Sodium Battery powers Inverter. But for how long will it run?
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- čas přidán 21. 03. 2024
- In this test, we are going to connect the FCHAO 'Peter' #Inverter to our 12V #Sodium Battery. I want to test which capacity is actually usable in a real-world #test. Firstly, the inverter wasn't happy when I connected it to the 15.7V battery and it complaint about the high voltage. I had to discharge the battery a bit and lower the voltage to 15.4V before the Peter turned on.
How far can we discharge the battery before the inverter gives up and shuts down? Let's do the test!
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It's good to see that at least 2/3 of its capacity is usable with standard electronics in a more 'real world' scenario. Sodium Ion batteries are currently forecast to end up about 1/3 cheaper than LiFePO4 once mass produced, so you could just oversize your battery if space isn't an issue.
There do appear to be some benefits to the chemistry in home uses, in particular:
- better cold tolerance, both in being able to charge below 0 degC and also better discharge characteristics when cold
- intrinsically safer (than even LiFePO4 by a small margin) due to being safe to over-discharge because there are no copper deposition issues
- potentially higher energy density than LiFePO4. The first commercial generation of cells are below existing LiFePO4 capacities but CATL is claiming that their second gen (due out in about a year) will exceed 200Wh/kg
- potential for exceptionally long lifespan. Natron Energy is already claiming 50,000 cycles with their current product.
Great video! Thanks for sharing the data. Also, I wonder if you might have squeezed a bit more out of it if you'd tested at constant .5C. Obviously a less useful real world test for a 50ah battery but still interesting.
Ya, und mit an off grid solar arrangement ist running Zee power inverter continuously the float voltage setting can simply be set too a few millivolts below the inverters DC input high voltage cutoff limit und the inverter will be running nearest to maximum efficiency gaining a slight advantage over lithium while actually using more of the available battery energy und lessening Charge Controller working losses by decreasing the current handling resulting in s cooler, longer lasting life of internal components. The top voltage is not much of a consideration in the continuous operating/ loaded inverter system and is actually a benefit with the addition cold proofing specification to boot. That said, the Inverter DC cut out threshold limit is unremarkable without consideration of load. However, in considering DC resistance loads such as heating, incandescent, brush motors - again this SIB technology provides advantages over lithium. SIB technology is at the front of inverter restructuring where higher DC voltage is predetermined by infrastructure: DC voltages should be consistent with AC voltages to increase efficiency: High voltage DC is more efficient than it's equivalent AC voltage by a large margin.
@@anthonyrstrawbridgeHVDC is much more efficient indeed and requires less copper too. The only issue is the safety which seems to be resolved as well with new Class 4 - FMPS! Hopefully, soon we will be able to use it at homes and get rid of AC as much as possible, no need of inverters.
Instead of discharging the battery, get a high current diode and put it in series (forward direction, of course). It'll drop the voltage by 0.4-0.7 volts without using much of the stored power. If you want to make it a bit more permanent, add a switch across the diode that will handle the current. When the real voltage drops low enough for the inverter, short the diode with the switch.
Yes, this is a very good sugestión, if it is a high power shotkey diode, the the voltage drop is about 0.4v drop, but on general, power diodes are about 0.9 volt drop. Note, they will need to be heat sinked very well, as they get hot, another option is to use two power diodes in parallel but place very low value resistors in series with each diode, something like a 0.5 ohm 10 watt ceramic resistor.
The 4% at the top is not the most interesting. A diode would indeed help, but for a 4% gain, I don't know if I would bother...
Brilliant idea!
I think the 4% at the top are great for longevity. We now know, we don't need to fully charge sodium and they can be balanced at any stage. I would not hunt for these 4%.
Thanks Andy, I'm waiting for summer in my country, now it's spring.😀
I know that feeling. I used to live there for over 40 years.
I think this is a very educational video series. We were able to see in practice what the difference is with an LFP system. Thanks for that! 👍
Thank you, yes, we all learned from these experiments.
82.6K and it’s still going up, good work! Thanks for sharing your findings 😊
Yes! Thank you!
NO fire risk, survives overdischarges and drains 75% SOC with normal inverter makes this the perfect battery for homes.
No fire risk with LFP with more usable energy curve so don't see the case for Sodium.
@@nigelcharles511 LFP fire risk is lower than Li-ion batteries but it is not as low as sodium. A failing BMS risks overcharging Lithium and burning down your whole house.
Yes, you can use 90% range with LFP at the cost of reducing battery life cycles. Using 60-70% SOC in LFP is the highest drain aim for good battery life longevity.
If the BMS fails, the charger failed before. Fairly unlikely that both fail at the same time.
Thanks Andy, 👍 all very interesting.
Thanks. Good work. If you plot charge and discharge curves (volts vs SOC) at the same amps - for a given SOC the Ah efficiency is 100 x Discharge Volts / Charge Volts. At rest volts vs SOC curve is somewhere in between.
Love your work Andy , you have inspired me to build my own off grid garage, I have 1550watts on the shed roof available i have 2 100/30 mppt victrons , one 75/15 victron mppt , one victron temperature and voltage unit , a smart shunt victron and a 200 ah battery
That is fantastic. great work and a nice system you have there. What inverter do you use? Or just using DC?
Andy, how could you resest the bms if you did not have the battery case open? This could be a real problem for the average customer. Thanks again for all your hard work.
Was thinking the same especially for a novice
I am a average solar system owner.
Would love to have basic troubleshooting ability for my batteries and system
He bypassed the BMS for the discharge test. If you keep the case shut, the BMS will stop discharging before switching itself off. So it shouldn‘t be necessary in normal operations - I am not sure how much the BMS draws or the battery as self discharges though
Under normal charging and discharging, the BMS should not get into such a position that you need to restart it. This was only from the last test when we discharged the 12V battery to close to 0V.
Ah, Holger just said that😄
The BMS uses very little power, less than 1mA or so when on standby.
Sodium specific hardware is certainly coming..
Unless they use sodium mostly for grid storage and HV batteries.
Groovy Tuesday.
A multiplus 12/2000 can be programmed to use from 9,5V to 17V, so it could use more of the range.
I think most if not all 12V Victron inverters can work at that 9V to 17V range.
Great video. It'll be interesting to see sodium batteries perform with a dedicated inverter, that can handle the voltage range.
But for now ... I'm ordering some EEL V4 DIY boxes, with just the breaker on the front panel, and install Andy's best EVE LF280K cells. Couldn't have done it without you Andy, Thanks for the knowledge transfer ... 👍
Oh, by the way ... rainy and overcast here in the evergreen state, USA
Thanks for your feedback. I'm getting the new EEL case as well to show it on the channel.
Thank you very much this test was very informative. I would imagine using the battery this way would also increase it's usfull life. ❤. M
Sunny and warm in Napier NZ. Expecting 6 kWh today from a tiny system plus another 2kWh from grid during the free hour
Free hour of grid power... is that during noon time? Interesting. You could charge your vehicle and batteries during that time.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia it's with the power company electric kiwi. You get to choose the free hour every day but it must not be peak times, 7am-9am and 5pm-9pm. I charge the Ev at 7kW and the house battery at whatever the multi can do and run on the inverter for the rest of the day. It was a godsend last year when a cyclone knocked the grid out for 10 days
Here in central Indiana, where the Indy 500 race is run in May, it is cool and overcast, so not many amps to collect. As the sodium ion battery production is scaled up, inverters will be built (or firmware updates provided) so that they can work with a wider range of input voltages. It is interesting to see how much the amperage increased and it would be very wise to use the correct wire size.
Yes, either new inverters or firmware upgrades. Not all can be upgraded though. Low voltage goes really hard on the inverter.
great video and you can use even more if you discharge at 0.2c. 😅😂 the weather was 🌧 today in Baghdad
I thought this 30A was already very low with only 350W pulled from this inverter. 12V is not great😄
Thanks Andy, another great informative video. It's all about the usable power...
And the Ah😙
Try a dropping diode to switch on the inverter, then when load is on, by-pass the diode.😊
Today the weather was very cloudy and wet in the Netherlands. I only had 3.7 kWh from 6700 Wp of solar panels. About 0.9 kWh was sent to the grid after the heat pump used most of it. I could add two more panels of about 430 Wp each on the shed at a 10 degree angle for maximum diffuse light in these conditions, but I would really like to build a larger 6 panel solar roof there and add some sodium-ion storage to brigde these darker days.
There is no hurry because of the solar debet system here, so I can wait for lower prices and new inverters that can handle the huge voltage drop.
Ran out of sun today and charged my 48v house bank from my12v 8kwh camper van bank, this video really reminded of Today 😂 I ran out to check the data from the victron shunt once it had gone flat and checked the jkbms to see the voltage difference in the cells, swear my wife thinks I’m crazy 🤪
I know what you mean, haha. She will get used to it. You need some sort of app so you can check on you phone...
Great video. That inverter review seems to go back years as I remember 😂. Looks like no 48v model.
Sunny So. California USA generating 1.21 jigawatts
Follow Andy's link and you'll see there is a 48v version available.
@@scottmoresy7709we can customize for you if you need.
@@scottmoresy7709 thanks. Under the 48v version it says input voltage 12v, 24v. Contacted the manufacturer
Not sure where you click but there is a 48V version on this page:
s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dl96k77
Ohh adelantando al futuro good
Thank you again for this Test.
I mistakiusky discargeed my 18650 Sodium Cell with 35 Ah by a broken Atorch Tester. The Cell got 95 ° Celcius puh...nothing badly happend The Cell after Cooling Had 3.1 Volt 24 mOhm and still works Like before with 1300 maH capacity
Oh, wow, that is dangerous!
It's spring in Toronto, Ontario, Canada but we having a Colorado low going thru so getting SNOW !
You summer will come!🌞
Hi Andy,
For someone wanting to use this type of battery for some reason they could use another inverter.
Some Victron inverters have a working range between 9,2 and 17 Volt for the 12V versions.
This would add at least 4% more at the top and some at the bottom also.
Depending on application this battery may beat some lead acid batteries and their disadvantages where LiFePo might not be usable without swapping equipment.
YEs, good point. Sodium can replace LA and even uses more of its capacity than LA can. Much lighter too.
I guess their price is going to have to come down pretty dramatically (the prismatic cells are about the same price as LiFePO4 at the moment) for them to be competitive, given the extra weight and lack of currently usable capacity.
But I imagine they have a far better environmental footprint. It would be interesting to know how much more ecologically sound they are.
A lot of questions around sodium batteries...
Need help.while trying to top balace battery pack with jk bms I notice a few cells going down in voltage instead of going up in voltage.is this because the pack is very unbalanced?
Hi Andy. Did you discover destiny for additional cable in JK Inverter BMS? That multi green-red-black one...
What does that mean?
Does the Peter inverter actually transfer data when connected to a Cerbo GX?
Nice weather here in Perth ! Not Perth WA , Perth Scotland 🏴 😊 Solar season coming 😊
Enjoy your upcoming summer.
You may configure two light bulbs in serie to discharge 12V batteries.
Yeah, I could do that. I designed this load for cells on a 3.5V level and can pull 35A through the bulbs. I usually don't deal with 12V batteries much.
Great work, soon some one will design an inverter that covers the sodium battery voltage range, sodium batteries will find uses where there are many charge discharge cycles per day.
Ontario Canada, just got 10cm of snow, panels are covered, no solar for me today. This summer planing on installing some bifacial panels vertical facing east, for winter they will catch the low morning and evening sun plus they will not collect snow in winter.
I'm too scared to install panels vertically. The wind load is insane.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia
Wind load is one of my concerns also, but I also like experiment so why not. ( Live in a valley so not many high winds)
Going to use screw in deck anchors. 80/20 inc T-slot profiles for the structure, mount the panels long side parellel to the ground, add some extra mounting points to the panel, plus a brace at each post.
The Thornova - TS-BBT54(425W) panels are 1722 x 1134 x 35 mm (67.80 x 44.65 x 1.38 inch), though about the 550W ones but decided too much unsupported lenght.
Hey great video 😅
Dont u have this big 1500w dc dc step up conderter with amazing efficiency?
How about putting it between battery and inverter to close the big voltage delta?
That would be another great test i think 🎉 ... could u do it? 😉
I killed them both. Not very reliable, I guess.
They had only 15A though, so 150W max at this voltage.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia hm ok
Maybe it is not entirely correct to assume the "peter-inverter" is the authority on voltage cutoff. I have a no-name 15yo one that has 20 to 33. And most Victrons can be set as low as 16V (for a 24V system)
It was just an example as I said in the video. Other inverters use these sodium batteries differently.
Looks to me like the sodium batteries with their wide voltage range is more suitable for high voltage systems. In my rv I use a Victron 3kva 12 volt inverter with 400Ah of NMC from an EV. The NMC batteries has a full voltage rating of 16.8 volts. The high limit of the Victron is 17.1, which is perfect for my application. If not for the wide voltage range I would be losing a fair amount of capacity with the batteries I am using.
Yeah, they are talking about grid storage and HV batteries with sodium. So I doubt these 12V sodium batteries will be a success.
Heya, nice test so differant battery types needs differant applaince's and that is mostly not availble
Like all things, first the sodium battery then the inverters to match the sodium voltage curve?
Could be. We will see...
I'll take a 66amp in not so sunny and hot Australia over Oregon liquid sunshine any day, but maybe not Sodium-ion batteries at the currently 2X to 3X the cost of LFE.
Yeah, they are more expensive. But so was lithium over lead acid years ago... time will tell.
Andy, I would love to see the Victron Phoenix, 12v 1200 VA inverter on the sodium ion battery, I have the 48 V version, I run it on a 12s 36v Lifep04 using dynamic cut off @ 33.6v ie 2.8v per cell.
It’s not a lot of power, and may void your warranty, but it works extremely well in my case using the bae 36v bus batteries.
One downside is inverter does not come with Bluetooth, need to buy Bluetooth module
Hay Andy need to know what size the connector on the capacitor active ballancer I have 3 15ah liion battery I want to ballance with one unit is it a vh3.96
Looks too big for a jst2.5. I want to know before I order so I can get extra cables
You can get them here: s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DC6o1LB
Probalbly a good battery to supply a dc-dc charger that maintains the charge of a smaller high discharge rate load battery.
Sort of a work around but not terribly complex.
I actually have a 12V to 12V charger. Will do a video in the future.
Maybe this type of battery would be useful in cooler climates for automated gate etc.
Please do a leoch lead carbon battery test
What kind of battery is that?
There’s nothing stopping any manufacturer from designing and programming equipment to handle sodium batteries. If the price is right for the batteries I imagine a world where inverters and charge controllers can handle lead, LFP and sodium depending on your need.
That's not necessarily true. It's really really difficult to find inverters with a wide DC input range. I don't think it's an accident because if it were easy to do that, then you'd have one product variant instead of 2 or 3.
@@big0bad0brad I believe the limit is more safeguard from battery damage and fire hazards from over and under charging. There are a few e.g. Magnum and Victron inverters with larger operating voltage ranges like 10-17volts.
@@RC-wu6gm Then find me an inverter that takes from 10V to 50V, I'd kind of like one.
Cold and snowy here in Michigan. My solar weather report: 0 amps today.
As long as the battery has some juice, it'll be fine!
👍👍👍
Victron inverter allows you to program the working voltage cut off, i think it can go as low as 10.5 volts, and up to 12.4 volts, so you would get much more energy out of you sodium battery.
Up to 12.4 isn't even safe to connect to a car battery
Different inverters, different setting. It was an example with the Peter inverter.
I think if a sodium battery will cost 50% less than Lifepo then I will probably seriously consider using it. Space is not an issue in my case. I wonder how many circles will you get using 70% of the capacity.
The cycles life will increase a lot with such a usage. Probably 25% more, I guess...
Hi Andy, Can you make an ageing test video of your first dye LiFePo4 48v battery? In my knowledge, It's been almost 3 years, since your first 48v LiFePo4 battery in a black box.
That will be interesting & helpful.
I did one a few months ago. Some of the batteries are already 4yrs+ old now.
czcams.com/video/GFuY8MrDAfA/video.html
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Battery 2.0
To compare independent of voltage, just use Wh
Ahem, V x A x h = Wh. It's not voltage independent. That's why we use Ah, not Wh.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia As a user I don't care about manufacturer ratings or how they measure their product. I only care about how much work I can store and get back out. The Ah rating already breaks down when comparing traditional gel or AGM vs lithium because they run at different voltages. 1 Ah at 14 V can do more work (work is measured in Wh) than 1 Ah at 12 V. What I'm trying to say is this: To compare Sodium vs Lithium, convert the measurements to Wh to measure how much work can be stored and then retrieved from each battery.
any way to increase useable capacity with existing inverter by adding a simple DC DC converter ?
Maybe for smaller systems, but what if you have a 5kW/10kW inverter? The loss would be quite substantial.
You are actually getting a large percent of the energy in the battery out than what you think. Remember, one amp hour at 15V is considerably more power than one amp hour at 10.5V. Losing the 4% at the top is kind of sad though, but maybe not all that bad. If you're using that battery with that converter, you would never be charging to absolutely full, probably last a bit longer?
Yes, need to measure Wh to be voltage independent
Wh is not voltage independent: V x A x h = Wh
Ah is voltage independent. Hence we use it to measure capacity😉
💙👊😎
If you used that battery in a 12V boat marine electronic, bulbs, etc. would be damaged by high voltage. Then they would stop working long before the battery is empty. Not sure I understand what market this battery is intended for?
Probably grid storage and HV batteries in the first place.
Now try and test with a proper voltage regulator / buck / boost converter between battery and inverter
I guess with a little firmware update it could be optimized to 90% used capacity
Not sure how the hardware would cope with such a low/high voltage. There are limits and we may need completely new designed hardware for sodium.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Sure. But there are tolerances which could be overthought in regard to sodium voltages.
Sounds to me like in the future you will have to buy a sodium pure sine wave inverter that operates in the complete usable voltage curve of sodium batteries.. TO be In development :)
If they ever come...
I wonder if Sodium requires compression?
Good question. It's in the next video here: czcams.com/video/EoZ0BcKjBlQ/video.html
it seems that we have to change our invertors types with this battery types
Why dont you have a look inside the inverter? Maybe you can find a potentiometer to adjust the minimum voltage. (If it is not done with software , in that case one would have to contact the manufacturer or hack it)
The minimum voltage settings for these types of inverters are there to protect the electronics. Lower voltage means higher current as we have seen. That could damage the inverter components.
Good point, there has been a few fires with motorbikes upgraded to HID's which basically have constant power draw.
Once the engine was shut off, the voltage dropped so the amps had to increase, overloading the not-fit-for-purpose wires.
It really isnt the worst thing to be forced to keep a battery in its middle 70% or so
No, definitely not. But LFP still has the advantage here.
Second
Juhuuuuuuuuu
Hi🙋♂️
@@OffGridGarageAustralia My Batteryshelf has now to grow up, so i study your old videos, Battery shelf 2.0...... Piece for piece.........Thanks, from the Lake Constance for those Andy
🐸🐸🐸
Hello Berlin!
Maybe lowering the BMS max cell voltage will solve that issue easily
I guess the kimit is the inverter, not the BMS
BMS was fine with this test.
Very good test for some practical use if anyone decides to get sodiums for an RV or camping fridge. The disadvantages are you won't be able to use last 25% and make sure not to charge above 95% but it also has much more advantages over AGM like you can charge them faster, doesn't have to be kept constantly fully charged, 75% of usable capacity is still more than AGM and of course much more cycles out of Sodium. These should be priced just a little bit more than AGM batteries or even same price as salt shouldn't be more expensive than lead and this is the whole concept of these. As for using these batteries for under the bonnet for instead of stop/start batteries I am not sure if that would be ”healthy” for any vehicle with such high voltages bulbs and computers might start blowing up but then once again maybe alternator wouldn't be able to charge these above 80% so it might actually work ok like that.
Sodium can definitely replace LA already. Lots of advantages as you said.
First!
You are🥇
the big economic question is... do we get it back in lifecycle, if we don't use the first 20-25%?
It will definitely last longer.
Like# 304
as a jealous viewer... greetings from nighty cool greece...
Hello to Greece!🙋♂️
Hello did you read my text about my battery
No, what text and battery?
fascho inverter xD
This battery need one more serie to rise the minimum voltage
Then it would be too high at the top!
The BMS is used for Lithium ion and therefor the percentages of the remaining capacity during the cycle will not be accurate. The BMS also showed it "pulled" .5KW from the battery while you said according to the sheet there is a 24-30% loss. This does not match with .5/.6=83% capacity used. This entire video results is all wrong based on the aforementioned. Good efforts though.
thats going to be a problem for lots of electronics like radios and routers, i can see the smoke getting let out 😮
It can be solved by adding a decent 12V regulator powering the 12V loads.
Not impressed compared to LifePo4.
It's ... different.
I cant stand bighead vedios, dislike
Cloudy 20 degrees here today. lol. Did they use sodium batteries back in the 1930s?
1930s?