Are Budget Home Batteries Any Good? Behind the Scenes Retrofit to 6.6kW Solar

I have a Fronius 10kW Gen24 Hybrid converter, 14.8 kWh of BYD batteries (Fronius recommended), three phase backup. Been working faultlessly, excellent monitoring. The BYD batteries are LiFePo as opposed to Li-Ion, larger and heavier than these per kWh, but run much cooler and ess prone to thermal runaway.

Will be watching this develop, was mostly information from SolarQuotes that I relied on when selecting our system. Modular battery was (to me) a no-brainer. DQ were the suppliers and installers. The installers were great, I requested LAN connection and they were able to accommodate that quite easily given the position of my routers and the brush plate I'd installed nearby. Very happy with the communications side, the LAN and routers are within my backup circuits and they have been rock solid. We tend to use a quite large amount of power and had a spreadsheet on my bills over four years, so I could see overall usage and feed-ins of the old system. Wife had agreed to my logic of de-coupling gas from the house as the dual energy bills seemed wasteful. The spreadsheet averaged use over billing periods which made for a reasonable guess for expected use volumes and patterns. DQ's Nathan was very helpful with balancing estimates during hot water and cooktop changeover from gas (also handled by DQ). We ended up with 6 modules (max stack for single phase setup under a single BMS head-unit). Sungrow's app is a little clunky but works pretty well. Even forced charging (FC) is do-able remotely, but could do with some polishing by their software engineers. Web display through the browser is much easier for FC time and charge target percentages.

Thanks Finn - very close to what I am looking for. Great explanations.

Hey Finn another great video.. some really useful info.. thanks for doing these reviews :)

Keep these videos coming really useful. I have a large solar system and am considering a battery but just can’t see the the ROI working just yet. Do you see a trend of battery prices coming down yet?

Good work mate. Love your channel. Keep it up.

Sungrow looks like a better option then I thought. Might be a go when my old lead acid battery bank finally throws it in 👍🔋☀️

We always install a double pole main switch when installing a backup supply. This means when the main switch is turned off the whole switch board is off and can be worked on safely.

I have an a Sungrow SH10RT and SBR256 with 13.3kw of Rec Alpha panels. 1 phase of 3 used for backup circuits (lights, fridge, internet, to etc). 100% agree. DC coupled battery works for my needs Tidy, cost effective and very happy

Following on from my other comment, this has thrown SunGrow back into the mix! Thank you. You say budget hardware, but it is more a mainstream product? The technology is becoming more affordable and its SunGrow leading the way?

I had 6.6 kW of solar and a Sungrow inverter and Sungrow battery installed just under 4 years ago (followed by an EV and Zappi smart charger a year later). It has all worked perfectly - except for the Sungrow monitoring (ARGH!). After about 1.5 years, many months worth of historic data just disappeared. The very good installer tried his best to get tech advice from Sungrow - but it turned into a nightmare and the poor installer had to waste hours of his time dealing with Sungrow. I would rate Sungrow tech support 1 out of 10. Eventually all the historic data was restored, but then some months later most of the historic data disappeared again. I haven't bothered with Sungrow support again after the last debacle. So now most of the historic data from 2020, 2021 and 2023 is not showing. Though the daily data shows, it's impossible to compare production and consumption over the last 4 years.

Hi, I have been following you for a long time and I remember you saying in a previous publication that you had a Tesla Powerwall. I am really interested in how you have mixed and matched the batteries and multiple PV systems.

Great informative video - thank you

Love to see an update after winter Finn. Ballpark what was battery cost before install in $/kWh ?? I know South Australia have better feed in and sponge plans but in Victoria we seem to be hobbled to $0.054/kWh

Can these batteries be added to an Enphase micro inverter systems? If so, what amount of storage would suit a 9.36kw system?

I have heard they are noisy and I found the comment on your website that the warranty is not passed on to new home owners if you sell. Not sure if this is true for battery? Really puts me off. Also would this be the best setup for an east west roof? Very confused. Want a battery now, but I have an east west roof, just slightly angled to the north.

Seems you have missed to answer the question in the title. Are they any good? Are you getting the rated capacity or close to it? Are the cells properly balanced? Do they stay this way? What's the build quality like? Many many points not touched upon to answer the question in the title :-)

How on earth are you getting that high a feed in tariff from AGL? Currently their best offer is 5c

Any concerns about having the battery in the garage with house above? I'm thinking her about fire risk.

I was 100% feronius until I saw this, thank you!