Hey TJ

[marc]

I'm posting this publicly, so folks who are not in the alternative energy business can see my thought process.

I've been speaking with the owner of a company called KISAE. He worked for Xantrex for many years until Schneider Electric bought them out. He decided to take what he knew, add the improvements that customers had been asking for, and build a new product line. In worst possible economic times, he decided that the market would respond well to a philosophy of "Keep It Simple Alternative Energy" and Keep it Simple Alternative Energy was born.

He now has a strong following and you can buy his products from the giants like Home Depot, Northern Tool, Amazon, etc. But, he also has some "back channel" distribution channels for folks like me. (If you move enough batteries, people are willing to partner up with a "no headache" distribution partner)

OK - straight out - yes they are built in China. You know that I've been a strictly "Buy America" company since I started my company. But, I also need to be able to offer both in order to feed myself. So, I've taken on Fullriver batteries along with Concorde, and I'm about to work with KISAE. I'm buying some sample chargers and inverter-chargers from these folks to beat up in my shop because I know what the typical failure points are. Industry people that I trust are are saying very, very good things about them based on their field applications. The spec's are perfect from a battery guy's perspective.

To me, their strengths are in the Inverter and Inverter-charger market - that's where I live.

The moral dilemma hits home because of the Made in China thing. As a consumer, I go out of my way to "Buy America."  But, as a small businessman I have now come to recognize that I must offer both - if I want to feed my family. If the inverters and inverter-chargers survive my workout, I'll talk about it here.

In the mean time - I personally think that Mr. Wilhelm should build "plug and play" systems for people that need his experience and expertise. That's something that the rest of us don't have, and it will cost us at least $100 per hour to buy. 

Tim, before you blow off the idea: Look at what Home Depot is very successfully selling in large numbers for $1,500. each: KISAE at Home Depot

Marc

[thywar]

Ohhhh. I can't install it but I can sell/market it all around this lake. I like it

[Cwi555]

At this point in time, it may be wise to get all of them that you can. There may come a time in the near future when importing is not an option.

[tjwilhelm]

Thanks for the links, Marc. I always like learning about new developments in the world of solar technology.

Your post covers a few separate topics. It might be easiest to respond to each separately:

1) Buying Chinese? I understand your dilemma. Importantly, though, I've seen more than a few times that you often get what you pay for. Not always; but, often, the quality and durability of the Chinese-manufactured products is not up to par. You pay less for these products; but, you also are sometimes faced with an early equipment failure and poor customer service. That said, from the business perspective, you're right some folks can only afford the inexpensive Chinese hardware. Regarding these Kisea chargers and inverter/chargers, I wonder if they are "listed" equipment -- have they been tested to UL 1741, and did they pass? Have they met the IEEE standards for quality?

It's interesting that you said Kisea was started by someone formerly with Xantrex, because both OutBack Power and MidNite Solar (Robin Gudgel) were started by former Trace Engineering people -- Trace being the precursor to Xantrex. These are both very solid, U.S. companies. That said, while I believe MidNite Solar's toys are all US manufactured, OutBack makes some of their products in the USA and some in India. Still, all their products have been tested, certified, and listed.

I wonder if the price difference is worth the quality difference. The KISAE Abso SW Inverter Charger 1000W 40A (IC121040)has a MSRP of $549.99; but is easily available for $499.99. To compare, the Magnum 1.0KW sinewave inverter/charger can be bought for $647.46, and is US-made -- essentially a $150.00 difference. Some will only be able to afford the $500.00 -- others will prefer to spend the extra $150.00 for what MIGHT be greater quality and reliability. I'd like to learn more about Kisea.

2) Building Plug and Play systems? That's not in the cards for me for the next year. I'm way too busy training tomorrow's solar technicians. HOWEVER, hanging out here is one of my needed escapes. While I'm here, I'm always happy to help, if I can, to throw my two cents in on system design, sizing, configuration, site assessment, etc.

NOW, on the other hand, Marc, if you have some quick and easy tag-team effort in mind, I might have to give that some serious thought.

[tjwilhelm]

Hi again, Marc. Now that it's not 2:00 a.m., and I've had a decent night's sleep, I've gotten back online and actually downloaded the user manual for the KISEA kit sold at Home Depot. Marc understands everything I'll be typing in here; but, I'm keeping our conversation open to the forum, in the spirit of the OP.

I've read through the manual one time and here's what I see: This kit IS a plug and play system. Here's my description of it -- it's (in simple terms) an 1800W UPS with a solar input (on-board PV charge controller). It is UL listed, to UL 1778. This, specifically, is the listing for uninterruptable power supplies.

This is made, strictly, for mobile and/or very short-term emergency backup. It is not made for integration into your home's electrical wiring/branch circuit system. It has its own on-board, 120V outlets for feeding juice to critical loads when utility power is down. It also has a power cord to plug into your home's 120V outlets for charging, and maintaining the charge, of the built-in 60Ah sealed Pb-acid battery. The kit also comes with a folding, 60W (peak at STC) PV module.

The small size of the battery and the PV module are the big limiting nodes on this "kit." You know as well as I do that the rated 60Ah battery is REALLY only 50Ah of available storage. At 12VDC, with no derating for inverter efficiency, this gives the user a max of about 0.6kWh of back-up energy. Here's what that means: If you ONLY plugged your 1/2 H.P. Zoeller sump pump into the kit, it would run for 1/2 hour of continuous operation before you draw your battery too low. IF you had multiple appliances plugged in (refrigerator, lights, microwave, etc.), and if their operation was a mix of intermittent use (appliances) and continuous use (lights and radio), this battery would likely only last for less than 4 hours of clock time -- what do you think, Marc? Is that a reasonable estimate?

If your power outage is extended, and if you used the battery for 1/2 hour and drained it down to the low limit, (again, not derating for inefficiencies and losses) you would need 10 hours of clear, direct sun to recharge the battery, fully...plan at least three days of real-world conditions to recharge. Does that sound reasonable, Marc?

IF a customer really understands what they're getting for their $1,500.00, and IF this is really a quality product, this might be something nice to have for limited-use, emergency back-up...an alternative to a SMALL, stand-by engine-generator set.

Here's where my thoughts go from here: IF their products are indeed a good mix of quality and price, I'd use their higher wattage/amperage inverters and charge controllers to build kits that would be useful for a limited list of critical electrical loads, with the battery pack sized for 3 to 5 days of battery autonomy, and the PV array sized -- for the user's location -- to fully recharge the battery in less than two days of average, winter, peak-sun hours.

This process should start with the load list and the energy budget (the number of hours/day each load is allowed to operate). This would give the customer a real picture of what they're buying; and, this kind of system could carry a person's critical loads through a VERY extended loss of utility power. Is this what you had in mind, Marc?

[solargeek1]

Can I tell you both how much I love these types of threads??

[tjwilhelm]

Mar 23, 2014 9:35:18 GMT -7 tjwilhelm said:

...NOW, on the other hand, Marc, if you have some quick and easy tag-team effort in mind, I might have to give that some serious thought...

...Here's where my thoughts go from here: IF their products are indeed a good mix of quality and price, I'd use their higher wattage/amperage inverters and charge controllers to build kits that would be useful for a limited list of critical electrical loads, with the battery pack sized for 3 to 5 days of battery autonomy, and the PV array sized -- for the user's location -- to fully recharge the battery in less than two days of average, winter, peak-sun hours.

This process should start with the load list and the energy budget (the number of hours/day each load is allowed to operate). This would give the customer a real picture of what they're buying; and, this kind of system could carry a person's critical loads through a VERY extended loss of utility power. Is this what you had in mind, Marc?

Marc? Are ya there? Is this the direction you had in mind?

[tjwilhelm]

Marc must be busy. I'm not sure if this is what he had in mind, or not; but, here goes:

An important element of bug-in survival is food storage. Amana makes a decent "Energy Star" refrigerator -- the Amana ABB1921WEW…18.5 Ft3...$1,099.00. Allegedly, it uses about 448kWh of electricity per year. This works out to 1.2kWh per day (448/365).

If you wanted three full days of battery autonomy, you would need 3.6kWh of ACTUAL battery storage capacity. Because the ACTUAL capacity of a battery is really only 80% of its rated size, you would need a minimum of 4.5kWh (3.6/0.8) which, at 12VDC is 375Ah of rated battery capacity (4.5 x 1000/12).

At 12VDC, the daily amp-hour demand (Ah/day) would be 100Ah/day (1.2 x 1000/12). Now, to size the solar array, you need data for your location. The data you're looking for is your average "peak sun hours." For most loads, you would use the worst-case peak sun hours for winter; BUT, for refrigeration during bug-in survival, you can put food outside in a cooler in the winter. Therefore, to size the solar array, just use the annual average peak sun hours. Here's a link to peak sun hour data: www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/properties-of-sunlight/average-solar-radiation.

Honoring Marc's initiation of this thread, lets use annual average peak sun hours for Texas. If you go to that link (above) and hover your mouse-pointer over Austin, TX, you'll see a bar graph of monthly averages for peak sun hours. The annual average would be near the equinoxes (March and September). Thus, I've selected 5.0 peak sun hours per day as my annual average.

Now, we know two important things. We know that our Ah load will be 100Ah/day. We also know that the location will give us 5.0 sun hours per day. If we divide 100 Amp-Hours by 5 Hours, we know that we need 20 Amps of charging current to replace our daily load with a daily input from the sun.

With 20 amps of solar current needed, in a nominal 12VDC system, we will need about 240W of PV modules!

Now we look at the KISEA products for charge controlller and inverter. The Amana fridge has a rated amp draw of 15A. At 120vac this works out to about 1,800W. Thus we need an inverter rated at or above that. We also need a charge controller rated for the 20A from our PV array.

KISEA has a 1,500W inverter and a 2,000W inverter. We would need to use the 2,000W inverter or the 2,000W inverter/charger.

KISEA has both a 10A and a 20A charge controller. We would need to use the 20A charge controller.

PLEASE keep in mind, I've just roughed the numbers here; but, they're good for getting you very close. The next step would be to check all the equipment specs and limitations; and, then adjust to meet the limitations and needs of the equipment.

Finally, you have to put it all together -- wire types and sizes, overcurrent protection, disconnect means, parallel combining of the PV modules, safely containing the batteries, etc., etc., etc. That's a subject for another day!

[marc]

Sorry - got slammed with work stuff - I will be back to talk about this!

[marc]

I think that some learning dialog like this is excellent!

Please note that I said I was going to get some of their gear to beat up in my shop. I’ve seen some really bad, and some very, very good Chinese electronics. I don’t know yet, but folks that I trust are using it heavily for about a year and half - all good so far.

Yes – I’m a big Xantrex fan, in fact I use two of their 60A, 3 bank chargers in my shop daily. I’m also a big fan of Magnum Energy for their inverter/charger kits in the 1KW to 4KW range. For larger residential systems you can’t beat the Outback Radian for scalability and surge handling. In my previous life at Sun Edison, SMA was the only product that we would touch for integrating the smaller 50K commercial rooftop systems at Kohls, Walmart and Wholefoods, right up to the larger ground mount systems with rows of 100KW, 480v inverters for 10MW to 15MW projects.

Now I live in a different world, straddling the fence with one foot in small off grid solar, and the other in the RV/Marine/Industrial world. It is not rare to see motor coaches with 48KW battery banks (2,000 amps at 24v) and large pleasure craft with three to four times that in multiple banks. The industrial stuff gets bigger for offshore rigs and cathodic protection for pipelines.

When selling to experienced customers with deep pockets, that’s just nifty – but what about the rest of us? THAT is what is driving me to look at Fullriver batteries and KISAE inverters/chargers.

Your example is just perfect to discuss this. In essence:
“What does it take to run an efficient refrigerator and a couple of LED lights?” is the most common question I hear!

Running with your numbers, which I obviously agree with and was headed roughly the same way, I wanted:
- A 2000-2500 watt sine wave inverter – so I picked the KISAE 2000 watt
I like full wave, so I used it at $350. (The 1500 watt modified wave is less than half the cost)

- A 30-40 amp charge controller – so I picked a Morningstar 12/24/48v 45 amp PWM
Not MPPT, but allows for HUGE expansion for $150.

- A 12v battery bank of 400-500 amp hours – so I picked (4) Trojan T105 - a flooded battery that needs maintenance, but a decent deep cycle battery, so I put (4) in at $150. each (Crown makes a great golf cart battery at $100. each) Lots of 12v appliances available.

- 250-300 watt PV. I have no experience buying individual PV modules, so I grabbed a number of $325. from Wholesalesolar.com – a reputable source that many of my customers like.

My target was to be able to get down to $1500 to $2000 for the list because I would still need boxes, cabling, connectors and circuit protection. That list comes in just over $1400, so add some shipping or sales tax and I have a $1600-$1700 list.

Now, we have to add the rest. Thinking in terms of a semi-portable system with home built racking, and my guess says it will put me close to $2500. for a barebones, backyard DYI system with good excellent expansion capability. The beauty is that expansion that the system allows.

Can I “fancy it up” or “strip it down cheaper?” Oh, you bet – this is just a starting example.

Shoot some holes in this!

Marc

[tjwilhelm]

I'll tell ya what, Marc. Rather than shoot holes in it, I'll just add to it and throw a suggestive tweak or two, maybe. It's late here, now; but, tomorrow I'll do wire sizing and come up with a B.O.S. hardware list. We may get these packaged systems all designed and spec'd here in just a couple of days!

[thywar]

Ok.. it was right in front of me.. so I'm bumping this thread to get some more conversation started cause I had a conversation with Marc today about a DC pump for the well that I have to have.. SG had sent me a link to THE solar pump.. so bump bump bump...

[tjwilhelm]

Which pump, thywar? The Grundfos "Flex?"

[thywar]

I really don't know at this point. I'm trying to figure out how to make my well multifunctional Standard well with solar/hand pump. I'd like to pump from well into at least a 1000 gallon tank then into the house. Marc suggests a good DC pump so I can put solar to it at a later date (a lot of this depends on money, as well as the skill set of the filtration guy here in rural Oklahoma). He says he's done a few but not sure of his experience in solar.
Marc (and solar geek) suggested the grundfos