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Post Info TOPIC: Lithium batteries


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Lithium batteries


Hi everyone, I thought I would start a new thread about batteries or more to the point brands, to date the only Lithium batteries I've had anything to do with are 18650's and my 17.5Ah kayak battery which I use a dedicated Lithium charger to charge both types, I've been searching the net for information on Lithium 12v suited to rv/solar and im getting a headache from all the BS, If Lithium is meant to be C1 why do most dealers quote their batteries at C0.3 and im not talking about how they are assembled with lower end BMS's, what I'm asking is why do they limit the input?

This is one supplier I've found that has a C1 input quoted https://www.bigweibattery.com.au/ could some of you guys check it out or know of them, and give me some feedback at what im looking at or not seeing and any other comment you think is relevant in helping me to understand the ins and outs of 12v Lithium.

Thanks again for your input.



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There are some links in this thread on very useful information on lithium.

https://thegreynomads.activeboard.com/t67732755/lithium-batteries-charging-discharging-balancing/

 

C0.3 is a battery build to a price. In other words an unsuitable standard.



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Ah yes read that article the other day, that was a very helpful and worthwhile read thanks.



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I will be probably be using Winston in our new build.
www.evworks.com.au/batteries/
Not quite sure what you will be getting with the "drop ins".
Cheers,
Peter

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Hi Peatopsmile

The lithium battery is newish technology so the construction, use profile and selling is being 'developed' by the buyers with their money. So in this environment everybody can say they are an expert and spout BS on their adds and social media. Because of this there is a lot of loose talk and claims being made about batteries IMHO. 

Lead acid batteries are mature technology and their use and performance is well known. But that does not stop people making untrue claims and selling poor quality batteries either. It is hard to decide what is good quality and factual information so dealing with a well known seller with a reputation and good history is probably wise. Asking on a forum can get strange answers too even here!   

I believe the use of integrated BMS has muddied the waters quite a bit and now the battery cells have to be evaluated and the BMS has to be evaluated also. The limits might be either or both and the specs of them both are mostly hidden and hard to evaluate in many cases. That is why you have the 0.3C problem. Hmm....

Jaahn   



-- Edited by Jaahn on Tuesday 10th of August 2021 08:41:21 AM

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 Hi peatop,

Some info for you.

download.spark (activeboard.com)

 

 

 

 



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Hi......I discovered a person on youtube that purchases the liFePO4 batteries utilized out of clinical gear (they require you trade from the get-go in the life) on Ebay. A bit of a roll of the dice on future bit the vast majority of the ones he had were better compared to 90% in light of the fact that most medical clinics dont lose power regularly. Makes it a lot less expensive.

The drawback is you need to wire them together yourself and add a charge regulator. This is the thing that I have seen that battleborn has progressed nicely. They set up a strong control framework to secure the battery and subsequently it keeps going longer and is more secure. The modest regulators were conceded to be low quality and would diminish future.

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Hi Lillismile

I believe you will find that those "bargains" are all in the USA and indeed are hard now to find since they became publicised. It is hard to ship lithiums and by the time you get them here they may not be a bargain. 

There is no market that I know of in Australia for selling these style of batteries and other people who are lithium interested snap any up if they become available. But good luck if you can do it.Then the BMS is the next challenge.aww

Jaahn



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Hi everyone, just to update you on what I've been up to hmm, after looking into the drop in battery replacement market here in Aus I found most of them were just 18650 run in  parallel and series, this to me was just asking for trouble in the long term, I watched all of the videos I could find on youtube and read countless posts on DIY forums about assembling my own and decided that this was the best way for me to proceed and get into the lithium battery scene.

I've purchased 4 105ah EVE cells and a 100a BMS from china for a total of $420 AUD delivered to my door. Once they land here I will test them and post my impressions EVE 105AH batteries.jpg

EVE 105AH batteries 3.jpg

This is the test data supplied by the company I purchased them from. If all goes well I will then place another order for 8 more cells and 2 BMS's to assemble another 2 batteries and run them all in parallel.

A lot of people are afraid to buy things from China, and rightly so in some cases but if you do your homework and take precautions, then you should feel confident in doing so. I chose a supplier that had lots of good reports of service from people on the DIY forums and also used paypal for the purchase so as to cover my butt if things don't go as planned.



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Hi peatop, lm guessing you got these through Amy ? What's the estimated transport time these days ?

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kesa32 wrote:

lm guessing you got these through Amy ? What's the estimated transport time these days ?


Amy's company and contact details would be appreciated.

Maybe we should think about a bulk purchase?



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Mike Harding wrote:
kesa32 wrote:

lm guessing you got these through Amy ? What's the estimated transport time these days ?


Amy's company and contact details would be appreciated.

Maybe we should think about a bulk purchase?


 Yes I did get these from Amy Wan but it seems there are several Amy's that provide batteries in China lol the estimated delivery was set at 50 days from order date and they are coming via sea.

YW-3.2V-280AH, YW-3.2V-280AH direct from Shenzhen Luyuan Technology Co., Ltd in CN This is the company but this is not a recommendation as I'm yet to get the batteries and test them, however this was one of several recommended at the time I ordered and suggest if your interested to do your homework first. one of the issues with bulk buying is import duties imposed on purchases over $1000 (I think) although this doesn't amount to much per cell it's still an added cost, then there are transport issues to other areas once landed here in Aus, when you order and pay it's in USD so you also have to pay for exchange and the exchange rate. But hey for a truly A1 battery it's sure much cheaper than the batteries available to us now. And if one cell fails it's easier to repair than anything you can buy here.

The forum I mostly used was DIY Solar Power Forum I think I followed the link from here, as for which tread I read, well there were many about all aspects of building, maintaining and parts best used to build a decent battery. youtube was another story but I did watch the whole series on Off-Grid Garage - YouTube as this was somewhat close to my heart (done the same thing back in the 90's but lead acid). and many more on different builds, tear downs, testing and charging.

My original setup is an AGM 120ah battery and about 570w of solar power using a solenoid B2B charger and was going to change this to an LFP setup as I went, just because of the cost of the batteries, but decided I needed a better performing battery setup or far more AGM's to get started, the other costs in the change are a decent solar controller and a newer dc to dc charger able to charge LFP batteries. The controller I decided on will be a Victron smart 100/50 and the dc to dc charger which arrived yesterday is a Renogy 20a which was only $109 delivered.

All in all I think this should keep me out of power troubles for now and if needed I can always add more panels.



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Yeah Amy Wan has a good reputation on DIY Solar forum , awesome shes a direct reseller of eve batteries ( from memory she has to buy in 5000 piece min lots at a time )
I bought mine last year through Basen, mine arent matched perfectly etc but l paid $70 US each plus delivery ( 280 ah ) at the time , l think now the same grade of cell is about $110 US each plus delivery

The only thing l dont like on Eve cells is the 6mm terminals, mine were tapped holes about 6mm deep , l lok-tited in 20mm SS studs , now you can get laser welded studs from factory if you pay a bit extra ? Well worth it in my opinion

And the other thing is its recommended you clamp these lightly together to prevent permanent bulging and damage internally , it apparently gives a much longer overall cycle life too

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I considered some of the larger sized cells but thought about the space needed to store them and weight, with the AGM I was just going to have them over the axle but since LFP don't have weight issues it's more about the space, so to get better usage of my space it the trailer I thought the 105ah would be better to manage. There was also talk on batteries under 200ah for mobile systems as this would be less stress on the cells, not sure about this and wasn't really part of my consideration.

The clamping, this is an issue that came under much discussion recently, some of the debate discussed was that it was recommended at high C cycling rates, as this is where the cells would heat up causing the deformation, I'm yet to find a definitive answer to the reasons behind it, however if you read through the manufacturers technical notes they say that with compression you will get far more life from a cell, and now it's recommended. But again they don't specify any reason for doing so.

I guess only the development Engineers would really know why and when we should compress the bank. on the other side of the coin, how is the DIY builder meant to get the bank compressed to the correct recommendations without having the specific equipment to do so? If you were building huge banks say for a house then yes you might consider it, but as this doesn't seem to have much impact on smaller systems with low level charge/discharge rates I don't know that it is worth worrying about.

The thread sizes of different cells over the last few years has had lots of discussion on the forums as well, My guess it has something to do with the tpi and not the size of the screw/bolt/stud given that the torque measurement given is not really very tight, however the 6mm depth doesn't seem to be very much, If I find the supplied screws to be to short I will be purchasing studs to replace them.



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Compressing the cells, presumably with all four in intimate contact, would reduce their ability to cool which may, or may not, have an impact upon their longevity - especially in Australian ambient temperatures.



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Yeah there's pros and cons to everything, l decided to lightly compress mine with wafer thin foam between them to help isolate the cells from each other as the blue plastic wrap is the only other thing .

Also you don't want the studs getting stressed by movement of any kind , it could cause an electrical nightmare very quickly 


Obviously this all counteracts cooling , but I'll be running low c rates most of the time so it'll be ok
I ran studs so l could hold the tension on them with an Allen key while doing up the nuts and touch wood it's been ok , it just doesn't inspire confidence hanging off 6mm x 6mm thread area lol , that's why l recommend the laser welded studs if possible, even then you'd have to be careful not to strip the thread with too much enthusiasm



-- Edited by kesa32 on Saturday 25th of September 2021 10:39:23 AM

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kesa32 wrote:

Yeah there's pros and cons to everything, l decided to lightly compress mine with wafer thin foam between them to help isolate the cells from each other as the blue plastic wrap is the only other thing .

Also you don't want the studs getting stressed by movement of any kind , it could cause an electrical nightmare very quickly 


Obviously this all counteracts cooling , but I'll be running low c rates most of the time so it'll be ok
I ran studs so l could hold the tension on them with an Allen key while doing up the nuts and touch wood it's been ok , it just doesn't inspire confidence hanging off 6mm x 6mm thread area lol , that's why l recommend the laser welded studs if possible, even then you'd have to be careful not to strip the thread with too much enthusiasm



-- Edited by kesa32 on Saturday 25th of September 2021 10:39:23 AM


There was plenty of discussion on the DIY forum with regards to stripped threads, And this shouldn't really be an issue, if the battery assemble is done in the correct process, and the torque procedure is followed, however this does not allow for Murphy's law lol
I thought the idea of compression was for expansion and contraction caused by internal heat, but I haven't really looked into that as yet. Also the idea of something between the cells I think is ideal, there are a few materials that are have good insulating properties and I think this is only limited by your imagination, but once this is done wrapping the whole thing in polyimide tape to keep it together. also im hearing different ideas about the polarity of the casing, this doesn't confuse things at all! pfft lol another reason to promote Murphy's law ;)


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Lol , yeah it gets pretty anal all the ifs and buts about compression etc .... l reckon just use common sense and run with it , otherwise you could go mad lol

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Hi smile

I am following this thread with some interest. I did some googling about the compression question and came across this guy and video. He has links to other related stuff. I do not know how he ranks but he does quote some manufacturers documents and talks sense to me !! disbelief and he does not appear to be promoting a product directly either ! 

jaahn





-- Edited by Jaahn on Thursday 7th of October 2021 01:41:56 PM

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Yes lve watched a few of his videos , he's very entertaining as well as knowledgable
I went with light compression mainly due to being in a mobile situation l didn't want to risk stress on those 6mm fixtures causing problems , which in a worst case scenario could mean fire , these cells are 5kg each .


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Jaahn wrote:

Hi smile

I am following this thread with some interest. I did some googling about the compression question and came across this guy and video. He has links to other related stuff. I do not know how he ranks but he does quote some manufacturers documents and talks sense to me !! disbelief and he does not appear to be promoting a product directly either !

jaahn





-- Edited by Jaahn on Thursday 7th of October 2021 01:41:56 PM


 I watched every Video, as although it's about a shed it totally fits any offgrid system, although I do fast forward a fair bit, he is also a qualified electrician, I like his panel calibration unitbiggrin will have to make a few of my own once I'm on the road, well maybe when at camp lol



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Hi Peatop,

Have they given you a tracking number to see how they are going.  I also purchased 4 cells but 285ah and they cleared customs on 3 September.  There has been no movement on the tracking since that date.  I'm now chasing up the supplier as they told me two weeks ago it would be two weeks for delivery and today I was told the same thing.

 

Tim



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TimTim wrote:

Hi Peatop,

Have they given you a tracking number to see how they are going.  I also purchased 4 cells but 285ah and they cleared customs on 3 September.  There has been no movement on the tracking since that date.  I'm now chasing up the supplier as they told me two weeks ago it would be two weeks for delivery and today I was told the same thing.

 

Tim


 Hi Tim, sorry Iv'e been away and on my return have been busy and this is the first chance I've had to get on here. Yes I was given a tracking Number but it was pretty much useless, however I have had other orders from aliexpress and these also had tracking Numbers, so I just added all these including the battery one to aus post tracking app and the battery parts turned up on that a few days ago but arrived here yesterday only a few days from the min expected delivery date. there have been massive delays in shipping because of covid so don't be surprised if things are a bit slow.

Onto the battery cells biggrin YES! they arrived Friday I couldn't wait to start the unpacking and build process lol but only stacked them in parallel to balance for a few hours, then assembled them to charge them ready for testing once my power supply arrives next week.

I was very impressed with the packaging, double boxed then all the parts individually boxed and surrounded in packaging foam.

20211029_124552_copy_756x1008.jpg20211029_124903_copy_756x1008.jpg20211029_125423_copy_756x1008.jpg20211029_125706_copy_756x1008.jpg

I haven't added the build photo's as I haven't taken any. Once I receive the power supply I will be assembling it from it's current form to finished state while running capacity tests, at the moment it is assembled and in a battery box just to charge using my solar and a small charger in the back yard lol



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Good to see you got your batteries, I've had a couple of parcels returned to sender in USA, even with the most expensive air freight. I still want the goods. Looks like next year!

 

Anyway, I did get a new phone from overseas. One thing I noticed setting up the phone, it asked for maintaining a long battery life, to set the limit of charge to 90% or 80%, so I've set it at 80%.

 

Charging limit_070854.jpg



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Your batteries look great peatop, you'll have to give us an update once your setup and running mate

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Whenarewethere wrote:

Good to see you got your batteries, I've had a couple of parcels returned to sender in USA, even with the most expensive air freight. I still want the goods. Looks like next year!

 

Anyway, I did get a new phone from overseas. One thing I noticed setting up the phone, it asked for maintaining a long battery life, to set the limit of charge to 90% or 80%, so I've set it at 80%.

 

Charging limit_070854.jpg


 Ha ha that's interesting that it's specified by a phone company but I wonder what type of battery it is and how it's charged Lifepo4 is hard to get an idea on it's charge without using a power meter, can you setup the charge/discharge cycle using one? not sure even the victron can do it, not that I'm going to buy one lol

Kesa32, yeah they do look the part and so small, I bought the smallest battery box and I could easy fit 8 cells and double the amps, which I haven't discounted yet wink but I'm still thinking 300 amps total and would prefer they be 3 individual batteries but put in parallel just so I can have one in the car when leaving the camper out bush while fishing or shopping, I will keep this thread updated on whichever way I go but so for so good, the battery is charged and balancing atm and still waiting on the power supply before running capacity tests and final assembly. as a final note though I am tempted to order more right now lol but I'm saving for my fishing trips atm so no spare cash yet wink



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Peatop , yeah if they're matched and batched then you should be balancing up nicely ld imagine , the smaller cells are apparently better for mobile and 4wd stuff as you've mentioned, lm not to concerned with our bigger ones as it'll be black top traveling only , so fingers crossed they behave themselves lol

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I ordered my victron 100/50 Friday and it arrived today surprise surprise but still waiting on my battery charger and power supply no but auspost have them so they could be months away yet lol although the very slow snail mail app does say this week.



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Well today I found my Battery cells well balanced and sitting at 3.5 volt (still waiting on power supply lol) so decided now is a good time to capacity test the battery, using a hairdryer via the inverter I pulled 109 Ah before the inverter shut down, so you could say I'm one happy chappy biggrinwink

20211102_154627_copy_756x1008.jpg

Screenshot_20211102-154558_xiaoxiang.jpg

As you can see the cells still have a short way to reach 2.5 v

20211102_160022_copy_1008x756.jpg

The battery setup in the box but yet to work out the packaging for it cry



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peatop wrote:
TimTim wrote:

Hi Peatop,

Have they given you a tracking number to see how they are going.  I also purchased 4 cells but 285ah and they cleared customs on 3 September.  There has been no movement on the tracking since that date.  I'm now chasing up the supplier as they told me two weeks ago it would be two weeks for delivery and today I was told the same thing.

 

Tim


 Hi Tim, sorry Iv'e been away and on my return have been busy and this is the first chance I've had to get on here. Yes I was given a tracking Number but it was pretty much useless, however I have had other orders from aliexpress and these also had tracking Numbers, so I just added all these including the battery one to aus post tracking app and the battery parts turned up on that a few days ago but arrived here yesterday only a few days from the min expected delivery date. there have been massive delays in shipping because of covid so don't be surprised if things are a bit slow.



 

Hi Peatop,

No apologies needed and I have been busy too.  Well my cells arrived on Tuesday but with the tracking I was sent halfway around the world.  I tracked then from China to the customs clearance in Sydney on 3 September but then it changed over to Toll for final delivery to Port Stephens.  I had to get back on to the seller to get the courier details but it was the same tracking number.  After a couple of weeks sat in Sydney they started to move and with the interactive Toll mapping it showed them moving around Sydney CBD.  Two days later the details said they were in Newcastle but the only problem was the map showed then in Newcastle UK lol.  That turned out to be wrong as they turned up on my door two days later.

I bought mine from Shenzhen Basen on Alibaba.com and I most certainly don't blame them as there was no delay on their part.  In fact I would highly recommend them.  The packaging was fantastic and the cells in perfect condition with them all measuring the same voltage.  I have put them together and today I will test them with my 3000w inverter and 2400w coffee machine to see how they go.

I have compressed mine but there is a good video in Off Grid Garage the shows without compression the expected derogation down to 80% capacity is 2000 cycles and with compression up to 20,000 cycles.  I couldn't imaging me running through an average of 200 cycles a year for the next 10 years let alone 2000 cycles but it is done now and they will fit perfectly in the space I have.  Mind you my wife is asking if I have seen the chopping boards,  they do make great ends to the cell pack and great handles biggrin

I have already decided that I will order another pack and see if I can sell off my two 100ah calcium batteries that came with my caravan.

 

 

 

 



-- Edited by TimTim on Friday 5th of November 2021 02:05:27 PM

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