Battery Power
- Thread starter Kingrex
- Start date
I am now a Victron and Abyss dealer. I am getting a 100AH Abyss 48 volt battery and a Multiplus ii 3000 or 5000 watt inverter.
The intent is to make a simple to use, 3 box solution with simple cable connections between the units. A short battery strap to inverter and a custom length Inverter to Torus RM20, or other filter you want to use. I have had a lot of feedback on people doing this and Isolation transformers seem to be the preferred filter. But your welcome to use what you want.
The biggest issue I am hearing is fan noise on the inverter. I am hoping to create an enclosure that has low velocity, high volume, quiet fans in the case to keep the inverter cool. I want to use the 3000 watt inverter as it weighs 42 lbs. The 5000 watt that will cycle the fan much less often is 71 lbs. 3000/120 volts is 25 amps. 5000w/120 volts is a true 41.6 amps. I really only need 20 amps. I am told the 5000 is so robust, the fans will never really need to turn on. I'm almost idling the unit with an average of 600 watts for a regular stereo. But I wonder if the extra overhead will give more dynamics. If someone were to be powering CH precision, then the fan may turn on with the 5000 if using both 20 Amp cords on each monoblock to 1x 5000 watt inverter. But it would have no problem powering them. They say the sustained peak power is 95 amps. I would probably suggest 2. Just to be safe. I hear they smoke on the 750 watt S5000 Stromtank. I also hear its best to keep the power at 50% or less of the rated power of the inverter to have the cleanest sine wave.
You can parallel or series parallel up to 6. That is 30,000 watts or 30,000/120 = 250A. You could easily power a 10kva Torus wall mount and easily power 2 monoblocks of Gryphon.,CH or Dagostino.
I will preprogram the inverter to just be a inverter, not a charger. I am using the Abyss charger that is designed to work with the Abyss battery. I don't want to mix these technology. The Abyss App is good at telling you the state of charge, discharge rate and remaining life. The battery is good for about 5000 cycles at a 80% discharge. I say never to 100% discharge. If you do that, you will only get 3000 cycles. The technical side of that is you will get 3000 charges that come back to 80% of full. Does that make sense. Said another way. If you are being smart and only discharge 80%, after 4000 cycles, there is still 80% battery life left. So you still have 80AH of battery life. Were talking 12 year of use every day and you still have a battery that charges back up to 80%. That's a good battery. And it has a robust Battery Management System (BMS) that monitors the cell closely to mitigate potential fire issues.
I am excited to try this to see if I can match what I get from the wall, done well. I am confident I can beat average wall power. I am confident I can get very good power that is consistent no matter when you use it. Its not connected to the grid.
I have wondered a little on how much to shield the cables. against RF. That can be a 2 prong fork. I once tried to shield a single large neutral cable in my panel. Long story on what I was doing, but it was horribly compressed and lost all the life. I removed the shield and all the goodness came back. I do make extension cables with THHN solid 10, twist, then sometimes sleeve with mylar and wrap it down with 22 awg dead soft silver, then tech flex over the top. That seems to work well.
I figure this will take a year to sort out. Its going to be a lot of trial and error of cables, plating metals, cases, duplex, fusing, grounding, inverters. I will post as it moves along.
The intent is to make a simple to use, 3 box solution with simple cable connections between the units. A short battery strap to inverter and a custom length Inverter to Torus RM20, or other filter you want to use. I have had a lot of feedback on people doing this and Isolation transformers seem to be the preferred filter. But your welcome to use what you want.
The biggest issue I am hearing is fan noise on the inverter. I am hoping to create an enclosure that has low velocity, high volume, quiet fans in the case to keep the inverter cool. I want to use the 3000 watt inverter as it weighs 42 lbs. The 5000 watt that will cycle the fan much less often is 71 lbs. 3000/120 volts is 25 amps. 5000w/120 volts is a true 41.6 amps. I really only need 20 amps. I am told the 5000 is so robust, the fans will never really need to turn on. I'm almost idling the unit with an average of 600 watts for a regular stereo. But I wonder if the extra overhead will give more dynamics. If someone were to be powering CH precision, then the fan may turn on with the 5000 if using both 20 Amp cords on each monoblock to 1x 5000 watt inverter. But it would have no problem powering them. They say the sustained peak power is 95 amps. I would probably suggest 2. Just to be safe. I hear they smoke on the 750 watt S5000 Stromtank. I also hear its best to keep the power at 50% or less of the rated power of the inverter to have the cleanest sine wave.
You can parallel or series parallel up to 6. That is 30,000 watts or 30,000/120 = 250A. You could easily power a 10kva Torus wall mount and easily power 2 monoblocks of Gryphon.,CH or Dagostino.
I will preprogram the inverter to just be a inverter, not a charger. I am using the Abyss charger that is designed to work with the Abyss battery. I don't want to mix these technology. The Abyss App is good at telling you the state of charge, discharge rate and remaining life. The battery is good for about 5000 cycles at a 80% discharge. I say never to 100% discharge. If you do that, you will only get 3000 cycles. The technical side of that is you will get 3000 charges that come back to 80% of full. Does that make sense. Said another way. If you are being smart and only discharge 80%, after 4000 cycles, there is still 80% battery life left. So you still have 80AH of battery life. Were talking 12 year of use every day and you still have a battery that charges back up to 80%. That's a good battery. And it has a robust Battery Management System (BMS) that monitors the cell closely to mitigate potential fire issues.
I am excited to try this to see if I can match what I get from the wall, done well. I am confident I can beat average wall power. I am confident I can get very good power that is consistent no matter when you use it. Its not connected to the grid.
I have wondered a little on how much to shield the cables. against RF. That can be a 2 prong fork. I once tried to shield a single large neutral cable in my panel. Long story on what I was doing, but it was horribly compressed and lost all the life. I removed the shield and all the goodness came back. I do make extension cables with THHN solid 10, twist, then sometimes sleeve with mylar and wrap it down with 22 awg dead soft silver, then tech flex over the top. That seems to work well.
I figure this will take a year to sort out. Its going to be a lot of trial and error of cables, plating metals, cases, duplex, fusing, grounding, inverters. I will post as it moves along.
I've been listening to the Abyss 48V battery with Exeltech 2000 watt inverter feeding my Torus RM20 for some time now.
My conclusion so far is that the Battery setup is better sounding than I had hoped and far better than I feared! The Exeltech has very low distortion and it sounds like it. Very clean and transparent. I'm aware of absolutely no loss of dynamics or any other battery "sound."
That being said, my Utility power sounds very good as well. It may have a bit more density. It may be a very slight trade off between transparency and body. Perhaps the extra distortion in the 3rd to 9th harmonics on Utility power adds a sense of body. That's only speculation. In any case my Utility power has typically 3% THD, which is not bad.
What I can say with near certainty is this: if you are one of those people who notice their sound quality takes a dip during the day and sounds noticeable better late a night, then you need look into getting off the grid. There is absolutely no reason to suffer through bad Utility power!
Rex will be able to offer a well thought out and executed system that I would bet will out perform the far more expensive competition.
My conclusion so far is that the Battery setup is better sounding than I had hoped and far better than I feared! The Exeltech has very low distortion and it sounds like it. Very clean and transparent. I'm aware of absolutely no loss of dynamics or any other battery "sound."
That being said, my Utility power sounds very good as well. It may have a bit more density. It may be a very slight trade off between transparency and body. Perhaps the extra distortion in the 3rd to 9th harmonics on Utility power adds a sense of body. That's only speculation. In any case my Utility power has typically 3% THD, which is not bad.
What I can say with near certainty is this: if you are one of those people who notice their sound quality takes a dip during the day and sounds noticeable better late a night, then you need look into getting off the grid. There is absolutely no reason to suffer through bad Utility power!
Rex will be able to offer a well thought out and executed system that I would bet will out perform the far more expensive competition.
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Please remember Wil has one of my all copper panels, excellent grounding and a well applied main service. Much better than any other setup that is based upon a standard loadcenter and dedicated branches to the room.
I am intending to optimize a Victron inverter, then send it to Wil to compare to his Exeltech. Maybe ask to have his Exeltech to try and improve upon it. We shall see.
I am intending to optimize a Victron inverter, then send it to Wil to compare to his Exeltech. Maybe ask to have his Exeltech to try and improve upon it. We shall see.
Please share your findings.
All details are important.
The most important factor will be to test if this exceeds the performance of power lines / exeltech.
Next what power do we need. Is Victron Quattro 15 kva the best option or 5 kva will be as good ?
Is the lifepo4 size a limiting factor ? 200 A to start with and test upto 1000 A in size.
Is the size of cabeling critical ? Both on AC (exit) side and DC ( input) . Is 1AWG good or need a bigger
Should we use one inverter for all system OR splitting it to 3 inverters has a benefit of itself?
( than gain a full separation of the AC for amp1 , amp2 , all other components)
Please remember to synchronize all 3 inverters to the same frequency and not as a 3 phase system.
I am going this route soon I hope so will follow things discovered and shared.
Ps. I agree with your findings that a good all copper pannel and big copper dedicated lines are the most important to any audio system. It is the most limiting factor in our systems.
Noise. That damned demon you may not even know about...
Had identical plan few months ago , but no time to make it happen. 5000 is probably best in regards to the theoretical power needs, but newer version ( 2) has AC connecting points much less quality then the version 1. I was thinking about the higher spec version 8000 and 10.000 as they could...
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I own a Victron 3000 watt inverter. It in my listening room.
I ordered 3 x 48 volt, 35AH batteries today. I am going with 3 smaller batteries that weigh about 38 lbs each. I decided to go that way as a 105 AH battery weighs about 98 lbs. To much to move around.
105AH at 48 volts is 5040 watts power.
With an 80% drain of battery that is 4032 watts.
If my system burn 500 watts at idle, I have 8 hours to listen.
System will recharge over night.
I want to create an assembly that is portable enough us audiophiles can move around. I can also use smaller battery cables as I am paralleling 3 batteries instead of 1. I weill probably use a #4 or a #2 cable.
I am going to design around using Battery Tender Power Disconnects. It adds cost and a contact point. But I want a setup that is plug and play. I will start with a worst case scenario so to speak, then work backwards if I am not getting the performance I want.
I am also looking at Exeltech 4000 watt inverters. But those are very expensive. Around $4500 for the inverter only.
I ordered 3 x 48 volt, 35AH batteries today. I am going with 3 smaller batteries that weigh about 38 lbs each. I decided to go that way as a 105 AH battery weighs about 98 lbs. To much to move around.
105AH at 48 volts is 5040 watts power.
With an 80% drain of battery that is 4032 watts.
If my system burn 500 watts at idle, I have 8 hours to listen.
System will recharge over night.
I want to create an assembly that is portable enough us audiophiles can move around. I can also use smaller battery cables as I am paralleling 3 batteries instead of 1. I weill probably use a #4 or a #2 cable.
I am going to design around using Battery Tender Power Disconnects. It adds cost and a contact point. But I want a setup that is plug and play. I will start with a worst case scenario so to speak, then work backwards if I am not getting the performance I want.
I am also looking at Exeltech 4000 watt inverters. But those are very expensive. Around $4500 for the inverter only.
I figured out how I'm doing it all. I just ordered nice pure copper cable. I will need to tried tined as well.
Working out how its all going to go together. I think I can make a effective way for an audiophile to safely and easily connect the batteries and inverters. Its going to be a external splice box that has all the connections pre done. All you have to do is land the wires on the battery. The inverter will come with the power strap and output cables attached. As well as the inverter being pre programed to operate as I need it. There is also some damping and isolation of devices that is happening on the inverter. I found a robust connector to connect/disconnect the inverter from the batteries. Silver contacts and rated for 100 amps.
I am using 3 batteries instead of 1. I will ship 1 if that is what you want. But 3 batteries are 37 lbs each. and equal 105 AH. A single 105 AH battery is 105 lbs. If you want long play time, then I would ship 2 x 105 AH batteries. That is easily 5 hours of play for a robust stereo.
FWIW, the image is not the parts I am using or how its going to go together. That was a first pass stare at it and see how I really want to make it happen. But it's a rough idea of what I am leaning towards. I have a pile of FTZ copper lugs and some more all copper battery cable on order. Its getting close.
I am using 3 batteries instead of 1. I will ship 1 if that is what you want. But 3 batteries are 37 lbs each. and equal 105 AH. A single 105 AH battery is 105 lbs. If you want long play time, then I would ship 2 x 105 AH batteries. That is easily 5 hours of play for a robust stereo.
FWIW, the image is not the parts I am using or how its going to go together. That was a first pass stare at it and see how I really want to make it happen. But it's a rough idea of what I am leaning towards. I have a pile of FTZ copper lugs and some more all copper battery cable on order. Its getting close.
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Tinning weakens the wire, is ~6x higher resistance than copper, and can cause connection issues (dissimilar metals, different tempcos, etc.) over time. I'd suggest just sticking with pure copper.
IMO it is much more complex. The higher resistance can be negligible, as the tin layer has a few microns and tin can prevent corrosion galvanic protection depending on the materials used in the plug contacts.
Belden refers that tin prevents copper from oxidizing and corrosion.
Tin has a worst high-frequency skin-effect behavior, but considering the typical high-end audio context it can be considered a good thing.
As most of the time, it depends on the compromises we want to accept.
These are LPO - also referred to as “LifePro”. (not LTO - the T standing for Titinate and as used by Taiko in the Olympus).
I would go with the battery set up @Kingrex is working on which will be plug and play and more than likely be better sounding, more powerful, and flexible than commercial products which are designed more for off grid RV use.
I also feel certain it will out perform any of the Stromtank models, and at a far lower price.
I would go with the battery set up @Kingrex is working on which will be plug and play and more than likely be better sounding, more powerful, and flexible than commercial products which are designed more for off grid RV use.
I also feel certain it will out perform any of the Stromtank models, and at a far lower price.
I believe the battey I have selected is very safe. It has a built in BMS. The charger is specifically fitted for the battery. It had a good power to weight ratio. Its a respected brand in the Marine industry. You really don't want a fire on a boat. I'm sure you could save $1000 buying something on Amazon. I would not trust a no name Amazon or Ebay battery.
Most battey cable and almost every compression lug are tinned. The wire I selected is not tinned. The lugs are. I am messing with removing the tin on the mating surfaces. But its getting very time intensive. Many hours. 600 grit. 2000 grit. Polish. Wash. Deoxit. And its a lot of metal dust requiring I wear a real resperator.
I will probably just go back to leave the lugs alone and compare bare copper to tinned copper cables. Someone once told me, tinned cable does not have as much capacitive contact between the indovidual strands as the tin acts as a poor insulator. Not sure how much it matters.
I have heard THHN is better, but the stiffnes could reault in damaging the battery terminal, and that could cause a fire. Its a mix of #4 and 2/0. Very stiff wire as THHN. Pretty soft as battery cable. At least the #4. The 2/0 is beefey.
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