[Jack Houpe]

Wow a lot of chat here! My wife and I are 68, we gauge everything we do on how long do we have to be alive and functional, I like to have comfort and performance as long as I can afford it after all we don't live forever. The batteries I've built should last the rest of my life but hopefully I'll be alive to see them belly up, if you look at the cost of 8D over a period of years you might come close to the cost of lithium but remember you only can use 50% of the amp hours of glass and wet cell batteries, so you can't compare 100 ah of wet cell to 100 ah of lithium because you can use 80% of lithium. So your getting 30% more battery with lithium of the same size, this means a lot if your really using your system.

Yes 52v lithium will be the way I will go in the future, wire size is much smaller and easier to work with below is a picture of my nephews golf cart that I converted to lithium, 200ah@52vdc = 10.4kw hour and the cost was $1680 which included freight from China. There is a heavy rubber mat that covers all those batteries up, plus they are strapped together, sometimes space is an issue so thats why it looks like that.

Richard the new mini splits (1 ton) have are inverter type units, they use a 3 phase DC compressor that draws 9 amps at full tilt. The difference is amazing compared to the old scroll type compressors that draw 17 amps for the same amount of cooling. If I where to design a new heat and air system for our Newell it would be inverter tech all the way and I would use remote cassettes rather than duck the air all the way to the back. Dometic now makes a roof mounted inverter AC which is easy on energy for those who have roof air. The beauty of inverter is it ramps the compressor speed down the closer you get to your set point which you can't do with old type scroll compressors. If you get into your RV and its 100 degrees inside and you have the temp set at 72 then the compressor runs full speed but the closer it gets to 72 degrees it ramps down speed and amperage so at set point temp the compressor draws half of the current, in my case 450w and I had 770w of solar so in full sun I could run the AC of the panels on the roof and everything in the van without battery usage.

Almost forgot, Growatt and many other all in one systems can be linked together, my 2 growatts are not linked but If I wanted 6kw at 220vac spit phase I could do it.