some incredible bsfc numbers...

[Tom Reed]

We have a $8k bank of Hawker PV1 batteries rated for 2100 cycles to 80%. They have a 10 year warranty, but since we only do shallow cycles, usually to 20% with a rare depth of discharge to 50% we're hoping for a 15 year life out of the batteries. If that happens we'll be at $44.44 per month cost. Hopefully the LiFe technology will be mature enough before it's replacement time and we'll be able to give them a try.

[ChrisOlson]

We work our batteries pretty hard.  They are most times never above 80% SOC for 7-10 days at a time.
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Chris

[Dualfuel]

Chris! That is an amazing powerconsumption number. "I see" says the blind man...I definitely see that there is a huge leap in cost when you go from something like my 1kwh/day to your numbers...I didn't even use that much electric when I lived in town...I will have to pin myself down with some numbers, but here is the fact...I have no regular income...my utilities were $300/month in town, now I pay $100 per month in gasoline during the winter, and nothing right now. I could not afford to live in town on the grid, now I can afford to live...
Two winters ago I put 60 hrs on the Kubota Generator, and I didn't use it last winter. I would say that this winter I didn't need the Kubota because we took the laundry to town so forty a month on that.
I suspect that your power consumption has something to do with the convenience of automatic electric appliances. Nothing wrong with that, but as you say it is expensive to maintain on battery power.
the thing that excites me...if you are gonna pay for expensive fuel to operate a generator with, then I would want to heat my place with the exhuast heat. Then I would probably just throw away the chainsaws...as there is way more heat in gasoline or diesel...Then I could get excited about listenening to the generator all the time....

[BruceM]

Good  to see someone serious about real battery cost.  My 1st set of cheapo Walmart (Johnson Controls) "110 ah marine deep cycle" batteries lasted 4 years so at the replacement cost of $74 including tax times my 10 batteries in series I end up with $15.40 a month. My DOD is  10% on average in the winter, never over 15%, fully charged every day, thanks to the Arizona sun at 5600 feet. I did not use my AC charger at all this last winter.  Because of my custom analog shunt regulators on every battery of the ten battery series string, I only do mini-equalizations a couple times a month, and I only add water once a year. 

We'll see how long the new set (2 winters on them so far) lasts.  I can afford some decent batteries now that I sold my other home, but I just don't think I can beat the cost per month of these marine batteries for my application. 

I use a lot less power than originally planned since I received a propane refrigerator as a gift from my Dad.  It takes $30 a month in propane to run but I love it's quietness enough to stick with it.  I've been too ill to work on a low frequency sine inverter for 120V, so I still run my Listeroid for laundry and pumping water (simultaneous).  I burn about $10 a month in fuel.

[Mad_Labs]

I've only lived off grid for 5 years. My batteries are from Sam's Club, branded "Energizer", although they are really made goodness knows where. They are finally showing signs of age, although still working. I suspect when the weather turns cold again this year I will have to replace them. I have never discharged them very deeply, except a couple of times. On the other hand, I didn't have a proper controller charging them until this spring. I know I was rarely doing the absorption phase correctly. I paid a little less than a kilo buck for them, so about US$16 a month in cost.

Anyway, I'm not convinced that the fancy batteries are really worth the money. Seems to me that a properly sized bank with adequate charging sources and you can get enough life out of the cheaper batteries. Bear in mind I have only a few years experience with this one bank. A buddy of mine with Surettes has had more trouble and paid more than I have though.

Jonathan

[ChrisOlson]

Quite a bit of the power consumed here is in my machine shop, which is powered off our XW6048 also.  If I'm doing a lot of welding and/or lathe and mill work I can pretty easily burn off 20 kWh in a day in the shop.  My wife won't allow a propane line coming into the house.  So we have all electric stuff there too, including water heating.  But surprisingly, things like her induction range with a convection oven are fairly easy to run on off-grid power.  If the inverter overloads it auto-starts our Honda generator and uses Gen Support to meet the load until it goes away, then shuts the gen off.  Those really heavy loads are usually very short in duration so the amount of fuel used for peak load support is almost negligible.

The real problem is my shop.  The little Robin running on the inverter's AC1 input programmed for Grid Support while I'm doing a lot of high power stuff in the shop will make a big difference.  And I can live with the fuel burned because it's minor compared to what I'm doing in the shop.

On really good days with nice incoming RE power we can 95% of the time power everything with the XW straight up.  If my wife is doing some high power stuff in the house, then I have always pre-started the Honda to have it online for Gen Support before I do anything in the shop like welding.  But I think the little Robin will take enough "edge" off the loads to keep from digging into the batteries too deep, and be more efficient than running the larger Honda.

This is the new powerhouse I built with both generators in it:



This is our utility and battery room:


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Chris

[mobile_bob]

Nice clean installation there Chris!

very well done

bob g

[ChrisOlson]

Nice clean installation there Chris!

very well done

Thanks Bob - we had dual SW Plus 4024's on the wall there a couple years ago.  Then went to a single SW Plus 5548 to get away from leg balancing problems with the stacked inverters.  But the 5548 didn't have quite enough "snoose" under the hood so we put in the XW.
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Chris

[Tom Reed]

Oh how I wish the Outback inverters we have had a functional generator support system. That would solve almost all of the issues we have by being limited to 3KW while charging. But alas all we have is the menu item on the control console and no hope of future support from Outback.

[SteveU.]

Hey ChrisO
Thanks for putting up the picture of your Suburu/Robin RDG3300H gen-set.
http://robinamerica.com/
http://suburupower.com/
That led to the Hatz 1B30 aircooled diesel engine that they list as using. All of the engine specs in detail are here with the graphed g/kW/hr:
http://www.hatz-diesel.com/en/products/diesel-engines
The pdf download info on these "B" and larger "C" series are some the most detailed I've seen down to the cfm engine use per hour; detailed power every 200 rpm from 1500 to 3600 rpm; engine pto side loading, etc,etc. In the "B" series download one picture hints at an availble direct mounted Permanet Magnet 2-7 kW charging system. The "C" series shows their "SIlentPack" engine enclosures. They claim thier 1C90 engine to be the "highest performnace single cylinder diesel engine  . . . in the world"
Ha! Ha! For you aircooled engine haters they show converting two of these to water cooled with better performance here:
http://www.hatz-diesel.com/en/news-media/news/current-news/details/1d81c-hydro-consept/
Thier versions of small generator systems are here:
http://www.hatz-diesel.com/en/products/systems/power-systems

MB you will like that they list out all of the US EPA and EU certification up through Tier IV Final for most of their engines.
Henry very good level of operations detail published on these engines - you will like this.

These are much lighter than the Kohler/Lamberdini's and even available in vertical shaft versions. May be a replacement some day for my gasoline field mower B&S engine. Still too heavy DuelFuel for a diesel chainsaw! I'll keep using my gasoline Stihls for my nice quiet in house woodstoves. Ha! Ha! Engine heats are for fuelwood drying and shop/green house space heating.

Fellas lead acid batteries begin to capacity "age" less as soon as you put the acid in them. Lowest you can hold this loss down to is ~0.5% a month. 1%+ loss per month is very typical for the lower line starting capable types. These numbers are with the best of maintence. I lose 1-2 batteries here a year just from not being able anymore to keep all of the 11 electric starting systems used enough. Funny I do NOT have that problem with the different 9 hand cranked magneto ingition system stuff here - just lots of stale fuel avoidance maintenance on all of these.
Only someone willing to go the make, and remake your own stationary battery cells could ever claim sustainability and recovery of costs.

Regards
Steve Unruh

[ChrisOlson]

Oh how I wish the Outback inverters we have had a functional generator support system. That would solve almost all of the issues we have by being limited to 3KW while charging. But alas all we have is the menu item on the control console and no hope of future support from Outback.

Tom, the Outback Radian inverter does have generator support advertised.  We strongly considered one but Outback and the dealer were not able to answer my questions as to how it functions compared to the SW/SW+/XW-series inverters, which have had it for almost 20 years thru the various models.  We were sent by the dealer to see a running Radian system in central Wisconsin that was supposed to have generator support set up.  When we got there we found out that they didn't really know what generator support was.  They thought it was the Generac 12 kW Guardian that they had modified for two-wire auto start when the batteries got low.

We were a little disappointed in that.  And even though we would've liked the additional capacity of the Radian inverter we decided to buy the XW because it's a proven system.  And Schneider's tech support was absolutely superb in helping us get it set up properly so it works with our small 3.6 kVA Honda generator.  I have load start set at 47 amps and it brings the generator online if the load exceeds that for five minutes, warms it up for one minute then puts it to work at its full rated 3.6 kVA prime capacity while the inverter carries the balance of the load.  When the total load drops below 47 amps it waits for one minute and if the load remains below 47 amps it disconnects the generator, cools it down for 90 seconds, then shuts it off.

It works, very very well in the XW, just like it always did in the SW/SW Plus.  Pretty much totally seamless.  And that's all I wanted to know about how the Radian does it.  But Outback just told me, "Oh, you probably won't need it anyway."  So I don't think they yet understand what it's about - which is conserving energy from the batteries during high draw times to prevent discharging your bank at the 2 hr rate.  And being able to do it with a smaller generator.

I have since talked to a couple people that have more experience with the Radian and it turns out that gen support in it is not true gen support like it's always been in the SW/SW+/XW.  They evidently adapted the grid support function from the GVFX-series into it, they still do not build an integrated generator controller, and the Radian appears to be targeted more towards larger grid-tie systems with battery and generator backup rather than true off-grid.  Which in fact, I don't know anybody that lives off-grid that can afford the batteries to run a big inverter like that just on battery power at full rated load for more than about 10-15 minutes.

The Radian is very new and yet unproven.  But perhaps they will enhance it with time.  It was a very nice-looking inverter.  Although I can't say that they made any significant improvements in the menu layouts in the Mate3 vs what the old Mate had.  The XW's menus are much easier to understand and find what you want to set or adjust.

So we've been overall happy with the XW6048.  We don't use the charger in it much - maybe 8 or 10 times since we've bought it.  But when it's charging with the generator, if the load exceeds the generator's capability it seamlessly switches to gen support and helps the gen out.  So the power from it VERY stable.  We don't even get a flicker in a CFL light bulb when I strike an arc with my Lincoln 225 amp welder in the shop.  It will handle 7.2 kVA overload for 30 minutes pretty easily before it starts to complain about overheat or AC overload.  And it will handle larger overloads than 7.2 kVA for shorter times, up to about 12 kVA for 15-20 seconds.  So it's got considerably more overload capacity than the SW Plus 5548 had.
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Chris

[ChrisOlson]

Hey ChrisO
Thanks for putting up the picture of your Suburu/Robin RDG3300H gen-set.
http://robinamerica.com/
http://suburupower.com/
That led to the Hatz 1B30 aircooled diesel engine that they list as using.

Steve, the Robin DY27 was last sold in the US in 2004.  It is still manufactured in Japan and sold to overseas markets today where EPA regulations don't apply.  I've seen a lot of problems with the Hatz diesels - especially their injection pumps.

The Robin was always famous for being virtually impossible to break back when the company was called Wisconsin-Robin even.  There was thousands of them built for the military back in the day (it was called the Wisconsin-Robin WRD1-270 diesel back then).  I remember a construction company that had a DY27 on a 2" pump and they dropped it from a crane and bent the governor linkage on it.  They hooked it up and ran it anyway with the fuel rack stuck at full fuel.  Then decided it must have a problem because fire and black smoke was coming out of the exhaust and the muffler was orange.  So they took it to the Wisconsin-Robin dealer and they fixed it, and it was still running fine several years later when the impeller in the pump finally wore out.
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Chris

[Tom Reed]

Sounds like things have improved a bit since the fall of '07 when the system we have was purchased. The vfx3648's do produce very clean power and other the gen support I'm happy with them. If the magic smoke comes out an XW inverter is in the cards. I also have an SW2512 from which I was familiar the gen support, but never used it.

[ChrisOlson]

I also have an SW2512 from which I was familiar the gen support, but never used it.

Indeed, it's a very handy thing.  It's how we run our big stuff here on off-grid power without spending an arm and leg on fuel and inverter equipment/batteries to do it.  Using a small AC generator for peak load with the inverter helping it out is much more efficient than digging into your batteries to run those big loads, then having to charge batteries with an inverter/charger.  The peak load support from the generator takes the load off the system so the RE sources can keep up with charging batteries, and minimize the use of the generator for charging.

I'm amazing how many people don't know what it is, or what it does.  I made a video once with our old system, demonstrating it:

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Chris

[Dualfuel]

Ha! Today is the solstice, and I am busily writing this while the Kubota is chugging away in the generator house...(nice house btw, Chris), the irony gets me every year.
The information Chris put out was very informative...in fact I have been researching converting my golf cart to 48 volts and then loading it with a MPPT controller, and a Magnum MS 4448. That generator support feature would be very useful for the applications I had in mind...Right now the cart batteries weld small things like rebar or trailer hitches using 30vdc, but I have no amperage control that really works...still for a quick job in the field its super handy.
C&D Technology makes sealed cell tower batteries...I got four of them from the junk yard in 2008, and I still use them (TEL-100) to run the GE refrigerator...they have been damaged by a stint being charged with no charge controller two years ago...they still work though...I never tried to buy new ones. All I did was call the number on the battery and got turned off by the 'crat who answered the phone...I like really good tech support...even if it embarrasses me (the guy at Magnum...."did you hook up the hot lead to hot 1?"...me "yeah sure!....uhhhhh well, no.....")
This year I bought Remy batteries for the cart $100 per...3 year free replacement, and the guys at that shop mean that...even when I explained that I use the batteries to weld with...he said it did not matter what I did with them. That felt good to hear. We both know I am not going to abuse the batteries...I always have them charging...plus who wants to move batteries, even to replace them.
Yeah steve, I have been really looking at a heat exchanger to dry wood with...and oil... and gasoline...and everything else around this water logged place.