Another Wattson is on its way ...

Always looking for a good deal, I found this Wattson unit, 6 months old only, that somebody from Toulouse (South East of France) was selling on Leboncoin.fr (equivalent of Craigslist like site in France) for 40 EUR only, when it costs 100 to 140 EUR brand new online

This person said he was selling it because he was moving from a house to an apartment where he could not install it, or did not need it anymore

I will probably use it to display Usage, along with Generation and Net Usage already displayed on my ESS
I might also wire it for somebody's Kit or use it upstairs to display Net Usage, we will see ..

DIY ESS Kit Blog gets a New Header

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LiFePO4 DIY ESS - Charger Stuff

If you remember the last time I got 3 24V LiFePO4 Chargers, one of them did not blow any air and went into an over-temperature situation; I had my Hong Kong contact send me another one and it arrived last night


The new charger is exactly like the six others, except this blue sticker instead of orange

Only now I decided to open the problem charger, and discovered that its fan connector was simply not plugged into the charger PCB ... This was easy to fix ! :-)

I then replugged it the the ESS Control Board / EMS to test it and the fan started spinning right away :-) 

Now, let's prepare this new charger to connect it with the other ones: 

Always the same thing: remove the original US AC plug, strip the wires and apply solder to make it stronger; On the DC side, remove the plug, strip the wires and solder 8mm lug on positive and 6mm lug for negative 

Done !

So I now have 7 Low Power Chargers to feed my battery pack, and had to plug 2 on the same AC port, together pushing 650W

The stack is getting a bit high with 7 chargers !

2 chargers are connected to the same AC port

7 x 92W = 650W (roughly)

It is tight, but all the DC chargers cables fit

This is the new charger positive lug

and the negative one

LiFePO4 DIY ESS Kit - 1,000 Visits already

The new Blog dedicated to my LiFePO4 Battery Energy Storage System just reached its first 1,000 Visits today :-)

I hope it will get more and more to let people know that a simple and affordable solution exists for Enegry Storage at Home usign Solar or Wind

NEW 2013 LEAF Pricing down to 17,290 EUR in France with Battery Pack Rental

Announced in Oslo, Norway, recently, this is the - good  - news of the day: The Nissan LEAF price tag drops to 17,290 EUR in France - after government incentive of 7,000 EUR - with the New battery pack rental option - New too -, and no CHAdeMO plug and no CARWINGS

It is half the price of the original LEAF (the one I have and paid 32,000 EUR after 5,000 EUR incentive) ... but it's ok, I got it among the first ones and more than a year and a half ago, so ...

Here are the 3 levels of trim



and the Battery pack rental plans



For more details see the great post of Yoann on Automobile Propre (in French)



Source: Automobile Propre

Citroen lowers the C-Zero price tag in France at 16,900 EUR

Maybe because of Renault ZOE starting at 13,700 EUR, Citroen revealed a new price tag of 16,900 EUR for its only electic car, the C-Zero - a rebranded Mitsubishi i-MiEV in fact -

This is less than half the original price tag when it came to French market at 35,000 EUR ....

Check out this page dedicated to this model: http://www.citroen.fr/citroen-c-zero

More info on Citroen website:  http://www.carstore.citroen.fr/promotions/gamme

Source: Automobile Propre & Citroen

Davide Di Rizzo / ELPA's EVSE - pricing & reservation

Davide Di Rizzo from ELPA is selling his EVSE at a reasonable 450 EUR for the 6-16A version and 480 EUR for the 6-30A one and I read somewhere that a first lot of 100 was being made already

Pretty cheap & fast, thanks Davide !

Photo Automobile Propre

Photo Automobile Propre

About his electronics company, ELPA, close to Milan : www.elpa.it

Some more info here:  http://renault-zoe.forumpro.fr/t838p30-30a-cro#20418

Another Tyco Kilovac Contactor and an Emergency Cut Off Pushbutton

Yesterday I got this other - brand new this time - Tyco Kilovac Contactor to replace the automotive 24V relay on the charger side of my DIY ESS. Like Jack Rickard says and uses for his heating system, it is overkill but you do not want to leave a ceramic hetaer load on that drains your battery pack to flat, for me, I do not want to chargers not to stop when the battery pack reaches the voltage limit of 3.50V per cell times 8 cells, in my case 28V

I also got, from the same eBay seller here in Paris, a small emergency cut off pushbutton/switch that will cut the 24V to the ESS box and deactivate all contactors, arduino, relays ... and hopefully stop any problem

Just realized after buying it that it is a Tyco Kilovac EV200A1ANA, and not the one I have already for the Grid Tie Inverter side, which is an EV200AAANA; The difference is that this new one I got does not have the Coil Economizer, so I guess it will use more power when the coil is activated - during the charge mode -

The 24V automotive relay, works fine, but get a bit hot, and you never know when it is going to stick/weld inside and not open when necessary, I just do not trust it as much as a good Tyco Kilovac Contactor 

DIY ESS Kit - New Blog dedicated to my ESS Project

And this is my first post on this newly created Blog " DIY ESS Kit ", dedicated to my ESS Project

Direct Link here