Which home energy storage battery?

[GarethC]

Hi all,

I'm keen to fit a home battery. As large as practical really and a minimum of 15kWh. But I'm struggling to deal with all the options.

No solar and no possibility of having it. This would purely be to use off-peak, lower carbon electricity for as much of our usage as possible.

Appreciate many on here have DIY'd it, but that's probably beyond me, so full kit preferred.

Can these things live indoors, or is an outhouse a necessity?

Greatly appreciate any advice you guys can provide.

[Thebeeman]

I went with a Luxpower and Pylontech setup. Initially 10.5 Kw but since added another 5 Kw. We do have solar but the battery side is separate stand alone. With this setup I can add extra batteries when cash allows.
I would suggest use a garage of somewhere rather than indoors, they do take up space and generate some heat.
At present, with no sun, we are storing 14/15 Kw on Off Peak rate and that sees us through the following day, except Xmas day when the B turkey got cooked.
Others will be along soon with their input.

[Stinsy]

I too have a LuxPower and Pylontech setup.

I would highly recommend getting batteries that work with any inverter and an inverter that works with any batteries. The market is moving to proprietary batteries and inverters that are only compatible with each other. I recommend against getting involved with that because if the inverter faults you could be sitting on a £10k paperweight of a battery.

I would strongly recommend Pylontech batteries, they are super reliable, modular, and easy to upgrade. I chose them because they performed well in an Australian long-term study (that has sadly now finished): https://arena.gov.au/assets/2018/05/lit ... ort-12.pdf

I chose LuxPower primarily because of price. And mine has performed perfectly reliably over the years. The controls are a bit translated-from-Chinese but it is reasonably intuitive and all the other Chinese inverters are similar, Solis, Solax, Sunsync, they're all the same, never heard about unreliability from any of them.

Have a look at ITS for bits: https://www.itstechnologies.shop/

[Krill]

Ditto above: Three Pylontech US5000 batteries and two Luxpowertek ACS3600 to charge in a three hour cheapslot from essentially empty to 100% keeps the house functioning unless we have to do a big cleaning and drying day (tumble dryer) or when there is significant oven use AND there is no solar production. House of two adults, no children. Add an extra US5000 if you want to deal with these edge cases, and possibly look at the Hoymiles small solar input options (just 2 panels can produce a significant amount in a day compared to an extra battery and cost a quater of the amount). Just do that after the sparkies have finished IMO.

We use a garage as well for storage, used a brick wall with less than two metres worth of wall space for the inverters, but the batteries sit in an enclosure on the floor.

One word of caution: I think the Pylontechs only get the 10 year warranties if installed by a professional installer, and the vat reduction doesn't start until next year (February?) for battery only installations so not point trying to rush. In that case, if you decide to play safe with extra batteries it's probably cheaper to just do all of them in one go.

[Lincs Robert]

Lux ACS units, Pylontech & Chinese stacks using EVE280/230 cells here

[Mart]

Anyone have any thoughts/comments about Fogstar?

[AGT]

Only 3500 cycles compared to 6000 for the pylontech would be my only issue

[resybaby]

I looked at the Fogstars before picking US5000's in the end.
Like the built in displays and that they would be easy to collect as Family in Redditch.
Asked a few simple newbie type questions via email, quick response, but no real answer to the questions posed.
Electrician also looked at the spec for me and advised against due to life expectancy.
So went with Pylontechs myself.

[HML]

Electrician also looked at the spec for me and advised against due to life expectancy.

How did the electrician assess life expectancy? AFAICS there is no reliable published information on the life expectancy of these things.

The life expectancies bandied about for cheap Chinese cells seem to be plucked out of the air.

In real life, assuming that there is some reality in the claim of 3500 cycles, that represents a life much greater than 10 years in domestic applications, unless your battery is so undersized that you give it a complete discharge every day. Mine are being hammered at the moment but they still generally discharge less than 50% during the day, so you might expect 20 years from a nominal 3500 cycle battery.

I've bought 16 280Ah and 16 304Ah grade B cells from Fogstar. Arrived reasonably promptly with no issues. They aren't particularly well balanced; the 280Ah ranged from 267 to 281Ah and the 304Ah from 301 to 309Ah but they're OK for the usage that they get.

[Joeboy]

Our plylontechs (oldest unit) is 5yrs 3mths. I run them down to 10% soc and have done since purchase, they are often discharged down this low, not so much in last year but certainly 4 years of being caned. . My inverter says they have a SOH of 90%. They've discharged 19Mwh so far.

Might help someone.