My comment:
Where to start. Seems pretty biased to battle born considering you have literally zero top tier batteries to compare. Just cheap ones. And the dakota lithium is ridiculously overpriced. I love the people at battleborn! But I do not think their product is competitive these days.
1. Certified and non certified batteries. If you want to compare battle born to other certified batteries, it will be utterly destroyed. Look at roypow (sold as epoch and other names). Open one up. Battle born is a joke compared to what is available today.
2. Durability of battleborn. Yeah, check out roypow haha did you not see any of my videos? They kick battleborns ass
3. Safety. Roypow has t class fuse built into each unit. Battleborn does not. And roypow is about half the price. And battleborn is using that little bolt as overcurrent protection?! haha what a joke! You are an electrical engineer, you know a t class fuse is better than a bolt lol come on now
4. Communication. Battleborn has none, roypow comes with victron comms
5. Roypow makes golfcart batteries. Their pack design is on a whole different level. Call up any shop that sells them (I do this) and ask them how many warranty claims they have had for them. Then call up a distributor and ask how many battleborn warranty claims they have had. Dont take my word for it, ask them yourself.
Now here is what I personally dislike about battleborn:
1. They are overpriced even considering the price of cells and bms today. You said that battleborn looks over their cell suppliers, well so does everyone else. And everyone else, even the budget batteries are using ev grade cells with every cert you could imagine. Only the more expensive levels have the pack level cert. So like I said above, you need to compare the battleborns to other pack level certified batteries.
2. They use cylindrical cells that are matched in house. That method is inferior to using matched ev grade prismatics. You want to match them at the factory, by capacity and internal resistance. And last I talked to battle born, they have multiple cell suppliers, but that needs to be verified, that was years ago. That is a silly way to make packs and your parallel packs will never be close enough in capacity and voltage to last decades. If you want a long lasting pack, you need the cells matched at the factory. Just like tesla batteries, roypow, epcube and all the others. Battleborns method is inferior, in my opinion.
3. The reason battleborn does not make 48V packs is Dennis the ceo said that the cell voltage differential is too high with strings that large. That is what he told me when I asked why he doesn't make server rack batteries a few years ago. Or 48V batteries. Very strange. I am guessing it is because battleborns method of using cylindrical cells and matching them at the factory is inferior. There should be NO issue putting 16 cells in series for lifepo4. EV lpf strings are much larger and cell voltage differential is no issue. This seems to be an issue with battleborns assembly method. He told me that he likes 12V batteries in series, as they do in their large installations. And that, to me, is completely illogical. They should be running 16S packs. With matched cells.
4. Next, I have had people complain about battleborns customer service and support on my forum and in emails. I also saw a video of a battleborn going up in smoke, and then those videos were taken down a day after being posted. Very fishy. Have you seen the posts on the forum? Are you part of my forum?
5. If you want a safe and listed pack for grid storage, you need comms. They still do not have comms.
6. Using 12V batteries in series for a 48v system is illogical. There will be cell voltage drift that can only be solved by charging them all up every six months or so. Depending on environment and how they are used obviously.
7. Just look at a battleborn bms and roypow bms haha its no competition. Especially for surge capacity
Just look at it! It is strange that you dont know about these batteries.
Now lets talk about the cheap chinese batteries and how they compare to listed batteries.
1. They are using good cells that are certified and all are matched at factory. Do some capacity tests! The cell voltage differential at exreme low and high SOC will be vastly better than a battle born.
2. Look up complaints with Litime. They sell way more packs than battleborn and the amount of complaints we get on the forum is incredibly low. And if they do get a bad pack, it gets replaced in days.
3. Previously the cheap chinese packs were using random bms (do you watch my videos at all?) and you had no idea what you were getting. now everyone is using litime bms that are made in house. they work damn well and have a super low failure rate. especially for the price.
4. after litime and sok started making decent packs, all the other cheap relabelers started to as well. All the build quality problems I complained about in countless videos started going away. And the complaints for the packs on my forum and the bad reviews disappeared slowly over time. Now that they sell hundreds of thousands of packs, there will be a bad bms from time to time, but the failure rate numbers are insanely low. Especially compared to a few years ago. I have always tried to bash them and find someting wrong, but I have to admit, they are getting better and fast. They glue and lock nut everything now and are incredibly reliable.
5. You can orient those prismatic cells on their side. This varies depending on the manufacturing process and what they recommend. Each one has different recommendations. But the litime ones, ask their cell suppliers. This was a big issue when I first opened one up. Look at how many ul listed packs for home backup have cells on their side. But again, it depends on the cell.
6. Oh wow you have a cheap litime, actually. You should check out their nice packs. Totally different fet bank and capabilities. Check out my videos if you dont know the difference. The cheap one you have is really reliable though. But obviously horrible unless you add your own low temp charging protection if you plan to use it in a cold environment
7. Yes your litime doesnt have a low temp charge protection because you dont have that model. The model you have works great for people in tropical climates. Check out the litime with heaters or the one with low temp protection. Considering what you're comparing, why not get their more expensive model?
8. Yes the overcurrent protection on them sucks! I should cover this more haha good testing at the end of your video
9. No, they are not using grade b cells. You are incorrect with that.
Lion energy. I like the people that work there, but they are overpriced. Just not worth it compared to the competition. The case is weak feeling. But they work well. nice bms too. I love that huge heatsink. Great for prolonged continuous discharge.
Renogy design is pretty crappy but it's a good pack. Really low complaints. I do not like pouch cells compared to prismatics, but that metal box works well to fixate the cells and they have enough room for expansion and contraction. Works well but somewhat ugly. I hate the xt60 plugs. Such a crappy design and expensive. But again, it does work well. Just illogical and overpriced.
Now comparing listed 48V batteries to battleborn is no comparison. These 12v batteries are toys in comparison. comms, precharge circuit, advanced overcurrent and buck converter built in if different soc battery is connected, 5+ temp sensors when battleborn has 2 (one for fets one for cells), dc rated breaker or t class fuse built in. battleborn has none of this stuff.
Next, all of this stuff is made in china. battleborn is not using anything special or different. and the competition is destroying them. I really do not know why they do not come out with something better to compete with people like roypow. very strange. why dont you cover roypow? just weird
I wonder if people even buy the dakota lithium. I just don't see the allure. The internals are similar to crappy batteries I used to review. Just looks like garbage. I do not want to buy one for review because its so expensive
You should use a CBA IV for capacity testing. Just better. And lab grade equipment. Saw your issues with the dakota test.
Did you use thermal paste for assessing the temp between the cells? Could not see it from the camera angle.
You should take those cheap budget batteries and cycle them for a month. The imbalance will disappear. That is a common issue on the budget models. But after they are balanced, you will have closer cell voltages. They are matched by capacity, so once they are balanced, they will be closer than other batteries. Or just buy their more expensive models. Those come balanced.
Nice testing for short circuit test!!! Hell yeah!
Again though, do a short circuit test on a roypow. That is what you should be comparing. T class fuse on each pack is superior. BMS will trip faster than a t class fuse obviously, but having multiple safety systems is ideal. Especially if you put a lot in parallel. None of the batteries in your video would be good for a large system.
Are you not aware of the other options on the market? This video would have been great 4 years ago. But it seems like you dont know what the competition is.
I was afraid he would do that
