charging or discharging, but it was under the house so a rather urgent case of pushing the vehicle outside to let it burn. Apparently it was a fairly decent blaze because the arcing and plasma ball was enough to set everything plastic in the vehicle alight. The battery had enough capacity to maintain the plasma ball for quite some time :shock: Keep in mind, this was a nominal 240vdc 76 cell in series battery, not a 12v battery. You can not get a plasma ball from a 12v battery, but a short circuit to the body work would be quite spectacular considering the photo below is a short across one cell not 4 in series
100Ah cell short circuit2.jpg
As you can see, there is a lot of energy in any one cell, so caution is very important. A lead acid battery treated the same way would explode a really good oxygen/hydrogen gas mix explosion and fire while spraying acid around the immediate area, so at least the LiFeP04 cells are safer as far as that goes

T1 Terry
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native pepper
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Re: im back

Post by native pepper »

Terry never tried it, but it should be easy to weld with lifepo4, do you know anyone who has tried it. Experimented with welding with LA, but the battery failed pretty quickly.
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T1 Terry
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Re: im back

Post by T1 Terry »

native pepper wrote: Mon Jun 29, 2020 2:41 pm Terry never tried it, but it should be easy to weld with lifepo4, do you know anyone who has tried it. Experimented with welding with LA, but the battery failed pretty quickly.
I just power the mig welder via the inverter or use one of those newish high frequency units if I need a stick welder. The generator welding machines we used for heavy stuff ran between 28vdc for special light work and to 48vdc and up to 400 amps for the big serious stuff rods. A lithium battery would do that fairly easily, but a dedicated welding machine has a lot of fine tuning adjustments that you can't get from a direct DC battery powered welding set up. Mig gas welding is also low hydrogen, so a much better weld and requires additional skill levels to achieve a good finish using low hydrogen stick welding

T1 Terry
A person may fail many times, they only become a failure when they blame someone else John Burrows
If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine. – Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO
campingnut
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Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2014 4:30 am

Re: im back

Post by campingnut »

Dear T1 Terry

Thanks so much for your reply. The supplier made me promise I would insulate and strap the cells. I have cut up some thin plastic cutting boards to put between the cells. These CATL cells have larger aluminium posts instead of bolts (guess they are joined to the bolt) - easy to bolt into the threads already there (two per post) but very easy to have a shorting accident so I am going to cover them well. Im using a PL40 to charge these and have yet to buy the PLS2 shunt adaptor if anybody knows of a reasonable place to buy them. I have included a photo.
spark.JPG

Just looked at prices for the PLS2 and shunt (200amp) and its way over $200 for the both. Would I just be better off buying the victron battery monitor and forget trying to measure the power side of it through the pl40 and just do the charging with it?
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T1 Terry
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Re: im back

Post by T1 Terry »

The Victron 712BMV is the better choice as far as battery monitors at the moment. More expensive than the shunt and adapter, but far superior to the Plasmatronics set up because the charge efficiency and Peukert's factor can be changed to better suit the different chemistry and actual maximum load the battery will experience. If the current is kept below 0.5CA when Winston cells are used, both the charge factor and Peukert's factor are set to 100% and a factor of 1, the effect is so small (at the 0.0?% ) that it becomes a rounding error. Sinopoly can only handle a 0.2CA load before derating needs to be taken into account and some of the cells/batteries are that bad they are not much better than AGM batteries in their efficiency. The Plasmatronics has a built in charge efficiency and Peukert's factor matched to the preset program selected or to the AGM factors if program 4 is used. Unfortunately the compounding errors make the figures unreliable unless the battery is return to 100% every few days and the SOC reset to 100% rather than the 120% it appears to top out at :?

If you really want a PLS shunt and adpter, I'm sure we have a few on the shelf Margaret would be happy to sell you ;) 8-)

T1 Terry
A person may fail many times, they only become a failure when they blame someone else John Burrows
If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine. – Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO
Coolabah1au
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Re: im back

Post by Coolabah1au »

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