LiFePO4 - The future for off-grid battery banks?

[PNjunction]

Guys - you are talking to a person who has a vested interest in hawking his own small batteries of unknown origin and won't reveal them even if asked by potential future customers.

Would you buy your lead-acid's this way?

Unless disclosed, for all we know these "military" grade batteries are laptop-pulls from RAAF computers that are upgrading from Windows 8. (well, not the same chemistry I know, but the point is made.)

One of the tenets of DIY LFP battery construction is the KISS principle. That is, like lead acid, you want to keep cell-count down, and buy the largest capacity you can to keep wiring and infrastructure issues under control. If your application is critical, you can get an extra cell for safekeeping. You'll need to with unknown, used, or poor /unknown quality.

Despite the diversionary topics, ask yourself if you'd feel right expecting Trojan / Rolls / Enersys or any other battery manufacturer to not disclose exactly what it is you are buying? If you are expecting a T105, but get a "hybrid" dual-purpose deep cycle, is that ok? Worse yet, expecting a Rolls, and getting a Costco?

Dax - I don't doubt you are doing some good things with LFP. But keeping your details so close to your chest is not helping anyone here - unless this forum only serves to create a "buzz" about your product and free search-links later on. And in this game, we know that any-PR-is-good-PR.

That is why I'm asking you to take off the salesman hat, and treat us like fellow makers, and not customers. Lkruper hit it right on the money.

[Willy T]

I guess he knows the Chinese have no loyalty to anyone. The only proprietary thing you can count on is that they will take it and sell it to anyone. In a past life they took a couple of my products and knocked them off and tried to sell them to me. I get a call and the guy tells me my prototype samples would be delivered soon and get back to them if I liked them, I hate to admit it, they were perfect and as good as we manufactured. My son in law still buys from them, larger quantities, but cheaper in the long run. I was stuck buying domestic made sub assembly's here and they were the ones they really hurt and not having a assembly line these days is a blessing.

[lkruper]

We've tried just about every manufacturer of lifepo4 cells there is and decided on these cells for a number of reasons, including they are used by a number of countries for their military and lots of industry. We do our own quality testing before installation

So, what's the deal? Did you sign a non-disclosure agreement, or don't want to lose a competitive advantage that you can't or won't reveal the names of these manufacturers, the detail of their performance in your setup and the reasons for your selection?

Here is something that won't reveal your sources: Can we assume you have selected one manufacturer of cell that you always use in your installations?


But also, I should add, that this forum is for the purpose of sharing real information, not making claims or boasts about technologies or acomplishments. It is in the spirit of sharing and helping others that people donate their time to this forum. What is your purpose?

[Willy T]

Hi Willy,
Am I hearing you correctly that you have lost one cell from your system. If so I am sorry to hear that, hopefully it is a one off. Can you enlighten us on what happened. Have you got your system back up and running again?

Simon

Hi, guy. Nope I am still trucking along with them. It's been a good summer. I checked the balance on them yesterday and they are still within .001 of each other. I am always in a dither on whats the best for them and me. I have never had a reason to drop them below 50% during the summer, but now I will have more cloudy days so I expect some 80% dod's in the future.

Options to me is having parallel systems with easy switchability of the loads and lots workarounds. I don't like sitting in the dark rubbing two sticks together, off grid ain't beanbag.

[karrak]

Meanwhile back in the real world, off-grid one dead cell can take your whole system down and your SOL without lot's of options built in. I guess we'll all be waiting for next years curtain call.

Hi Willy,
Am I hearing you correctly that you have lost one cell from your system. If so I am sorry to hear that, hopefully it is a one off. Can you enlighten us on what happened. Have you got your system back up and running again?

Simon

[Willy T]

It is refreshing to see new players bringing new technology to market, we really need some competition here maybe Dax's company will kick off a worldwide boom in new lithium off grid solar installs. Until then I guess a cell will still be just a cell until it's assembled into something useful for solar storage.

Meanwhile back in the real world, off-grid one dead cell can take your whole system down and your SOL without lot's of options built in. I guess we'll all be waiting for next years curtain call.

[PNjunction]

Mate, you're in the USA, I'm in Australia and we are not only hemispheres apart, but in understanding and use of this technology, on another planet it seems.

Actually, I'm next door basically and with you all the way with LFP - except for the fact that too many scams have come here trying to hawk e-bike trash cells held together with duct-tape, crash-victim Nissan Leaf cells, and other hackerish grey-market, laptop pull junk. Either that or investor-bait schemes.

So yeah, we're a little bit skeptical - especially if it smells like salesmanship with the red flag about avoiding large-format cells like 100ah Winstons right off the bat.

Put yourself in my shoes - why should I trust you when you won't reveal what you are actually using? We don't know if you are stuffing boxes full of little cylindrical cells gotten cheaply. Maybe a handful of Headway's?

When you installed your previous lead-acid systems, did you go in blind and order up a generic lead-acid battery, or did you want to KNOW what you were purchasing beforehand? The same consideration should be given here and have nothing to hide. But these days, the LFP players want to change the rules and keep people in the dark - or afraid that competitors or other "makers" will jump into the game and become a competitor.

Tell ya' what - if you can find T1 Terry in your neighborhood, give him a sample so you can have an independent evaluation without any vested interests. If you can find him - like me, we are all just too burnt out on repeating the same things 5 years or more message after message, thread after thread.

we have the largest supply of the best quality lithium on the planet, are in contact a company experimenting with lithium graphene combinations and super capacitors. Which may be the next step in energy storage.

Read this first before your techs or marketing department convince you super-capacitors are worth investing in for solar storage such as we are using:

http://www.solarpaneltalk.com/showthread.php?12153-Why-not-use-capacitors-to-store-power-instead-of-batteries

Super capacitors belong to the car audio thumper crowd. Save your R/D money for something else.

Just keep in mind that there are guys like me out there who will purposely buy excess cells to cut open for inspection and testing to destruction before investing a lot of money in more. We're not the average consumer.

And yet you use Linux, hated by known supposed reputable OS providers and claimed by most as terrible and only for very technically minded because its too hard. We use linux exclusively and it goes really well on raspberry Pi's, which we use in our remote monitoring setups and they never fail.

Ah yes, but I go one step further. I make sure that I don't have any proprietary binary blobs, drivers, or other non-disclosed code. I don't have to guess at what is in my system. If you won't tell us what cells you are using and in what configuration internally, then I figure there is something to hide - and which may bite me in the ass in the long run. Or I could close my eyes and live in the walled-garden of vendor lock-in.

Just be careful with what you are proposing, or you may end up putting a wall around your products / services, and just end up all Microsoft / Apple like - just in different clothing.

Look - I think we are on the same side - it is just that your messages read like they are from a maker-turned-salesman. Take off that slick jacket and bring back the maker to your messages.

[karrak]

Hi Dax,

Great to see some more ingenuity and the 'give it a go' attitude from Australia. Your posts are like a breath of fresh air.

If this forum is anything to go by it wouldn't surprise me if there are more off-grid LFP installations in Australia than the whole of the USA.

I am responsible for two installations in Australia, one is my own and the other is for a friend.

I am very interested in what you are doing. I tried to send a PM but not sure if it has got through.

Simon

[dax]

Ok:
Linux desktop 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u4 (2015-09-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Sometimes OpenBSD too.



And those are what? When I buy a lead-acid battery, and expect and pay for Rolls-Surrette, I want to know in case the original manufacturer's identifiers are missing. Or am I getting something else? Oh, OUR batteries are just as good, trust us. I expect the same consumer knowledge of what's inside when I go LFP.



Kind of like Expecting Panasonic / Sanyo Eneloops, but with the wrappings removed, and after testing find out the cells you really have were Tenergy, counterfeit fakes, or cells that are manufacturer rejects which got waylaid out the back door on the way to the recycler. Even a modest consumer can get hold of a Maha MH-C9000 for quick testing.

Or expecting Sanyo NCR18650B's only to discover that what's really inside are SmokeFire 3000's half filled with flour. How about used cells from laptop-pulls? Here, a CellPro Powerlab PL8 can help identify these differences for the interested consumer.



You should follow us on Candlepower forums for the smaller stuff. Especially op HKJ and his extensive testing for both performance, and thermal IR imaging.



This is the real reason I'm being so caustic. The industry as a whole suffers damage from cells of unknown origin and pedigree. Thing is, we don't know if YOU are getting ripped off and inadvertently passing bad cells on to the consumer, unless you do your own capacity and IR checks on each and every cell. Far from practical and spot checks with cells of unknown origin are a bad practice.

Going with established brands and KNOWN reputable manufacturers would put my mind at ease.

When I cut one open, I'm not going to find questionable A123 pouches missing / modified tabs, damaged zipper-fuses, cells from commercial "special projects" that should have been destroyed / recycled, old stock, homebrew internal connectors with dissimilar metals and so forth am I?

You should be proud to reveal your cell sources and models. So what are they?

Mate, you're in the USA, I'm in Australia and we are not only hemispheres apart, but in understanding and use of this technology, on another planet it seems.

We are a multi millions dollar turn over private company, not a bunch of amateurs. Said from the start I'm a builder, not an electrician so my explanations revolve around my understanding of the technology, hands on experience and learning from our technicians. I could learn all the intricacies, but don't have the time. In the last 6 years, I've stuffed a lot of cells seeing what they can do and not do and have had my technicians very frustrated with my antics. But it is necessary to push these things to see their limits and it is I who pay for them, so they handle it and we all learn a but more.

We've tried just about every manufacturer of lifepo4 cells there is and decided on these cells for a number of reasons, including they are used by a number of countries for their military and lots of industry. We do our own quality testing before installation, as well as having two electricians who have spent time overseas learning manufacture and repair of cells. It may not be that long before we establish our own lifepo4 manufacturing facility here in Aus, we have the largest supply of the best quality lithium on the planet, are in contact a company experimenting with lithium graphene combinations and super capacitors. Which may be the next step in energy storage.

Next year as a staff exercise, we are going run a car in the solar challenge from Darwin to Adelaide, should be a buzz and hopefully will gain enough out of it to design and build a compact lifepo4 solar powered car. There is a new category called the cruiser, which is a passenger vehicle category and that's the class we intend entering. Already the frame/chassis has been built using a modified drag racing frame, most of the running and drive gear is off the shelf and proven.

Do you honestly think a company our size would go into this like a hobby player, if so you know nothing about the building business. If you want some technical jargon ask someone else, not me. I only stopped off here because I was a bit shocked at some of the really dumb claims being made and felt others may like to know the facts from someone who knows how they operate and how to use them. Don't think the government or corporations we install for, would be happy if we used inferior cells and equipment and we've been doing this type of work since the 1980's. How long did you say you've been installing lifepo4 systems.

Pretty funny, the claims of our charge controllers being like phone chargers, shows how little some really know about this industry, or the current state of the control technology. Our installed charge controllers have individual cell voltage monitors, BMS and active cell balancers which I have mentioned in a previous post and which have been completely disregarded. They are so well setup, you can use them without cell balancers or a BMS. The voltage parameters and way of connecting, are such, it's very rare for cells to go over 3.5v if there is load on them and one or two cell lines 3.6v with no load, put a load on them and bingo they balance. When we go retail, cells will have our brand as we will be doing any repairs and also offer our customers the ability to rebuild their cells when and if they expire. This will save them 25-45% off a new purchase, which gives us an advantage over retailers and branded imported cells.

Loved your final statement, "Going with established brands and KNOWN reputable manufacturers would put my mind at ease." Just like Volkswagen owners and the same with many branded manufacturers, most are just crap with built in redundancy for profit growth. And yet you use Linux, hated by known supposed reputable OS providers and claimed by most as terrible and only for very technically minded because its too hard. We use linux exclusively and it goes really well on raspberry Pi's, which we use in our remote monitoring setups and they never fail.

We tried all the BMS on the market and ended up building our own, same with charge controllers, next is cells and panels probably.

[lkruper]

Yes it would be a sensational claim, one we can't claim. Was referring to our first 120amp pack in time lines and cycles, it has only been in the last 2 years we have been flat out installing these systems in off grid residential. The majority of our work is rural, remote, outback and marine installs, for stand alone communications and support infrastructure. We do a lot of government work, including site preparation and infrastructure construction, so our experience is very varied and we work around the country and some overseas jobs.

The longest lifepo4 residential installations, except for our own homes, have been operating for more than 4 years and now we are doing about 3 a week. Many people don't realise how many off grid connections there are in this country, or solar connect. Off grid, well over 300000 and there are millions of grid connect. Many grid connect are looking at going off grid storage and that's were our growing market is, so we use a variety of different size and configured charge controllers and inverters for these.

We don't use batteries, we use cells and purchase in container loads. They are not junk as those with little experience and enslaved to rip off commercial brand retailers who have redundancies built in to their systems, try to claim. Bit like people who claim windows is a good operating system, when it is last century junk and way past it's use by date. We use military and industrial standard cells, which are way above what is available retail, stronger cases, more robust in design and a lot cheaper, as we buy in bulk. Which is no different to most industries, where industrial components are far superior to retail and that goes for just about every life endeavor. It's the same with cell capacity sizes, retailers and those with little or no experience beyond AAA, or a small nominal voltage pack claim large capacity branded cells are the best. You will find military, industrial and real EV constructors use small capacity cells in large packs for a number of reasons. Which would take a couple of pages to explain and I don't have the time for that, or the negative ignorance that would follow it.

As for being available to the public, that is something which will come in the near future, from many sources as the dumbo's stuck in the past wake up to the reality of how lifepo4 operates. So we are redesigning them for residential customer use and expect our first shipment to arrive in the next month or so, at decent prices. Presently we are negotiating a new price and supplier for our residential components. Which will not have redundancy built in and will be available in a sealed system, or separately. They will come in 12-24-48-96v configurations, depending on customer requirements and their afford ability.

When we have a retail release, will come back here and provide a link to them. If you keep your lifepo4 charge discharge cell regimes at 3.5v upper, 3v lower and restart charging at 3.4v and if your cells have been constructed and balance properly before use, keep a load on them you should have no trouble with them at all and no need for balances or BMS. Charge and load from the 4 points of the pack and they will stay stable.

One interesting thing we have learnt, is in very low temperatures, lifepo4 struggle to provide large current demands, as in staring engines and for a long life should not be allowed to get to cold. In some remote installs, we had to put cell packs into heavy insulation and and in below zero installs, the cell packs were placed in living areas to keep warm. You can't do that with lead acid for a number of reasons. That's another benefit of lifepo4, you can put them anywhere so they can be placed very close to the charge source or humans without any safety concerns. Hope that helps you understand them more.

There seems to be a lack of real verifiable information regarding claims for LIFEPO, something that your anonymous post doesn't change. I look forward to that future time, to which you allude, when information will be made public.

[PNjunction]

Bit like people who claim windows is a good operating system, when it is last century junk and way past it's use by date.

Ok:
Linux desktop 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u4 (2015-09-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Sometimes OpenBSD too.

We use military and industrial standard cells, which are way above what is available retail, stronger cases, more robust in design and a lot cheaper, as we buy in bulk.

And those are what? When I buy a lead-acid battery, and expect and pay for Rolls-Surrette, I want to know in case the original manufacturer's identifiers are missing. Or am I getting something else? Oh, OUR batteries are just as good, trust us. I expect the same consumer knowledge of what's inside when I go LFP.

It's the same with cell capacity sizes, retailers and those with little or no experience beyond AAA, or a small nominal voltage pack claim large capacity branded cells are the best.

Kind of like Expecting Panasonic / Sanyo Eneloops, but with the wrappings removed, and after testing find out the cells you really have were Tenergy, counterfeit fakes, or cells that are manufacturer rejects which got waylaid out the back door on the way to the recycler. Even a modest consumer can get hold of a Maha MH-C9000 for quick testing.

Or expecting Sanyo NCR18650B's only to discover that what's really inside are SmokeFire 3000's half filled with flour. How about used cells from laptop-pulls? Here, a CellPro Powerlab PL8 can help identify these differences for the interested consumer.

You will find military, industrial and real EV constructors use small capacity cells in large packs for a number of reasons. Which would take a couple of pages to explain and I don't have the time for that, or the negative ignorance that would follow it.

You should follow us on Candlepower forums for the smaller stuff. Especially op HKJ and his extensive testing for both performance, and thermal IR imaging.

As for being available to the public, that is something which will come in the near future, from many sources as the dumbo's stuck in the past wake up to the reality of how lifepo4 operates.

This is the real reason I'm being so caustic. The industry as a whole suffers damage from cells of unknown origin and pedigree. Thing is, we don't know if YOU are getting ripped off and inadvertently passing bad cells on to the consumer, unless you do your own capacity and IR checks on each and every cell. Far from practical and spot checks with cells of unknown origin are a bad practice.

Going with established brands and KNOWN reputable manufacturers would put my mind at ease.

When I cut one open, I'm not going to find questionable A123 pouches missing / modified tabs, damaged zipper-fuses, cells from commercial "special projects" that should have been destroyed / recycled, old stock, homebrew internal connectors with dissimilar metals and so forth am I?

You should be proud to reveal your cell sources and models. So what are they?

[dax]

Are you saying that your company has 1000s of LIFEPO systems that have been working for 5 years and have undergone 1825 cycles and are still going strong? Can you give more specifics about where these batteries came from and how much they cost? Can you identify your company? Do they advertise these batteries and your success rate, because what you report sounds quite sensational.

Yes it would be a sensational claim, one we can't claim. Was referring to our first 120amp pack in time lines and cycles, it has only been in the last 2 years we have been flat out installing these systems in off grid residential. The majority of our work is rural, remote, outback and marine installs, for stand alone communications and support infrastructure. We do a lot of government work, including site preparation and infrastructure construction, so our experience is very varied and we work around the country and some overseas jobs.

The longest lifepo4 residential installations, except for our own homes, have been operating for more than 4 years and now we are doing about 3 a week. Many people don't realise how many off grid connections there are in this country, or solar connect. Off grid, well over 300000 and there are millions of grid connect. Many grid connect are looking at going off grid storage and that's were our growing market is, so we use a variety of different size and configured charge controllers and inverters for these.

We don't use batteries, we use cells and purchase in container loads. They are not junk as those with little experience and enslaved to rip off commercial brand retailers who have redundancies built in to their systems, try to claim. Bit like people who claim windows is a good operating system, when it is last century junk and way past it's use by date. We use military and industrial standard cells, which are way above what is available retail, stronger cases, more robust in design and a lot cheaper, as we buy in bulk. Which is no different to most industries, where industrial components are far superior to retail and that goes for just about every life endeavor. It's the same with cell capacity sizes, retailers and those with little or no experience beyond AAA, or a small nominal voltage pack claim large capacity branded cells are the best. You will find military, industrial and real EV constructors use small capacity cells in large packs for a number of reasons. Which would take a couple of pages to explain and I don't have the time for that, or the negative ignorance that would follow it.

As for being available to the public, that is something which will come in the near future, from many sources as the dumbo's stuck in the past wake up to the reality of how lifepo4 operates. So we are redesigning them for residential customer use and expect our first shipment to arrive in the next month or so, at decent prices. Presently we are negotiating a new price and supplier for our residential components. Which will not have redundancy built in and will be available in a sealed system, or separately. They will come in 12-24-48-96v configurations, depending on customer requirements and their afford ability.

When we have a retail release, will come back here and provide a link to them. If you keep your lifepo4 charge discharge cell regimes at 3.5v upper, 3v lower and restart charging at 3.4v and if your cells have been constructed and balance properly before use, keep a load on them you should have no trouble with them at all and no need for balances or BMS. Charge and load from the 4 points of the pack and they will stay stable.

One interesting thing we have learnt, is in very low temperatures, lifepo4 struggle to provide large current demands, as in staring engines and for a long life should not be allowed to get to cold. In some remote installs, we had to put cell packs into heavy insulation and and in below zero installs, the cell packs were placed in living areas to keep warm. You can't do that with lead acid for a number of reasons. That's another benefit of lifepo4, you can put them anywhere so they can be placed very close to the charge source or humans without any safety concerns. Hope that helps you understand them more.

[PNjunction]

The brand of the 100amp cells, we tried were winston, none lasted more than 3 years, whilst our no brand chinese industrial grade cells, are still going after nearly 6 years and none of our installs using these 40-50amp cells have had a problem, other than wiring and small electronic failures. There have been a few bad cells, most get discovered before installing as we always run a pack for a week before it goes in.

Uh oh. Usually this indicates that the Winston was abused, or the infrastucture (high-resistance connections) and so forth, or an initial "sanity check" was never done on the factory balance. Failed "bleeder boards", new-old-stock, shipping damage can be an issue, and the biggest one is this:

"Old" Winston (and the old Thundersky) docs had people charging up to 4.2v back in the 2008 or so timeframe. That document was misinterpreted as the proper normal method-of-procedure, and failed cells were the result. Hopefully you weren't following that old documentation. You can even find it today in some distributor archives or egads - older balancing circuits.

This is the disqualifier for me: recommending "no brand chinese industrial grade cells," -- game over.

This is the tactic used by el cheapo battery manufacturers that stuff their cases with whoever is the lowest bidder, and the consumer has no idea what the quality of the cells are inside.

Don't take this personally - seeing that, I would never be interested in your systems and run away as fast as I could. As it stands now, the systems you have are just very large version of cheap cellphone chargers taken to the bigger scale.

[inetdog]

Quote did not work for me either. So, how did they come up with 27 years?

When Reply with Quote does not work, you can still access the quote formatting using the button with the speech balloon on the formatting bar.
It puts "[QUOT]" and [/QUOT] tags around the selected text (or opens an empty tag pair and you can put your text in between the tags. You can also type the tags in manually. (Note that to keep the tags from being executed, I left the final E off of QUOTE.)
All that will be missing is the name of the quoted party, which you can also put in. In the above text the string "=lkruper" is added right after "QUOTE" in the opening tag, followed by ";178476" the internal reference number of the quoted post. (As in http://www.solarpaneltalk.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=178476)

[Bala]

Quote did not work for me either. So, how did they come up with 27 years?

No idea, it states they use outback controllers that have a 5 year warranty but no mention of battery warranty. Also say they make there own bms.

Would be good if mods would allow dax to Id his company if he wishes to.

It is of genuine interest to me, as my batteries are almost ten years old.