Low priced LiFePO4 Batteries vs High priced

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by T1 Terry

...... but quick, easy, cheap, reliable,long lasting are not words that go together when talking about a house battery that you will be risking your life on ......

T1 Terry

I'm shooting for easy ( it was ) cheap ☆ reliable☆, long lasting ( I hope )
3 out of 5 and hoping for 4 .

[goboatingnow]

There’s no doubt that given the low cost of switched capacitor active balancers there’s no justification to use passive ( resistive ) balancers

Li shouldn’t be ever floated or trickle charge. Any impressed voltage on the battery terminals causes li ion movement. This promotes SEI layer growth and degradation.

Best undercharge and stop as oppose to risk overcharging

For fractional C use balancing is not important in my experience and cells are likely to converge anyway.

[Rumrace]

Brand reality must be a TV show.
There are two Chinese lithium battery makers and the both have 54 cousins with names to impress with Domestic reference. That domestic name is to lull you into thinking they have your best interests at heart. They don’t just the opposite. Then there are the importers who stuff these facades in plastic boxes and claim American know how. That’s the whole point of all the brand names places the legal accountability elsewhere.
Windsor is building a huge battery factory to support the electric car production. Ontario is rich in lithium.
The batteries won’t likely list the best factors for your list because they will be the truth.
Collecting data on Chinese production is not possible unless you have an independent lab at your call. Consistently the claims are not 50-% true. Of the some 3,500 UL claims less than 10% are factual and that’s everything with a UL or CE sticker.
As far as the Marco Polo import and export resale the planet has added a 25% ( enabler's tax) to kill these marketers exports. The US has at least 30 brands of TV the rest of the planet will never see. They are import names only. Old great brand names with no product like Bell and Howell sell their brand name for 3 cents a box.
Collect the actual factory source it’s a 3.2 which has been around for sometime well before marine interest. We used them for early solar street lighting. They are junk. Inconsistent junk with 54 brand names

[Rumrace]

Several years ago the Toronto Star did an article on portable heaters. They had the ETL lab test 25 portable heaters which were being sold at Walmart who changed brands like underwear.
24 failed some on very basic stuff like 6amp cord on 15amp appliance. Phillips passed and when questioned Phillips said they are dropping portable heaters as they can not compete.
Stanley Works hasn’t made a tool in decades but they threatened General Tools future. Stanley Tape measures took out Lufkin who moved to China too late to compete. Now Lufkin is the worst brand from the best.
Buying facades takes out the real deal.
How many Buck Knives copies have you seen but no one can copy Bucks integrity.

[goboatingnow]

Pay big bucks buy supposed quality

Pay cheap bucks buy supposed cheaper quality.

The reality is somewhere in the middle.

It’s to hard to figure out.

I’ve about 30% Chinese electronics on the boat. So far it’s been fine

[s/v Jedi]

6 out of the top 10 of the world’s largest battery manufacturers are Chinese. All 10 are Asian.

https://www.greencarcongress.com/202...teryshare.html

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

6 out of the top 10 of the world’s largest battery manufacturers are Chinese. All 10 are Asian.

https://www.greencarcongress.com/202...teryshare.html

You mean lithium based right?
Because one of the top lead battery manufacturers is less than 25 miles from me .
DYNO

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Rumrace

Brand reality must be a TV show.
There are two Chinese lithium battery makers and the both have 54 cousins with names to impress with Domestic reference. That domestic name is to lull you into thinking they have your best interests at heart. They don’t just the opposite. Then there are the importers who stuff these facades in plastic boxes and claim American know how. That’s the whole point of all the brand names places the legal accountability elsewhere.
Windsor is building a huge battery factory to support the electric car production. Ontario is rich in lithium.
The batteries won’t likely list the best factors for your list because they will be the truth.
Collecting data on Chinese production is not possible unless you have an independent lab at your call. Consistently the claims are not 50-% true. Of the some 3,500 UL claims less than 10% are factual and that’s everything with a UL or CE sticker.
As far as the Marco Polo import and export resale the planet has added a 25% ( enabler's tax) to kill these marketers exports. The US has at least 30 brands of TV the rest of the planet will never see. They are import names only. Old great brand names with no product like Bell and Howell sell their brand name for 3 cents a box.
Collect the actual factory source it’s a 3.2 which has been around for sometime well before marine interest. We used them for early solar street lighting. They are junk. Inconsistent junk with 54 brand names

What you are paying for with different brands is quality assurance ( better inspection practices same factory

[Phil_Fr17]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

6 out of the top 10 of the world’s largest battery manufacturers are Chinese. All 10 are Asian.

https://www.greencarcongress.com/202...teryshare.html

Interesting information and diagram.


And all of these manufacturers are working for electric vehicles.
In my mind, this is not really the same usage as for Service battery (or House battery) on a boat.


The next issue may be the lack of lithium versus demand, but I'm off topic.

[Pegu Club]

Originally Posted by davil

===============
off topic

Be that as it may, it is an important thing to understand, especially when going the cheap price route.

Fair winds,

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by newhaul

You mean lithium based right?
Because one of the top lead battery manufacturers is less than 25 miles from me .
DYNO

“Lead battery” ? I vaguely remember this… weren’t those used in the good old days?

[T1 Terry]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

“Lead battery” ? I vaguely remember this… weren’t those used in the good old days?

I thought it was when nothing better was available

I spent $10,000 Australia nearly 12 yrs ago buying lithium cells to test, torture and otherwise evaluate their suitability for house battery use. At the time, no one used LFP cells as house batteries, well if they did, they certainly didn't tell anyone.
Now days, there are claims of 20 plus yrs of experience, impressive, they don't mention the time machine where they had taken lithium cells back more than 20 yrs into the past to do their experiments ..... When pressured about just what the early days of testing involved, and it seems they had battery powered toys as kids .....

I stand by what I've posted here and on many other sites and back it up with genuine tested results and cells still holding 100% capacity, tested using the factory C2 load testing (discharged from 100% SOC to 0% SOC in 2 hrs using the labelled capacity to determine the load required) even while still under the C2 load, all cells still hold better than 3v ..... You can't ask for much more proof than that .....

T1 Terry

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by T1 Terry

I thought it was when nothing better was available

I spent $10,000 Australia nearly 12 yrs ago buying lithium cells to test, torture and otherwise evaluate their suitability for house battery use. At the time, no one used LFP cells as house batteries, well if they did, they certainly didn't tell anyone.
Now days, there are claims of 20 plus yrs of experience, impressive, they don't mention the time machine where they had taken lithium cells back more than 20 yrs into the past to do their experiments ..... When pressured about just what the early days of testing involved, and it seems they had battery powered toys as kids .....

I stand by what I've posted here and on many other sites and back it up with genuine tested results and cells still holding 100% capacity, tested using the factory C2 load testing (discharged from 100% SOC to 0% SOC in 2 hrs using the labelled capacity to determine the load required) even while still under the C2 load, all cells still hold better than 3v ..... You can't ask for much more proof than that .....

T1 Terry

Ok so if I read correctly in 12 years of abuse you still have 100% of the capacity you had when the cells were new?
If so then my hopes for this being my last bank are well founded

[T1 Terry]

Originally Posted by newhaul

Ok so if I read correctly in 12 years of abuse you still have 100% of the capacity you had when the cells were new?
If so then my hopes for this being my last bank are well founded

What brand cells do you use and what BMS do you have. 11 yrs of 24/7 use, the $10,000 worth of cells don't have many survivors, mostly learning about the number of fail safes are required and and you can't build anything to be stupid proof .... me in this case, I bypassed all the fail safe measures in an attempt to get power into the battery pack after 2 weeks of constant rain or rain clouds so thick there was very little solar ... left for a 6 week travelling holiday at 3 am and forgot all about the bypass wire ... you guessed it, the sun appear the day we left. The 720Ah 12v pack was at 16.5v, all the inverters had shut down due to over voltage and two fridge freezers absolutely full had defrosted and became home to multiple generations of flies.
Also learnt about punching the pins out of the MC4 connectors and soldering the pins together with heat shrink over them after discovering part of the solar wasn't actually reaching the controller because the pins in the MC4 connectors only make contact via a small spring insert in the female sleeve, if that gets pushed up deeper into the sleeve, there is no connection between the male and female pins ....... This is something we find in a lot of solar systems where panels have failed, the string was open circuit and one by one the panels failed after being turned into heaters.

One 400Ah @ 12v nom. is still functioning in the Mazda motorhome, it doubles as the starter battery and has been below 10v a few times till I mastered the battery isolation at 5% SOC and getting the BMV to reset to a correct 100% SOC where all the cells were better than 3.5v in every cell so a 14v reset to 100% SOC with 5% current flow for 1 minute. That eliminated the 14v reset when the cells were not within a reasonable balance of each other .... The 2 cells Mainsail has on his info site blown up like they were pregnant are two replacement cells I was going to put in that battery pack, just based on age because the cells were well past the "10 yrs shelf life or combination of shelf life and use was the point the cells collapsed" B/S that was rife across the interweb "those in the know" sites. They had been 4 yrs old from production before I received them, then I'd used them for 7 yrs, we were heading off on another long road trip and decided to play it safe .....
Long story short, had visitors, thought I'd turned the charger off but it was the wrong power point I switched off ..... just before heading to bed some 10 hrs later, the battery was so hot I could feel it as I walked past.
The old cells went back in along with other cells I'd retired and that pack is still going today ..... So the 10 yr calendar life was proved to be B/S as well ...

T1 Terry

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Phil_Fr17

Interesting information and diagram.


And all of these manufacturers are working for electric vehicles.
In my mind, this is not really the same usage as for Service battery (or House battery) on a boat.


The next issue may be the lack of lithium versus demand, but I'm off topic.

Lithium is a minor component of li batteries and there is no projected shortage , nickel is more likely to be a issues ( and cobalt )