SOLiCORE provides two RS485 ports and one CAN port, plus a local LCD display. Closed-loop support is confirmed on request, send us your inverter or rectifier make, model and firmware version and we will confirm before you order.
We answer it that way deliberately, rather than claiming universal compatibility, because the same physical interface does not guarantee compatibility. RS485 and CAN are transport layers. For closed-loop operation, the baud rate, message identifiers, register map, protocol version and firmware version all have to align between battery and power conversion equipment. “It has CAN, your inverter has CAN, so it will work” is a claim that fails at commissioning, and the cost of discovering that on site is considerably higher than the cost of asking first.
Closed loop versus open loop, and why it matters:
Closed loop, the battery management system reports state of charge, state of health, charge and discharge current limits, voltage, current, cell and pack temperature, alarm codes and protection status, and the inverter or rectifier adapts its behaviour in real time. You get accurate state of charge, coordinated protection, and charge control that respects the battery’s actual condition.
Open loop, fixed voltage and current settings entered manually, no feedback. State of charge display becomes unreliable, protection coordination is limited to voltage thresholds, and the charger cannot know when the battery is derating itself.
For an industrial installation, specify closed loop and verify it at factory acceptance test rather than on site.
Five years, with rated cycle life of 5,000 cycles at 100% depth of discharge and 10,000 cycles at 80% depth of discharge.
The conditions matter more than the headline period on any lithium warranty, and these are the ones to read:
The most useful thing to do at commissioning is start the evidence file: commissioning readings, firmware version, charge settings and the monitoring configuration. It takes an hour and it is what a claim rests on.
Page: https://valen.com.au/v-trail/ Questions: 16 · First six above the spec table Link from this page: V-Trail calculator (https://valen.com.au/vtrail-calculator/), Vantara, ModX2
Note on the savings question: the answer below explains the mechanism and directs the reader to the calculator to model their own case rather than publishing a single worked example. Valen will supply verified figures to insert once the calculator’s fuel-consumption basis has been confirmed. Please build the answer as written and leave room for figures to be added later.
Trade and project pricing is available through the Valen webstore once you are logged in to your account. If you do not have an account, contact us on 1300 734 253 and we will set one up.
We are deliberately not competing on the retail price of a 48 V 100 Ah module, and it is worth being clear why, because it affects whether this product is right for you. There is a large Australian retail market in 48 V rack batteries serving off-grid homes, caravans and small solar installations, and it is priced accordingly. SOLiCORE is built for a different job:
If the application is a shed or a caravan, there are better-value options on the market. If you are replacing a battery bank at a site where a failure means an outage, a callout and a report, the relevant comparison is not the module price. It is the ten-year cost including replacements, site visits, integration and the risk of a bank you cannot see inside.
Lithium batteries are dangerous goods. They move under UN 3480 (lithium ion batteries) or UN 3481 (contained in or packed with equipment), Class 9, and every cell or battery must be of a type proved to meet the tests in the UN Manual of Tests and Criteria, Part III, sub-section 38.3 before transport in Australia. SOLiCORE is certified to UN 38.3.
For a working, correctly packaged battery from a compliant supplier, this is routine and handled by the freight arrangement. The two situations that catch people out are worth planning for in advance:
Damaged or defective batteries must be marked “DAMAGED/DEFECTIVE LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES” and packed to specific packing instructions. Not every carrier will take them.
Batteries for disposal or recycling travel under a dedicated provision, marked “LITHIUM BATTERIES FOR DISPOSAL” or “LITHIUM BATTERIES FOR RECYCLING”.
The practical implication for remote-site work: the removal is harder than the installation. A failed lithium bank at a site three hours from a highway needs compliant packaging, correct marking and a carrier willing to take Class 9 damaged goods. Lead-acid has no equivalent burden. Build the end-of-life logistics into the project at the start, and ask your supplier whether they manage the removal or leave it with you.
It depends almost entirely on whether the battery cycles, and most published comparisons are unreliable because they compare a lithium design life against a VRLA field life. Here is the honest structure.
Where lithium wins clearly, cycling duty. On a daily cycle, VRLA delivers hundreds of cycles and lithium delivers thousands. Over fifteen years a cycling VRLA installation may be replaced three or four times, and on a remote site each replacement is a site visit, freight, labour, decommissioning and disposal, usually several times the cost of the battery itself. Lithium’s higher purchase price is recovered on the second replacement it avoids.
Where lithium wins on secondary factors, hot and space-constrained sites. Lithium’s usable depth of discharge is 80–95% against 30–50% design practice for cycling lead-acid, so you buy roughly half the nameplate capacity for the same usable energy. It is materially lighter and smaller, which matters where floor loading, rack space or cabinet volume is the binding constraint. And it does not follow the VRLA temperature-life curve, so hot sites do not consume it.
Where the picture is much less clear, pure standby duty in a controlled room. A UPS battery cycling a dozen times in its life will be replaced on calendar ageing, not cycles. Lithium’s cycle advantage is worth nothing there. What remains is footprint, weight and temperature tolerance against a higher capital cost, a battery management system in the protection path, and in New South Wales as of 2026, a materially more demanding fire engineering path in a building. Reasonable engineers reach different conclusions on those trade-offs. We will work through yours with you rather than apply a default.
What to include in your own model: purchase price, installation labour, the number of replacements over the asset horizon, replacement labour and freight to your actual site, decommissioning and disposal cost, monitoring cost, cooling energy, floor space, and any fire engineering or room upgrade the chemistry triggers. Leave any of those out and the answer changes.
es, and lithium is often the better choice, but the cabinet’s thermal design, not the battery’s datasheet, decides whether it works.
VRLA loses roughly half its life expectancy for every 10 °C of sustained temperature above 20 °C, which is why a long-design-life VRLA becomes a short-lived consumable in a sun-loaded enclosure. LiFePOâ‚„ does not degrade on that curve. In a 40 °C-plus cabinet, lithium’s whole-of-life cost advantage is at its largest, and it is the reason Australian road authorities have increasingly specified LiFePOâ‚„ for roadside critical infrastructure.
Three things must be right:
For any lithium installation inside an occupied structure, assume the fire engineering will be examined. Plan accordingly.
A battery management system is the electronics inside a lithium battery that keeps it inside its safe operating envelope. Every lithium product needs one; the difference between products is how good it is and what it will tell you.
What a BMS does:
A distinction worth being clear about, because the terms get used interchangeably and mean different things: a BMS is inside the battery and protects the battery. A battery monitoring system is external, watches a bank, typically lead-acid, and reports its condition for maintenance planning. A lithium battery has a BMS. A VRLA bank does not which is why external monitoring is a separate product for lead-acid installations and an inherent feature for lithium.
Protection engineers raise one legitimate concern here: a BMS can open the DC circuit. Where the DC supply feeds protection and control, in a substation or a signalling location, the possibility of the battery removing itself from the bus has to be assessed against the protection scheme. That is a design conversation worth having early.
IP54 describes the enclosure’s protection against solids and liquids, under AS 60529. The first digit, 5, means protection against dust ingress sufficient that dust does not interfere with operation. The second, 4, means protection against splashing water from any direction.
What IP54 is suitable for: an indoor rack, a comms room, a plant room, or an outdoor cabinet where the cabinet provides the weather protection and the battery’s own rating provides a second layer against dust and incidental moisture.
What IP54 is not: weatherproof. It does not mean the battery can be mounted in the open, exposed to direct rain, hosed down, or installed where water may pool. If the application is genuinely exposed, the battery needs to be inside a rated enclosure and the enclosure’s rating is the one that matters.
For roadside, trackside and pole-top applications, the enclosure IP rating, thermal design and ventilation are usually the governing specifications rather than the battery’s own rating.
|
Parameter |
Setting |
|---|---|
|
Charge voltage |
57.6 V ± 0.8 V (56.8–58.4 V) |
|
Charge current |
20 A standard, 50 A fast charge |
|
Charge temperature range |
0 °C to 55 °C |
|
Discharge cut-off voltage |
40 V |
|
Continuous discharge |
100 A |
|
Peak discharge |
250 A for 2 seconds |
Two notes for anyone integrating this into existing plant.
Charge current is a design choice, not just a limit. 20 A standard charging is appropriate for most standby and solar applications and is easier on the cells. 50 A fast charging exists for applications with a short recharge window, a site with limited solar hours, or a system that has to be ready again quickly after a discharge event. If you have a fixed recharge time requirement, tell us and we will confirm the configuration.
Do not set the plant low-voltage disconnect below 40 V. The battery management system will disconnect at 40 V to protect the cells. If your plant’s load shedding is set below that, the battery removes itself before the load is shed, which turns a managed brownout into an unmanaged outage.
SOLiCORE is a 3U, 19-inch rack-mount module measuring 517 mm long × 442 mm wide × 133.5 mm high. “3U” means three rack units, a rack unit is 44.45 mm, the standard vertical increment of a 19-inch rack.
Three things to check before ordering for an existing cabinet:
Depth. 517 mm is deep for a comms cabinet. Many telecommunications cabinets are shallower than a data centre rack. Measure the usable internal depth including the door and any cable management, not the nominal cabinet depth.
Weight and floor loading. A lithium module of this class is far lighter than an equivalent lead-acid bank, which is one of the strongest retrofit arguments, but a full bank is still a significant floor load, and rack rails have their own rating. Confirm the module weight with us for your rack calculation.
Rail type and mounting. Confirm the cabinet’s rail standard and whether shelves or cage nuts are needed.
For capacity planning: at 3U per module, a standard 42U rack accommodates fourteen modules on space alone, approximately 71 kWh, before allowing for the DC distribution, controller and cable management that also need rack units. Plan the rack elevation, not just the battery count.
Up to 16 units in parallel, giving approximately 82 kWh in a single bank.
Three practical points on scaling a parallel lithium bank:
Match the modules. Parallel strings share current according to their internal resistance. Modules of the same model, same firmware and similar age share properly; a mixed-age or mixed-model bank does not and the newest module carries disproportionate current. Add capacity in planned steps rather than by accretion over years.
Do not mix brands. Different battery management system implementations in the same bank will not coordinate their protection thresholds, and the result is nuisance disconnection at best.
Plan the commissioning sequence. Modules should be brought to a similar state of charge before paralleling. Connecting a fully charged module to a discharged bank produces a large inrush current between them.
SOLiCORE retains more than 97% of discharge capacity at −20 °C, genuinely strong low-temperature discharge performance, and better than lead-acid, which loses substantial capacity as temperature falls. The discharge range is −20 °C to 60 °C.
But charging is the constraint, and it is a real one rather than a marketing caveat. SOLiCORE’s charge temperature range is 0 °C to 55 °C, and LiFePOâ‚„ must not be charged below 0 °C. Below freezing, lithium ions cannot intercalate into the graphite anode fast enough and instead plate onto it as metallic lithium, permanently raising internal resistance, reducing capacity, and potentially forming dendrites that create internal shorts. The damage is cumulative and irreversible. The integrated battery management system enforces the charge temperature limit.
Sub-zero mornings are routine in the Snowy Monaro, the Central and Southern Tablelands, alpine rail corridors, Armidale, Ballarat and much of the inland in winter. In New Zealand, the same applies across alpine regions, the Central Plateau, and much of the South Island. It is not a theoretical concern.
Australian and New Zealand road authorities have engineered explicitly around it. TMR’s MRTS213 requires roadside cabinets to hold a minimum internal temperature of 0 °C with a thermostatically controlled heater. NZTA’s ITS specification requires backup times to be met at 0 °C. Both standards treat sub-zero operation as a baseline design requirement, not an edge case.
The mitigations are straightforward once the problem is acknowledged: an insulated enclosure with a thermostatic heater, or siting inside a conditioned space. What is not acceptable is a design that assumes the battery will charge on a July morning in Cooma because the datasheet says −20 °C.
Note also the storage range: −20 °C to 45 °C. A battery stored in an uninsulated shed through a Pilbara summer is being aged before it is ever commissioned.
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