For those who've been following the saga of our solar PV & battery storage system, the latest news is that I decommissioned our last Redflow ZCell a week ago in order to have two stacks of three Pylontech Pelio batteries (https://en.pylontech.com.cn/products/Pelio) installed. As described in my last blog post (https://ourobengr.com/2025/12/what-happened-next/) I'd pushed the failing ZCells as far - or possibly further - than could reasonably be expected. These new batteries work just fine with our existing Victron inverter/charger gear, and give us just under 30kWh of usable storage capacity. I'll do a proper writeup in due course once they've got a few more miles on them, but for now here's a picture.

#solar #energystorage #redflow #pylontech #victron

In the hope that it will be useful to the future work of folks here, I've written up as much as possible about my experience patching up a failing ZCell and nursing it along. I've also included some further general notes about Redflow's hardware and software:

https://ourobengr.com/2025/12/what-happened-next/

What Happened Next: https://ourobengr.com/2025/12/what-happened-next/ - another post about our 5.94kW solar array with Redflow ZCell battery and Victron Energy inverter/charger system.

I managed to get about six months out of our most recent ZCell before it started leaking (not good for something that was allegedly warranted for 10 years) but I patched it up and am continuing to nurse it along until we're able to migrate to something else.

I will continue to write about our system in future, but this post will probably be the last that covers Redflow batteries in any detail.

#solar #energystorage #redflow

Yeah... That went well: https://ourobengr.com/2025/08/yeah-that-went-well/ - The latest in my long series of posts about our 5.94kW solar array with Redflow ZCell battery and Victron Energy inverter/charger system, wherein our battery that replaced the first one under warranty itself failed for the same reason. Happily we were able to get it replaced again, but not through Redflow who no longer exist. I've also included some speculation about why these batteries fail, and some possible mitigation strategies in case other folks with ZCells are still running and want to stay that way.

#solar #energystorage #redflow

Yeah… That went well.

On December 14, 2024 – three weeks after I published the last exciting installment in this series of posts – our new Redflow ZCell battery, which replaced the original one which had developed a leak in the electrode stack, itself failed due to a leak in the electrode stack. With Redflow in liquidation there was obviously no way I was getting a warranty replacement this time around. Happily, Aidan Moore from QuantumNRG put me in touch with Jason Litchfield from GrazAg, who had obtained a number of Redflow’s post-liquidation stock of batteries. With the Christmas holidays coming up, the timing wasn’t great, but we were ultimately able to get the failed unit replaced with a new ZBM3.

At this point the obvious question from anyone who’s been following the Redflow saga is probably going to be: why persevere, especially in light of this article from the ABC which speaks of ongoing reliability issues and disturbingly high failure rates for these batteries. That’s a good question, and like many good questions it has a long and complicated answer.

[…]

#redflow #solar #victron

"And because #Redflow was small, it was forced to rely on repurposed third-party components. This put it at the mercy of other manufacturers, who would regularly decide Redflow's small orders weren't worth the trouble."

Build it with generic components you can get from any supplier, or scratch-build the whole thing yourself.

Reminded of a comment by the CEO of Williams International about their factories - Metal ingots come in one end, Jet Engines go out the other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9yUv3uObQ4

Something Interesting Happened: https://ourobengr.com/2024/11/something-interesting-happened/ - a review of the third year of operation of our 5.94kW solar array with Redflow ZCell battery and Victron Energy inverter/charger system.

#solar #energystorage #redflow

Something Interesting Happened

Our 5.94kW solar array with Redflow ZCell battery and Victron Energy inverter/charger system is now slightly over three years old, which means it’s time to review its third year of operation. There are several previous posts in this series:

Go With The Flow (what all the pieces are, what they do, some teething problems)

Hack Week 21: Keeping the Battery Full (an experiment in working around the limitations of a single ZCell)

TANSTAAFL (review/analysis of the first year of operation, 2021-2022)

Still Going With The Flow (review/analysis of the second year of operation, 2022-2023)

If you’ve read the above you’ll know that the solar array was originally installed back in 2017 along with a Sanden heat pump hot water service. That initial installation saved us a lot on our electricity bills, but it wasn’t until we got the ZCell and the Victron gear that we were able to really manage our own power. The ZCell allows us to store our own locally generated electricity for later use, and the Victron kit manages everything and gives us a whole lot of fascinating data to look at via the VRM portal.

There were some kinks in the first two years. We missed out on three weeks of prime solar PV generation from January 20 – February 11 in 2022 due to having to replace the MPPT solar charge controller. We also had no solar PV generation from February 17 – March 9 in 2023 on account of having our old tile roof replaced with colorbond steel. In my last post on this topic I wrote:

In both cases our PV generation was lower than it should have been by an estimated 500-600kW. Hopefully nothing like this happens again in future years.

…and then at the very end of that post:

I’m looking forward to doing another one of these posts in a year’s time. Hopefully I will have nothing at all interesting to report.

Alas, something “like this” did happen again, and I have some interesting things to report.

[…]

#redflow #solar #victron

Een maker van Flow Batterijen #Redflow is in moeilijkheden. Techniek is veel belovend maar markt acceptatie is altijd de moeilijke stap 2. Ik heb het gevoel dat er een shake out gaande is. Welke batterij maker/techniek het dan wel of niet red. Laatst ook #northvolt. #energietransitie #flowbatteries #storagebatteries #gridbatteries

Flow battery maker Redflow goes out of business
https://www.energy-storage.news/flow-battery-maker-redflow-out-of-business-with-administrators-unable-to-find-buyer/

I am looking for #electric works to run two 3kW pumps for #bushfire #protection (two pumps, 3 hours running time = 20kWhours of stored energy, I suppose).

I'd hoped to use two #Redflow batteries for the purpose, but I am getting 'nup, we do Tesla powerwalls' from installers. Who knows why please?

I don't want to give Elon any money if I can avoid it, and I'd prefer a battery that is made locally.

That being said, maybe I need to get off my high horse and get on with pumps.

Anyhow, thoughts?