Aquion Energy up and coming battery....opinions please

[Sunking]

If that is what is required, I'll look for another place to live. AGM and LFP were both favorable for charge time for me by comparison.

If i were in your shoes I would find land with utility. In areas where Winter sun hours fall below 3 hours you have to use AGM/LFP, or plan on running a genny a lot. Even with AGM or LFP you woul dstill need genny for those days and days of cloud cover. Given that i would look at LFP because you can hold off on genny until they get down to 20% vs 50% with AGM.

Keep up the research, you are doing very good.

[Living Large]

Recharge time via generator is a major issue. With that high Ri comes very slow charge rates of greater than C/15. Totally unacceptable with both solar and generator. With a genny you want to charge with at least C/8 or higher to minimize fuel burn, fuel cost, and noise pollution. In northern climates with short days requires AGM batteries to take the very high charge rates of C/4 and higher required. No way is Aquion batteries a candidate for solar.

For my use, generator run time is a huge issue for the reasons you state, as well as maintaining the generator (oil, repairs, replacement). My idea of living isn't to have to listen to a generator run all day every few days. That is not an option. If that is what is required, I'll look for another place to live. AGM and LFP were both favorable for charge time for me by comparison.

[Sunking]

I woke up today thinking about my attempt yesterday to explain why I don't believe AHI is feasible for my 7kwh per day application for a year-round off grid house with gen backup at a low winter insolation site. I do have some short term larger loads such as a well pump and microwave oven, but otherwise lower loads which don't include heating water or HVAC. This house I would like to be comfortable in, and not have to change my lifestyle substantially from my on-grid home. By that I mean having to go through multiple steps to do something that is now routine, each day. As an example, it would be nice to not have to crank up the generator every time I run some water. I do realize there will be regular monitoring and management.

One factor that really is important is not running my generator for lengthy periods of time to recharge the batteries. Maybe I am off-base, but when I saw the charge/discharge characteristics of LFP, and ability to charge at a wide range of currents, my eyes lit up. I will have stretches of cloudy/snowy weather, and insolation in Nov-Jan is low already. As readers here know, my objective from the start was to avoid the toxicity of FLA, if possible. Yes, it can be managed, but that was my preference.

I did a comparison chart of FLA, LFP and AHI to summarize some of the parameters I came across in the past few months as a newbie looking at these chemistries. I may have made some errors and improper estimations, and if so please kindly suggest corrections. Folks here live this stuff every day and rattle specs and rules off like second nature.

There are a couple of things that drove my thinking. For the amount of AHI I would need, to keep the charging time reasonable I would need to be near the 12A per stack max, which would require a generator of 10KW or more (I would need 18 stacks by northerner's estimate), and that would also make me upgrade the inverter/charger. Also, my solar array would have to be increased quite a bit for PV charging. Upgraded MPPT to handle more current. Initial cost and crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

According to Dereck's estimate, the power I could draw out of the AHI is limited by its internal resistance and will be lower than I need for a well pump or microwave, I believe. More of everything but performance is what I was seeing for my particular application.

One comment on your spreadsheet. Cycle life for LFP you are using is based on 100% to 0% SOC. Normally only an EV would push those limits, no need to do that with solar. Run 10 to 90% and you can double that cycle life to 4000 cycles or roughly 10 years.. All lithium batteries are stressed if SOC is pushed to 100%. That is why manufactures only ship them at 60% SOC, and recommend storage at 60% SOC. Don't charge them fully. Even on your laptop you can extend battery life by setting SOC to 20/80.

Lastly LFP can be ran PSOC, so no need for genny until you get down to 10 to 20%.

[Sunking]

You cannot access the 40% of Aquion batteries because it is below 42 volts. Nothing can tap that down to 30 volts. When are you going to acknowledge that fact? It shoots all your capacity calculations to hell. It would take nearly twice the capacity of Aquion to equal the usable capacity of FLA.

[SunEagle]

"Aquion Energy Wins Deal With Bakken Hale Off-Grid Residential Estate In Hawaii To Supply 1 MWh AHI Battery"



http://cleantechnica.com/2015/01/12/...eanTechnica%29

Not surprising that a private estate can afford to install not only a 176kw solar panel system but a 1MWh battery backup along with the required propane generators.

Looks like a win for Aguion but doesn't sound like something the average Joe can afford.

[Sunking]

If you size your bank accordingly then recharging won't be an issue. What is your daily usage expected to be and what will the highest load be on your proposed system?

Recharge time via generator is a major issue. With that high Ri comes very slow charge rates of greater than C/15. Totally unacceptable with both solar and generator. With a genny you want to charge with at least C/8 or higher to minimize fuel burn, fuel cost, and noise pollution. In northern climates with short days requires AGM batteries to take the very high charge rates of C/4 and higher required. No way is Aquion batteries a candidate for solar.

[dahur]

"Aquion Energy Wins Deal With Bakken Hale Off-Grid Residential Estate In Hawaii To Supply 1 MWh AHI Battery"

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/01/12/aquion-energy-wins-deal-bakken-hale-grid-residential-estate-hawaii-supply-1-mwh-ahi-battery/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29

[Living Large]

LivingLarge:



If you use the WYSIWIG mode of the post editor you can undo attachment errors just by deleting both the start and end content tags ("[ATTACH]" and [/ATTACH]) that refer to the attachment and than add a new attachment. To get WYSIWIG mode select it as your default mode in your profile or hit the top left button in the display above the entry window while posting.

Thank you for commenting on this. I deleted A pair of tags and the attachment number in between them, and the attachment remained. I do not recall if the tag was ATTACH, but I believe that it was. After doing so, adding the new attachment, and submitting the changes, that first attachment remained - they were both there. I went back to edit it again, and only the tags for the new attachment were there - I could not understand why the first attachment was still attached, didn't want to leave both, and so I did the only thing I could think of and started over with a new post. Obviously not the best solution but the only one I saw.

Perhaps I will run a quick test to see if I can replicate this. I don't want to waste bandwidth.

[inetdog]

LivingLarge:

Reason
Made attachment error I could not undo

If you use the WYSIWIG mode of the post editor you can undo attachment errors just by deleting both the start and end content tags ("[ATTACH]" and [/ATTACH]) that refer to the attachment and than add a new attachment. To get WYSIWIG mode select it as your default mode in your profile or hit the top left button in the display above the entry window while posting.

[northerner]

Hopefully Aguion listens to the feedback from the "Testers" and makes adjustments to their product (especially the pricing). It will be hard for them to find a large market selling a premium product for a lot of money. Something that maybe Tesla has learned with their second and third version EV but their price is still outside the mainstream customer.

The price is scheduled to come down over time. From what I have read it is about $500/kwh of battery now, and should come down to $350/kwh around the end of this year. Eventual target price by the company is $200/kwh. All prices of course in today's dollars.

Up front cost of this battery is high, but could be very economical option for some, if the data they are presenting holds true, and prices come down as well.

[Living Large]

AHI versis FLA versus LFP

I woke up today thinking about my attempt yesterday to explain why I don't believe AHI is feasible for my 7kwh per day application for a year-round off grid house with gen backup at a low winter insolation site. I do have some short term larger loads such as a well pump and microwave oven, but otherwise lower loads which don't include heating water or HVAC. This house I would like to be comfortable in, and not have to change my lifestyle substantially from my on-grid home. By that I mean having to go through multiple steps to do something that is now routine, each day. As an example, it would be nice to not have to crank up the generator every time I run some water. I do realize there will be regular monitoring and management.

One factor that really is important is not running my generator for lengthy periods of time to recharge the batteries. Maybe I am off-base, but when I saw the charge/discharge characteristics of LFP, and ability to charge at a wide range of currents, my eyes lit up. I will have stretches of cloudy/snowy weather, and insolation in Nov-Jan is low already. As readers here know, my objective from the start was to avoid the toxicity of FLA, if possible. Yes, it can be managed, but that was my preference.

I did a comparison chart of FLA, LFP and AHI to summarize some of the parameters I came across in the past few months as a newbie looking at these chemistries. I may have made some errors and improper estimations, and if so please kindly suggest corrections. Folks here live this stuff every day and rattle specs and rules off like second nature.

There are a couple of things that drove my thinking. For the amount of AHI I would need, to keep the charging time reasonable I would need to be near the 12A per stack max, which would require a generator of 10KW or more (I would need 18 stacks by northerner's estimate), and that would also make me upgrade the inverter/charger. Also, my solar array would have to be increased quite a bit for PV charging. Upgraded MPPT to handle more current. Initial cost and crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

According to Dereck's estimate, the power I could draw out of the AHI is limited by its internal resistance and will be lower than I need for a well pump or microwave, I believe. More of everything but performance is what I was seeing for my particular application.

[russ]

Aquion has done that. They have sent their stacks out for independent testing. I am potentially looking at this product for my battery replacement down the road and is why I have asked for new users to chime in and back up the data that Aquion has posted.

In 5 or 10 years that will be meaningful - until then it is salesman's BS.

[SunEagle]

Aquion has done that. They have sent their stacks out for independent testing. I am potentially looking at this product for my battery replacement down the road and is why I have asked for new users to chime in and back up the data that Aquion has posted.

Hopefully Aguion listens to the feedback from the "Testers" and makes adjustments to their product (especially the pricing). It will be hard for them to find a large market selling a premium product for a lot of money. Something that maybe Tesla has learned with their second and third version EV but their price is still outside the mainstream customer.

[northerner]

Hard to analyze something that has no track record. In industry we always let others be the tester - expensive if the supplier is lying too much.

Aquion has done that. They have sent their stacks out for independent testing. I am potentially looking at this product for my battery replacement down the road and is why I have asked for new users to chime in and back up the data that Aquion has posted.

[russ]

Hard to analyze something that has no track record. In industry we always let others be the tester - expensive if the supplier is lying too much.