My house has mountains and my work has paid for cellular internet but will not pay for star link. But cellular does not work at my house because of mountain, so I have the cellular modem on top of the mountain where it gets a signal and I use some cheap wifi link to transmit wifi to the houseI have 150w of solar panel there I got for free and for the long time I was using car batteries. I just impulse bought a lithium 100ah battery, but I am finding that it does not work below 0°c??How the fuck do I keep this stupid battery warm? Half of the year it goes below 0c every night. Is it only a problem when it charges
>>2865756Waste some of that energy warming the battery? Or bury the battery deep in the ground where it stays above freezing.Does it cut off completely at 0C or it just loses power? If it cuts off completely, it almost sounds like a thermal cutoff on the BMS board. Maybe there’s a way you could cheat that. Otherwise lithium batteries normally get some heat into them as they’re being charged/discharged. So maybe running a smaller load off of them when the temp drops could keep the thing warm enough to not cut out, but then you would want to rig it to run that second load only when the temp drops to a certain limit.
>>2865757I don't think so, if I have only really 4 hours of sun to charge it, I can only use 5ah of total load or 60w. Idk how much the stuff uses but maybe I can buy a bigger box and put everything in one box to heat upI think if I bury the battery will get it wet
>>2865757>Does it cut off completely at 0C or it just loses powerI'm not sure, I don't have it yet, It does have a bms temperature that either disable charging or just disable the Battery. I'm not sure how it could only block charging
>>2865763It must be the BMS blocking it. I’m curious if it’s on a circuit board or a temp sensor hanging off into the cells. A lot of those temp sensors read resistance, so you could probably remove the sensor and solder in a resistor, but then you’re bypassing a safety on a big bank of lithium cells and voiding whatever warranty there is.Lithium gives off some heat as it chargers and discharges. Maybe try some insulation of some sort? Wrap that bitch up and maybe it retains enough heat from running that router to keep it above 0C.
>>286576060W is plenty. Cheapest is an insulated box with an incandescent lamp (think beer cooler or like a pelicase with some foam) if you have AC. Or a reptile heating pad if you only have 24V. The latter sometimes come with a thermostat built in but may not go as low as 0C
>>2865756Anons in this thread trying to reinvent the wheel.
>>2865783That was my first half sentence here >>2865757 but I forgot to post the pic with it. I’m not sure anon has enough solar juice to keep the battery blanket powered tho
>>2865780It is 60w max including equipment. But really if it goes through a cloudy day it should be 30wI guess I could use a microcontroller to turn on a 5w lamp it cold and use a lot of insulation
>>2865780>beer coolerI was going to suggest this. Get an old coleman cooler for free or cheap and put your electronics and battery in there. Then insulate around it more with some fiberglass batt insulation or styrofoam board. Then drill as small as a hole as you can for your wires to come out through and seal it up with some silicone or something similar. If that doesn't keep it warm enough then I'd look into the battery warmer or a small incandescent bulb that comes on with a thermostat switch.
>>2865756Pay for Starlink out of your pocket. You're going to create more aggravation for yourself than the cost of the subscription fee.
>>2865756>How the fuck do I keep this stupid battery warm?Burying under the frost line would be the easiest long-term solution, but impulse-bought lithium raises a lot of questions.>does not work below 0CIf it was set up correctly, it should discharge at any temperature but only charge above 0C (with a safety margin, so maybe 2-3C), but it can be set up to completely shut down under 0C. Regardless, if you weren't impulse buying, you could've straight bought a battery that has automatic heating built in, many BMS support that feature.A 150W panel that only gets sun 4 hours a day might not be enough to keep the battery warm and also run the equipment, obviously depends on how well you insulate it though. Also seconding that you should just pay for Starlink, probably much better quality of connection.
>>2865855This, just try and get your employer to subsidize the cost by however much they have been paying for the cellular service.
>>2865855>>2865869They do not know I am doing this because they provide a company phone and company tablet but I took Sim out of the tablet and put it in the modem.I think it's fair because I take work calls from home and have to remote work often, and I do not need a tablet for my job.I also at some point will dump cellular and use a wifi link 30km to my work but I was having issues with it. It works and I get 15mbps up but 1-2mbps down and very low signal so bad reliability
>>2865858I forgot I will be putting two more, it has two 75w panel right now but will have 4 later, maybe 6
>>2866064At 30km you can be very happy that it works at all, long range wifi is good for a few km.
>>2865783> Top/HautThis seems like technology available only in canada
>>2866107You can buy battery warmers just about anywhere. That's just an example.
LiFePO4 batteries will not take a charge under 0C. Your BMS may or may not reject the charging current when it is too cold. Cheaper ones don't have a low-temp cutout. The battery can be discharged in temperatures above -20C, so you don't need to worry about losing power. You can spend some of your battery's charge to warm the batteries up. It's just important that you don't let them go flat if you have no alternative way to heat them. I would get those heating pads for the battery and have them on a thermostat controlled relay to keep them around 5c.You should be using a solar charge controller. LiFePO4 batteries take different voltages then Lead Acid. Your charge controller needs to do bulk/absorption up to 14.6V and float at 13.6V. I recommend setting re-bulk voltage at 13.4V. Do not let your charge controller equalize the battery. Some solar charge controllers can automatically stop trying to charge the battery if the ambient air is below a threshold.
>>2865756>My house has mountains Well there’s your problem right there. I’d recommend moving to a house from a more recent geologic era.
Just get the starlink bro. It's like $120/month at most. Put in 1 extra hour of work per week and the cost is completely offset. Then you won't have to deal with any of this bullshit.
