Allen Jackson

John Weiland wrote:Eric,    I may have missed it in your build description, but do you have plastic/ABS separation sheets between each adjacent cell?  I just received 4 EVE 100 Ah cells that will fit nicely in an ammo-box build but need to confirm the need or not for dividers as has been mentioned elsewhere on internet descriptions.  Thanks!

Non-conductive separators are a very good idea if your system is going to be moved around, because that would prevent wear on the outer cases, but I don't think this type of battery is using the outer shell as an electrode. I'll check mine to test if either electrode has continuity with the shell.

Did your batteries come with fiberglass separators? All of the cells I have ever bought, did come with those, but that might be a vendor-supplied bonus.  Admittedly, all my (limited) experience working with LiFePO4 batteries, has been with the larger batteries in bulk, for stationary powerwalls, or ESS (energy storage systems), so I don't know how the smaller ones are sold. On the smaller end of the scale, everything needed to be portable and carry it's own weight (robotics), so while the original ones were lead-acid based, that quickly got swapped to NiMH because NiCad was toxic AND had a vicious memory problem, then lithium polymer as the holy grail.

BTW John, if you are wanting to add battery banks to that one, this is the better model for that - https://www.amazon.com/JKBMS-12V-24V-Bluetooth-Protection-JK-B1A8S10P-HC/dp/B0FPCZS56M?th=1

On a different note, many of the Daly BMS models have parallel functionality too - read the details.

Mike Haasl wrote:This is a badge bit (BB) that is part of the PEP curriculum.  Completing this BB is part of getting the sand badge in Electricity.

In this Badge Bit, you will replace or install a permanent AC light fixture.

Wiring varies greatly, just be safe when pursuing this BB

To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
  - install new or replace existing permanent AC light fixture

To show you've completed this Badge Bit, you must provide:
   - a picture of the current location that needs a new light fixture
   - a picture of the installation midway through
   - a picture of the finished installation with the light turned on

Here's another permanent 120 VAC light fixture installation/replacement, so if it's a duplicate, it can be applied to the next level.

My wife and I decided (for different reasons) that it was time to retire the old kitchen light fixture. It's one with a stacked set of circular florescent tubes, and they both work most of the time (for me), but my wife isn't tall enough to tap it when it hesitates... We went shopping for a replacement and chose one she's willing to try, and I was willing to accept.

This fixture is controlled by a pair of 3-way switches, and I discovered after removing the old fixture, whoever installed it and the wiring, incorrectly switched the neutral leg, not the hot! There's not enough slack wiring in the switch box to correct that, so for now, I'll have to just install the light and come back later when I'm willing to open up the walls and ceiling to rewire it. The old wiring is the old silk-wrapped tar, but it's in grounded BX conduit.  The inspector must have been sleeping to miss the neutral switching during the initial construction?

In any case, it's up, the boss is happy with the amount of light in the kitchen, and the breaker didn't blow when I was done.

My wife said she'd prefer the next week instead, since there's no event going on the 5th-9th now.  I've paid the $300 (after recovering my dusty PayPal account), so you should have record of that soon, if not already.

I look forward to the adventure!

Burra Maluca wrote:

Allen Jackson wrote: One 220VAC 30 amp RV outlet  - There is NO such thing!

Well there is in Europe, but it's not the sort of thing I'd expect to find in an RV in the USA.

This BB is a PEP one so as far as I know it should be suitable for use in Montana, so I strongly suspect it's a typo and should read "One120VAC 30 amp RV outlet", not 220

You're probably correct, as it didn't occur to me that such a thing might exist outside of the USA, however both of the examples shown in the YouTube videos are based in the USA, and are using the 120 Vac NEMA TT-30R and neither of the inverters they are using are capable of producing anything other than 120 Vac outputs, so that's all they could supply from those DIY boxes.

There are inverters that are capable of producing both 120 Vac and 240 Vac in the US, and they're typically called "split-phase" inverters, but those also tend to be much too large to fit into the scope of this BB project.  I own 3 of those currently.

The US National Electric Code is the standard that I was referencing for the NEMA outlet specifications, as that would seem to be more applicable to Montana, and I suspect that European standards for outlets would have them looking very different than the NEMA TT-30R does too.  I haven't lived in Europe since 1987, and even back then, I didn't have an RV, so I wasn't paying attention to that sort of thing then.

Mike Barkley wrote:Allen you should be able to get most of it from here ... https://www.mcmaster.com/products/electrical-lighting/

Perhaps there was a misunderstanding - I'm not looking for parts, I'm trying to get the BB requirements corrected, because there's a part of the listed requirements that's wrong.

It states:

To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
- 1100 watt hour capacity
- 1500 watt inverter
- reasonably water resistant case
- One 220VAC 30 amp RV outlet  - There is NO such thing! *
- Four 110VAC 15 amp outlets
- Four USB plugs
- Two 12V sockets
- Power meter with display
- Solar input plugs
- Plug to charge the unit from 110V or 220V

*The 30-amp RV outlet is a 120 VAC outlet, NOT a 220 VAC outlet.  The 50-amp RV outlet is 240 VAC, but the NEMA TT-30R is the outlet in question (TT stands for travel trailer), and it bears a resemblance to the obsolete NEMA 10-30R outlet, which WAS a 240 VAC outlet, and sometimes folks might wire them wrong because of the confusion about this.

There's a newer video listed on the BB page now, and they both are using the NEMA TT-30R outlet, which is readily available at Home Depot and the like, but it's STILL a 120 volt outlet.

What they're using:


The old NEMA 10-30R dryer outlet (which is an ungrounded 220 Vac outlet):

The 50-amp RV outlet looks like this:

Thanks!  Enjoy the holiday - it would take me more than the weekend to complete that BB anyway, so there's no big rush, I'm still sourcing some of the parts

Is this the thread I should have posted in for my correction of the BB in question?:
https://permies.com/wiki/140481/pep-electricity/Charge-Carry-lithium-battery-power

There's a technical error in the BB requirements as listed, because the 30 amp RV outlet in question isn't 220 Vac, and even in the YouTube video example presented, Jehu Garcia didn't use a 220 Vac outlet (or an inverter capable of producing 220 Vac).  He did clarify that in the comments later, as someone asked about it.

Here's my try for a 12 V light repair (it's actually a replacement & LED upgrade).

Anyone who has ever had to change a bulb on one of these (Cadillac DTS, although it is not alone in the category) will understand what a pain it is, as it is officially required to remove the front bumper cover & grill to change any of the bulbs in that housing. Changing bulbs isn't what this is about, though.

The right side daytime running light on my car had melted the socket base, and the dealer doesn't sell the housing separately. They will only sell the entire headlight assembly with the HID lamp, HID ballast, DRL, & marker lights as a bundled package, for a small fee of only $900/each...  The left headlight is yellowed and crazed too, but the housing is intact, and even though it would be nice to get two new clear lens headlights, I refuse to pay more for a set of headlights than I would expect to pay for a set of tires!

There are aftermarket headlights to be had, for a few hundred dollars, but the adjusters aren't in the same place as the OEM ones, so they didn't fit well in the space, and they couldn't be adjusted without removing the headlight assembly. I bought a pair, and had to modify the housing to access the adjusters, but I decided to do an LED upgrade to all the incandescent lamps in the housing, so hopefully it would never have a heat-related meltdown like before. That also required an additional load resistor to be installed, so the turn signal wouldn't hyperflash like a fast busy signal.

With the sheet metal mod, the adjusters can be accessed from below while in place, so it's an acceptable solution.

John Weiland wrote:Thanks for these continued additions, Allen, and giving a personal shout-out to others who have helped a newbie like myself get knee-deep into solar/battery power so quickly.  So much great experience and expertise here to help along interested members of the community.

I hope to add more soon regarding a larger desired system....likely 48V for reasons you and others have noted....and hope to take advantage of the current (and hopefully not disappearing???) deals on hybrid inverter systems for our home.  This may be sized to handle full home loads, but as noted elsewhere may also just be targeted, at least initially, for critical loads like furnace, water-well, and sump-pumps.  One item I did wish to bring up for discussion is your comment about 30A 220/240VAC outlet and perhaps I misunderstood your explanation.  Below is the plug configuration for connecting our gas generator to the transfer switch on our utility (grid) power pole.  It's rated for 30 amps and does indeed all for 120V and 220/240VAC through that same plug.  In fact, I'm actually hoping to set up a hybrid inverter (pure sine wave, 12 - 15 kW) that would be connected to parallel-tied, 100 Ah batteries (scalable).  The hope initially is just to charge the batteries from the grid to test out the interface, then add solar panels step-wise to fine the balance between cost and battery charging that appears to match our battery draw-down.

Now time for some crude math (sets up abacus...  )  I have gas gennies in the 7-9kW range, but only if I use 240V in the equation of 240 X 30 amps do I get the 7200W that the gennie is rated at.  A question arises as to what might happen if I wire the inverter as split phase to provide both 120V and 240V across that same cable and into that same transfer switch:  I'm assuming a (combined?) load larger than 30 A might be attempted, but at what point does this become dangerous?  Pretty sure the generators are breaker protected so that if such a draw/load occurs, the breaker will be tripped, but I've not had this happen to date.  I guess the question is whether the inverter 'AC OUT' terminals will have a breaker that one can size appropriately for all downstream considerations....wire size, etc.

Finally, the specs on the EVE 3.2V cells that you posted look very similar to the ones I'm looking at....only difference being the dimensions.  The cells I'm looking at are ~1.4 inches thick, which will allow me to place them, along with appropriate dividers and bonding wrap, side-by-side into a ~6+ inch space.  Additional space in the casing  will easily allow for BMS and associated wiring.   Fingers crossed!

In the JAG35 YouTube video referenced in the BB, about making a lithium battery powered "Solar Generator", as they were called back then, the both the Inergy Kodiak and his DIY box have a NEMA TT-30R panel mount outlet on them.  I believe that it was mistaken for a 240 Vac outlet commonly used for electric clothes dryers back in the day, which would have been the NEMA 10-30R outlet.  They look similar enough that over the years, many folks have incorrectly wired the TT-30R as a 240 Vac outlet, and then when anyone plugs in an actual RV, it fries all the 120 Vac electronics...  In the YouTube comments, Jehu Garcia even responds to a question about the outlet, saying it is the 120 Vac RV outlet, NOT a 240 Vac outlet at all.

Modern electrical code has replaced the old dryer outlet with a grounded version, so it now has 4 prongs on the plug, not 3, as the retired NEMA 10-30 didn't have a ground connection, only 2 hots and a neutral, and folks were expected to ground the frames of appliances that used the old plugs.

Your NEMA 14-30 is fine.  The "L" just means it is the locking variant, and the "R" is for receptacle, whereas "P" is for the plug side of the connection.

As far as the genny connection, your plug has 4 prongs.  1 is a ground, 1 is a neutral, and the other 2 are hot wires of opposite phases, so there will be 120 Vac measured between each of the hot wires and neutral, but if measured between the 2 hot wires, it will measure 240 Vac.

If you're only using a 120 Vac load, the return path is through the neutral, and the other hot wire is sitting idle, with no current flow, but only using a single leg, you can't draw more than 30 amps through that leg before it should blow a breaker on the generator.  That's what's called an imbalanced load, and different systems can handle load/phase imbalances of different magnitudes.  The genny I was working on this afternoon can only handle a 50% load imbalance.  Yours may be different, but you can't get full power from the generator without using both legs in close to a balanced fashion.  It's hoped that if plugging into a 240 Vac breaker panel, random distribution of 120 Vac breakers will average out and balance the phases, but often they have to be juggled and breakers/circuits may need to be moved around to get as balanced as possible.

A hybrid inverter will also have a maximum load imbalance, and they all should have breakers on their outputs, although it is customary for a split-phase capable inverter will feed a breaker box, and then the distribution goes from there, as arranged by the installer/electrician.  In my powerwall BB entry, both of those inverters are split-phase 120/240 Vac inverters and they're powering a mix of 240 Vac and mostly 120 Vac circuits.

In this picture, the black L1 on the load side feeds the bypass transfer switch L1, which feeds the load center L1, and the red L2 on the load side feeds the bypass transfer switch L2, which feeds the load center L2.

If we need to work on the inverters, the load center can be transferred over to grid power, and then the inverters can be shut down with impunity, or at least without the users knowing, unless we lose grid power...  I did work at balancing the phases, so that while running a 5 Kw load on the system, the phases are less than 3% different , but I had to do that before the powerwall installation because they were blowing breakers and taking down the entire server room in the process when they were highly imbalanced -- then they chose to add more servers, and I had to upgrade the power feed, add the 2nd inverter, etc.

My entry for installing an outlet:

This is a part of a larger job I did installing a large "DIY" powerwall for a server room.  The room adjacent to the server room was selected for its proximity to the server room, (there's a furnace and a water heater in the room) but it was suitable for running conduit from the main breaker box and also to the server room (in our county, all high voltage wiring needs to be in conduit).

I had a helper on this job, but they didn't want to work on high voltage, so I did all the work on this outlet. It's a dedicated 20 Amp GFCI outlet (technically any outlet installed below grade are supposed to be GFCI).

On heavy-duty outlets of this type, there is a brass plate in each contact, which allows attaching wires by clamping force when the screws are tightened. This completely avoids the issue of a wrap-around failure of the wire looping around screws.  I think these also allows the spring clip push-in type, but I don't like using those either, especially with the clamping option available.