I’ve noticed on cold evenings my charging rate has slowed down meaning it’s not as charged by morning on a cold night as it is on a milder one, I mentioned something about this about three weeks ago ‘up there’. 15 degrees seems to be the critical temperature for my system (and it’s also the recommended minimum temperature for optimum performance).
The battery management system on the battery (which I assume in your case is also Lithium based?) will manage the charge rate based on a number of inputs; state of charge, temperature of the cell being two (there may be others, I don’t know). I think the BMS might also manage the discharge rate based on similar parameters so it’s possible that on a cold day the battery would only discharge at (say) 1kW rather than the 3kW it could manage on a milder day; however I’m mostly using my battery in the evening, at peak times when there is around a 500W load or so, so this isn’t something I’ve noticed.
In the past I used to do a fair amount of off-road motorcycling. I fitted a lithium battery to a bike (to save weight) and I found that first thing on cold mornings it felt flat and often wouldn’t churn the bike over fast enough to comfortably start. If I churned it for a few seconds and then waited ten seconds and tried again, on the second attempt (when the battery was warmer) it span much faster and started. So I guess this gives an example of Lithium based battery discharge rates being temperature dependent.
Ive not found any issues so far charging or discharging. The inverter ( Givenergy AC 3.0) does both at errr 3.0Kw.
The internal battery temperature is measured and monitored by the BMS and has been as low as 13 degrees in my garage.
This afternoon i have lagged it with a hot water cylinder ( one of those red things) lagging kits. As much out of curiosity. I’ll see how tonight goes.
I’m still very new to this but noticed a couple of occasions the battery has given up its charge very quickly, like dropping from 40% down to 10 in a matter of minutes. Other times it’s been a very smooth discharge curve
I think relatively speaking they are. Obviously the ambient outdoor temperature will be a factor, as with any heating source. Now that we have learnt how to run them efficiently, our power usage has improved - they key is too set a sensible temperature and leave them to run without changing any settings. Apparently it is also best to have them set at heat only or cool only, rather than the “auto” setting to stop it heating and cooling through cycles (though haven’t tried this yet).
Our weather has been all over the place lately. Heating one night last week, cooling last night
I thought it was almost mid summer down under! We are going through a long cold snap. Colder than last year certainly. Not what anyone wanted at these sky high prices.
Yes, we’re getting sunny warm days and wet cool days at the moment. The metrological summer starts at the longest day (19 December), so hopefully things will pick up.
I was interested in who built the battery cells before I bought it (I used to work with battery supply for mobile phones and had some residual knowledge of which suppliers we favoured, battery was from one of these suppliers so I was happy).
It is a risk, but I’ve also got a wood burner, oil fired central heating and an EV with a much larger battery so I doubt the home battery is the biggest risk.
It’s in my attic above a room I use as a gym.
Not aware of any having inbuilt fire extinguishers, problem would be if a lithium battery of multiple kWh failed it would probably be quite a violent reaction that a fire extinguisher wouldn’t help with.
The risk of it failing doesn’t really worry me very much.
Don’t have a battery yet, but I guess my car with 10 gallons of fuel is also a risk in my integral garage with a bedroom above. I do however have a heat alarm fitted in the garage to give me. bit of warning
We’ve just had a Mixergy hot water tank installed. These new designs are inherently 20-25% more efficient than a traditional hot water cylinder. Ours can be heated by our gas central heating boiler or by its electric immersion heater which is connected up via a myenergi Eddi solar diverter.
With gas at 10.5p/unit and our electricity at 11.24p/unit, I’m not sure which will be the more cost effective source? With the energy prices so close, guess it comes down to the heating efficiency of the boiler versus the immersion heater.
Guidance welcome from those who understand such matters better than I.
The SolarEdge battery has one. One would hope that every cell is monitored and one that is misbehaving is isolated and the problem reported. They don’t tell you very much about their research into faults, but neither do other manufacturers.
Most home storage batteries feature lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathodes, rather than the Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) chemistry found in most electric car batteries.
LFP has an inherently lower energy density than NMC but this is less important for a home battery. It is much more thermally stable & robust, so a far lower fire risk.
