How Cold Weather Affects Home Battery Efficiency
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- Опубліковано 19 гру 2023
- This video looks in detail at the impact of cold temperatures on lithium home batteries.
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#home #battery #cold - Навчання та стиль
Videos poster image is wonderful. Made me chuckle. Another informative video. Thanks!
Haha - glad you liked! I use face-swapping AI to put my face onto Jon Snow's :-) faceswapper.ai
@@GaryDoesSolar very effective
I’ve got my Givenergy I the loft and do notice a bit of a drop off in performance when it’s cold. As you said in the video, ours is running doing something pretty much 24/7 though on the coldest days the ASHP has been using it all up before mid-afternoon. Only way to help is to pause the battery after our morning peak, then resume before teatime.
Great idea!
Great video once again! I also love the thumbnail for the video, it made me chuckle for a good while :D Keep up the great work!
Thanks! Yeah, I use face-swapping AI to put my face onto Jon Snow's :-) faceswapper.ai
Another great but timely video. I think last years cold snap was a real eye opener for battery owners and the DIY’ers soon got to grips with insulation. Interestingly, Powerwall owners in Northern Scotland had no problem. That’s where your money goes I guess.
Yeah, I'm thinking that Tesla did some great analysis on what would make a great home battery! I'm very happy to see they've switch to LFP for the 3rd Powerwall though! It does mean the battery's slightly bulkier though...
I believe that Powerwalls have built in heaters to keep the batteries warm in the winter. Just an example of why they cost more, but a very important feature anywhere which gets even moderately cold winters.
Thanks for another great video Gary. Since I dropped my last note I've been monitoring my batteries more closely - the stats I get from the standard Foxess cloud are quite comprehensive. In addition, I have also bought a temperature and humidity sensor (logs all data) and have placed it close to my batteries in the garage. Plus, I decided to put temporary/make-shift insulation around the battery tower (bubble wrap and an old blanket as a cover). The weather has been mild recently hence I do not yet know how the set-up will fare when the temp drops to/below freezing - performance is good right now but I am ready for when the temperature drops. Thanks to all the people who comment here too - a lot of useful tips.
Thanks John - I found it a really interesting topic! Thanks also for sharing about the various things you've tried and the results from that! :-)
Informative video as always :-) My battery is inside, inverter is outside.
Thanks Mark! Wow - that seems unusual. Any reason for that?
@@GaryDoesSolar Temperature, no worries of battery getting too cold in the winter, and not to hot in the Summer. Inverter doesn't have temperature issues, and in my view is a higher fire risk than the battery (GE 9.5kWh)
Had my PW2 installed in July so now experiencing my first winter with it. It’s located in the detached garage where temp fell below zero on several days in recent cold snap. Not noticed any degradation in charge/discharge rates. Was more expensive than other options but it just works.
Yeah, and that's what I really like about the Tesla batteries - great design, resulting in a battery that will operate pretty much anywhere in the world :-)
Another very useful show Gary and I’m sure many will find it very useful,for me these issue’s are not a problem.
Before I even ordered my solar system I had planned to have the battery and inverter installed in a spare bedroom built in wardrobe which had mainly been used to store junk. My home has built In wardrobes in all bedrooms so I could afford to lose the space to a better cause. Also the warmth that the battery and inverter emits is helping to heat the upstairs area of my house. Win Win 👍🏻. It also makes it very simple to change settings and monitor the system without the need to enter the loft or leave the house.
I did have a few concerns about temperature generation from the system during the summer months but my inverter temperatures have not exceeded 60 degrees c. I also leave the wardrobe bifold doors open all year round and have the window ajar in the hottest temps with the bedroom door closed.
Another plus is that all the cabling from meter up and panels down is all hidden so no need for any making good or decorative repairs. Keep up the good work and have a merry Christmas and a happy healthy new year 🎄🍾🥂🎆🎇
Thanks for sharing about your own installation - might give ideas to others. Have a great Christmas and New Year yourself. I'm hoping to have a little time to relax if I can :-)
Great vid, I used PIR board and a 60watt infrared bulb which worked great but I need it get another battery and don’t like the asterisks, so bought a server rack with doors and put a 100watt heater with a thermostat in there and then blocked a free vents up on the rack
Thanks, and nice solution! :-)
I decided to get our installer to put the battery and invertor in a downstairs walk in cupboard so it is at normal house temperatures and in fact I can also use it to raise my dough when making bread! I did install vents into the door to help the battery to not heat up the cupboard.
Great idea - and might help others in their location decision too! :-)
Got my GivEnergy on side passage wall and had a simple wooden frame built with a small roof overhang, insulated with foam board insulation. Because you want it ventilated still it doesn’t totally stop it cooling but slows it down. In HA is shows battery temp and doesn’t seem to drop below 10c so far
Sounds great! Thanks for sharing this - could give ideas to others :-)
I've put a couple of old coats over our battery in the garage, not sure it makes any difference!
I've noticed that there is a constant discrepancy of a few hundred watts since November, which I have assumed is some kind of heating in the battery.
I'd be so interested to get a thermal camera but one of the reasons is to see how much heat the battery is losing in the winter.
Checking with a camera sounds like a good idea!
A simple solution in either loft of attached garage is a heater on a smart plug with some automation. I've set it at 00:30, turn heater on if the temp is below 5c as I know anything below, it struggles to charge in the 4 hour window. Then another automation switch heater off when above 10c.
Love it! Thanks for sharing this - could give ideas to others! :-)
@@GaryDoesSolar I worked for years for a Telco that had outside cabinets with battery backup. Usually lead acid but same principal. The best operating temperature for those was as I recall 20 degrees. They had heater plates and a thermostat which came on at I think 10 degrees and off at 15.
Great video and some really interesting comments from people on where they keep theirs. Looking into the GivEnergy AIO but would probably have to go on the 1st floor, so not sure as told these are very heavy and sit on the floor rather than bolt on the wall. Just hope we don’t get another beast from the east or that could be very interesting on how it affects outdoor battery systems.
Hi Richard - thanks! Yeah, I really like the GE AIO battery (and would have likely have bought two of these for my own situation, if they'd been available earlier last year). Will be interesting to see if their performance matches what I'v been told in the video!
My GivEnergy LFP battery is outside with no added insulation/shelter and the cell temperature has never dropped below 0 C (and rarely got that low). I have not noticed any reduction in power or energy at low temperatures. My normal use (including overnight charging) generates sufficient heat to keep it in a workable temperature range.
That's brilliant! :-)
Thanks Gary. Quite reassuring. I have the AIO in a brick built outbuilding and the cold weather of a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about protecting it from cold. I considered a 500 Watt oil filled radiator with thermostat that was £20 from screwfix, and coupleing it with a Smartplug timer. I also thought of a Silentnight Electric Blanket as a more " off the wall " solution.😁 In the end I went along the charge at a lower rate for longer route, though if it does get bitterly cold then I'll revisit the Oil filled Radiator option.
Cheers! And I really like the ideas on how to keep your battery warm! 😀
You can also get terrarium heating pads which are 3-10 W and nice and flat. I thought about trying them and just putting them under the lowest battery in the stack. I built a box for it all now so haven't needed extra heat so far this winter.
@@TheBadoctopus
Did you put air vents in? Looking at my AIO I can see Heat Sink fins at the rear of the unit with the grille at top and bottom.
@@devjon123 the box I built is in 3 parts: base, walls, roof. This means I can prop up the walls and/or roof to create a natural chimney effect for ventilation, or just leave the roof slightly ajar.
But in the summer my garage gets well over 30C and from what I've read too much heat is even worse for battery lifespan than cold. So I'm expecting to have to remove the sides or add some fans and silver foil on the outside to reflect some of the heat from the corrugated concrete roof panels.
I'm just trying to get as much lifespan from them as possible.
I thought Jeff Dahn said that cold temps are good for degradation for the types of batteries on Tesla model Y. He has a good video on it on UA-cam you can watch.
Cheers Dave - I'll check his videos out (I know he's on a number of Tesla patents, so I'm sure he knows what he is talking about). Everything I've read so far though says that degradation is worsened by very cold temperatures - I've always got an open mind though... perhaps it's just about what is defined as 'cold'...
I struggle to get my head around it, but is there a difference between the impacts of temperatures when discharging vs. charging?
Thanks Gary, another great clear explanation. I know it wasn’t the thrust of the video but might have been worth briefly touching on the opposite problem of the battery overheating. It would be easy to conclude that you should have your battery installed inside to avoid the cold weather problems but batteries and especially inverters overheating is a big issue as well.
Just been looking at my battery temperature recordings in Home Assistant; shows the battery ranged from a low of 10 degrees in the early December freeze we had, to peaks of 49 degrees. Even today it’s varied between 19 and 49, depending on soc & charging activity
Hi Geoffrey - cheers! Yeah, I did think about covering heat as well as cold, but it seems lithium batteries can easily operate at 40 degrees (or more)...
@@GaryDoesSolar I think it’s the inverters that don’t like the heat too much. The point being that equipment siting needs to think about summer and winter. I’ve got on my project list a set of computer cooling fans to automate with home assistant for that reason
@@geoffreycoan Ah yeah, good point about the inverters...
Thanks Gary. I was curious how my battery is doing in winter. Especially this winter. Barely any sun this December to charge our battery and I noticed it would at times totally discharge to 0 on certain days despite having a setting to stop at 10% capacity. Not sure if it is a defect or the cold, but this never happened in the warmer days. Wonderlux 4.8kw battery.
Cheers. Sorry to hear about the issues you were experiencing. Unfortunately, I don't have much experience about Wonderlux batteries. Worth getting onto a forum for Wonderlax users, to see if they're experiencing similar issues...?
My Growatt Ark batteries didn’t like the cold. They throttle back to 2.15 if the temp drops below 15. Not great when you are in flux and want to charge quickly during the cheap spot. I’ve since insulated both garage doors and added numerous draft exclusion items, which I should have done anyway really.
Also I have put one of those metallic emergency blankets around it as well as a couple of old blankets. So far it seems to be doing the trick, though it hasn’t been quite as cold yet.
The batteries only give off a minimal amount of heat, even under heavy usage.
Growatt is a bit crap for letting you see temperature data. Get what you pay for I guess, but otherwise it’s working really well now and charges almost to full every night.
Thanks for sharing this - will hopefully help others in a similar situation :-)
I am thinking of a pay as you go tariff which is available in Ireland as my system should be big enough for 6 months of the year meaning I won't have to pay standing chance, can you do a video on standing charges
I'm happy to add this to my list of future prospective topics (it's quite a bit list though...)
Hi Gary, many thanks for another really helpful video for solar novices like me. I have a Solis inverter and a PylonTech Force L2 battery located in my garage, where it does get pretty cold. I read that to avoid the battery going into hibernation and to prolong battery life at low temperatures (
Sounds good. I don't have any experience with Solis, but perhaps other do...
These are all settings you can see in the Solis screen on the inverter menus. Check your manual or online videos, once you've had a look around the screens it's not too bad...
These two settings are:
1. Over Discharge = minimum state of charge before he inverter stops drawing from the battery.
2. Force Charge SOC = when it reaches this state of charge %, the inverter will charge from the grid a little to add capacity back in.
IMHO 35% over discharge is high, you could go for 25% and try to insulate the batteries a little. Make sure you're fully charging them overnight as Gary suggests.
@@TheBadoctopus Thanks Jim. I'm clear about what the two settings do but I was really hoping to learn whether the values for winter that I had read about (and annoyingly I can no longer find) were the "norm" if there is such a thing. I tend to agree with you that 35% Over Discharge seems high but I'm no expert. Anyway, I do charge the battery full at night and it is partially insulated so I'm hoping for the best. Thanks again. Chas
Must admit that I wouldn't want a lithium battery anywhere inside the house or the garage. We have been looking at a house move and one of my things has been where to put a battery if we fit solar panels. I had decided that building a small "battery store" to the back of the garage might be the best bet and fully insulate it with rockwool inulation to the wall between the battery and garage for fireproofing and insulation and insulate the rest of it with rockwool and Fermacell or similar. Then put some forced ventilation in for when it gets too hot on the one day in summer. I'd probably cable up with oversized cabling so that all of the equipment was in the store and if possible fit the diesel generator in there as well.
Most home storage batteries are LFP battery chemistry and pose very, very little risk. In the garage is the best bet in my opinion.
Hi Bill, yeah - safety is certainly top of my list, and like Dan says, LFP chemistry is the safest we have so far - but even then, any extra precautions taken can only help. I feel that there is a lot of attention on battery technology development now (more than there has ever been) and this will result in safer and safer products over time - which for me, I'd like to see, so that every home can have a battery.
I found this reassuring for my LiFePO4 battery ua-cam.com/video/D8xNjz73p80/v-deo.html
This is the first answer that mentioned the use of a fireproof area to store the battery. I wonder why others will place batteries in the loft, in a bedroom or even in a spare cupboard. Does the ESA in your area not enforce the need for fireproof rooms?
@@GaryDoesSolarI supposed the garage can be a preferred location for battery storage. Will there be additional preparation especially if it is an attached garage?
Thanks Gary, very clearly explained as ever. TBH for LFP batteries the potential negative effects of installation in a garage or loft (against a heated room) seem relatively minor, particularly if the battery is being regulaularly charged and discharged as you suggest. But I would be interested in anyone with actual data that show the real effects on capacity etc under different real world scenarios. My pylontechs seem to be doing fine in the loft both on capacity and charge/discharge, but that's not a scientific measurement on my part.
Depends on how cold, how much you tend to draw from the batteries at any one time and how quick you need to charge them as to whether you will notice. I only noticed once last year that my Pylontech failed to charge fully in the Octopus GO off peak window and it was only because they needed the full 4kW charge rate and could only get 2-3kW from what I recall, so they didn't quite make it on time. That was during a period when it was negative figures for several days outside and batteries in the garage. This year the box they are in is lined with closed cell foam and its yet to drop below 10C in the box so no performance issues what so ever.
Small greenhouse/propagation heaters work well for Pylontechs as you can easily place them underneath and they consume very little power.
I wouldn't personally recommend removing loft insulation unless you also box in the batteries above as the heat loss will make you have a cold ceiling which could lead to mould.
Cheers Michael - yeah, my GivEnergy batteries are working really well in the garage - although the temperatures have been mild of late - I'm waiting to see how they will perform sub 5 degrees... I nearly went with Pylontech batteries in fact - I really like the modularity of them! :-)
I just built an OSB housing for the batteries in my cold detached garage. Since then they seem to retain the overnight charging heat quite well, and that's before I put any insulation on the inside or outside of the box.
The data I have from the sensors I added last month is the garage itself seems to add 2-4C vs the garden, and the box adds another 2-6C vs garage - depending on how cold it is, for how long, and how soon after the overnight charging period we're looking.
I already have Home Assistant adapting my minimum state of charge from 10% to 20% as it gets down to freezing (this helps prevent risks of under voltage and stressing it), but I'll now be able to slacken this control thanks to the box's extra warmth.
@@TheBadoctopus Brilliant!
Mine are installed in the kitchen. Thermal control was a major consideration in that decision, but it also looks fine in a location that has plenty of other utilitarian appliances.
Fire safety I think is low probability with modern batteries. The are built very well and aren’t subject to the knocks and general abuse that portable batteries suffer from.
Due to space constraints our four batteries are in the loft. When the internal temperature drops below 12C the charge rate drops from 0.5C to 0.2C but fortunately, because we have four batteries, we can still charge the bank at around 4.2kW which means we can store plenty in the 2-5am Flux window to last us 24 hrs. Neither installer or manufacturer were at all transparent about this limitation, so it’s just luck of having four batteries that means this isn’t a serious bottleneck. If we had only two batteries as had once been the plan, this would have been a real issue though the coldest months.
Yeah, I was in two minds about covering C-Rates in this video, but decided against. I might cover in a follow-up video, depending on interest. Multiple batteries certainly help a lot here!
What about heat instead of cold?the room I have mine fluctuates between 15 and 28. But the last few years there's been weeks in the summer when it went over 32º. I wonder how that affects the battery
From what I’ve read, lithium batteries are fine up to 40 degrees 👍🏻
These batteries don't look particularly efficient really, when you look at the big picture.
My LiFePo4 home battery which has been kept around 15 degrees ambient, has only yielded efficiencies of between 60 and 73 % when you compare energy input, to available energy output during discharging.
Just imagine if they had the inefficiencies of an Electric Vehicle wrapped around them too - it would look little better than an ICE vehicle.
That's quite a low efficiency, Tony. Who manufactures your battery?
@@GaryDoesSolar it is an Ecoflow Delta 2 with an Ecoflow Delta 2 Max Extra Battery giving just over 3 kWh storage (2.4 - 2.5 kWh real terms usable power from 100 to 0%).
I am charging overnight at 500 - 600 W for about 7 hours.
I think there is much that is conveniently omitted from the efficiency numbers when you look at EV charging losses, with thermal management, pre-conditioning, and even AC - DC rectification for the highest speed charging.
@@BROOMEngineeringTMIET Hi Tony, ok, so these Ecoflow units are just not in the same class as the battery solutions I'm taking about (see manufacturer examples towards the end of my video here: ua-cam.com/video/x83t1iCMXxw/v-deo.html). Therefore, I'm not surprised at the low efficiency ratings you're seeing. Ecoflow units are trying to be all-rounders, with lots of functions built-in, but the home batteries I'm talking about are designed to do only two things, and do them efficiently. Take the Tesla Powerwall 2, for example - It has a stated 90% round-trip efficiency. And Tesla makes sure that it does.
@@GaryDoesSolar it may have other features but I am using it to only perform 2 functions.......take 230V energy from the grid, convert it to DC, and store it. And then to invert the battery DC to 230V AC for domestic consumption. I only ever have the AC outputs activated, and the DC outputs turned off.
Why do you think they have made a unit that achieves such low efficiencies?
Do you have anything to independently verify the Tesla claims of 90% round trip efficiency? I'm afraid I doubt this. It isn't uncommon for manufacturers to over state performance.
Having managed an R&D department, I am also fully aware of manufacturers overstating performance of products and components.
It looks like I will be investing in other battery storage to looks at real terms efficiency, and see if claim of 90% are even close to reality.
@@BROOMEngineeringTMIET I guess a high round trip efficiency was not high on Ecoflow's design priorities. In terms of actual real-world testing of Tesla Powerwall 2, here's one example, which covers that and other popular home batteries: batterytestcentre.com.au. As I said, Ecoflow is just not in the same league...