Thanks for the tips. I’m kind of stuck with the choices I’ve made in the past and I don’t want to upgrade or change before it’s really needed, in order to prevent waste. One is just a cabin where I go maybe a dozen times a year. The other is a sugar shack used in the day for only a few weeks during the spring so it just has a 3000W 24V inverter. It’s enough for the lights and the water pump once in a while. We really don’t need that much power for now but I’ll certainly switch to 48v when we’ll need to upgrade.
As for the ideal temperature, I’ve pretty much given up. The average temps in January are around -10°C and it sometimes goes in the -20°C. I thought about multiple ways to insulate and heat the batteries but in the end, I don’t want to leave this unattended in the middle of a forest. So far my solution in winter for the cabin is to carry a portable power station that was sitting in a heated place.
Lifepo4 is pretty much the one type you can safely leave unattended, it’s very very hard to get them to burn and even when they do it’s mostly smoke. Lithium is the big flame/boom one. The trade off is less energy density compared with lithium but for home storage thats less of an issue. The batteries i shared even feature fire suppression systems (basically an automatically deployed fire ratardant foam internally) for additional protection.
Building a little box of insulation around the batteries using some foam board panels and a water heater blanket with some water pipe heating tape you can get at most hardware stores would be the cheap easy way and should help with the colder month temps. And is easily picked uo and set aside in warmer weather
Thanks for the tips. I’m kind of stuck with the choices I’ve made in the past and I don’t want to upgrade or change before it’s really needed, in order to prevent waste. One is just a cabin where I go maybe a dozen times a year. The other is a sugar shack used in the day for only a few weeks during the spring so it just has a 3000W 24V inverter. It’s enough for the lights and the water pump once in a while. We really don’t need that much power for now but I’ll certainly switch to 48v when we’ll need to upgrade.
As for the ideal temperature, I’ve pretty much given up. The average temps in January are around -10°C and it sometimes goes in the -20°C. I thought about multiple ways to insulate and heat the batteries but in the end, I don’t want to leave this unattended in the middle of a forest. So far my solution in winter for the cabin is to carry a portable power station that was sitting in a heated place.
Lifepo4 is pretty much the one type you can safely leave unattended, it’s very very hard to get them to burn and even when they do it’s mostly smoke. Lithium is the big flame/boom one. The trade off is less energy density compared with lithium but for home storage thats less of an issue. The batteries i shared even feature fire suppression systems (basically an automatically deployed fire ratardant foam internally) for additional protection.
Building a little box of insulation around the batteries using some foam board panels and a water heater blanket with some water pipe heating tape you can get at most hardware stores would be the cheap easy way and should help with the colder month temps. And is easily picked uo and set aside in warmer weather