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EG4-LifePower4 vs EG4-LL Lithium Battery

ChrisG said:
Which one? I’m trying to understand which one is problematic. LifePower or LL(screen)
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The basic eg4 LiFePower4 are the ones having issues with starting/sudden surges. It appears to be hit or miss as some have had issues with the battery going into short protection trying to start a vacuum cleaner while others have been able to start large inverters with no problems. I had no problems starting a 6k growatt with two eg4 LiFePower4. The pack has grown to four and the only issues I see are a slight charge/discharge differential between the new vs the old batteries.
 
robby said:
Don't assume. Ask @HighTechLab he is the SOK Rep on the forum.
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Find me one single server rack battery that mysteriously includes a much more expensive active BMS... There isn't one.

You're trying to call out issues with batteries like they're major issues, when they're exactly how both batteries are designed, I think?

Jack Rabbit Off Grid said:
That weird it won’t start a GroWatt. I can start my Magnum 4448 off just one.
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There are a lot of people with very bad wiring, and who refuse to show a clamp meter reading, they're obviously just putting the company on blast and hoping to force the company to bend over backwards to help them. Not all of the threads where people have issues with the battery are the fault of the battery.

I've responded to a couple of those threads. The poster usually reacts like yosemite sam and starts stomping on their hat when somebody questions their wiring and derails their "putting EG4 on blast" thread.
 
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Lilikoi_Heavy_Industries said:
Find me one single server rack battery that mysteriously includes a much more expensive active BMS... There isn't one.

If I had just started shopping for these and saw the statements you made, I'd ignore your posts at this point robby, you're trying to call out issues with batteries like they're major issues, when they're exactly how both batteries are designed.


There are a lot of people with very bad wiring, and who refuse to show a clamp meter reading, they're obviously just putting the company on blast and hoping to force the company to bend over backwards to help them. Not all of the threads where people have issues with the battery are the fault of the battery.

I've responded to a couple of those threads. The poster usually reacts like yosemite sam and starts stomping on their hat when somebody questions their wiring and derails their "putting EG4 on blast" thread.
Click to expand...
At this point, they are sufficient posts pertaining to the short circuit protection issue of the eg4 LiFePower4, that it is more than just putting the company " ... on blast ... ".
 
Lilikoi_Heavy_Industries said:
Find me one single server rack battery that mysteriously includes a much more expensive active BMS... There isn't one.
Click to expand...

Fortress eFlex 5.4KW battery has a fully active balancing BMS. Takes 15 minutes to balance out the batteries.
I have four of them.
eFlex Cabinet.jpg

Lilikoi_Heavy_Industries said:
If I had just started shopping for these and saw the statements you made, I'd ignore your posts at this point robby, you're trying to call out issues with batteries like they're major issues, when they're exactly how both batteries are designed.
Click to expand...
Please go ahead and Ignore me. I have been wondering which Battery manufacturer you are representing. ?

Lilikoi_Heavy_Industries said:
There are a lot of people with very bad wiring, and who refuse to show a clamp meter reading, they're obviously just putting the company on blast and hoping to force the company to bend over backwards to help them. Not all of the threads where people have issues with the battery are the fault of the battery.
Click to expand...
There are a lot of people on here who know exactly what they are doing and are having problems. Lets assume for a second you were right. Why is it they can use another Brand of battery, even an old AGM battery and get their Inverter to start but a Lifepower4 is not able to start it? Same Wiring but Different Battery :unsure:
Lilikoi_Heavy_Industries said:
I've responded to a couple of those threads. The poster usually reacts like yosemite sam and starts stomping on their hat when somebody questions their wiring and derails their "putting EG4 on blast" thread.
Click to expand...
Your new here, it has not even been two months since you signed up. Most of those threads are 5 or more months old. What questions did you ask them and under what account?
 
robby said:
Don't assume. Ask @HighTechLab he is the SOK Rep on the forum.
Click to expand...
While similar in function, the SOK and EG4 use totally different BMSs, from different manufacturers in completely different parts of China. Side-by-side the hardly resemble each other.

@Koldsimer could speak to the point of the SOK having a much better time with the startup load of his inverter versus the EG4's he was using (but ultimately returned). We make absolutely certain our battery meets spec... it doesn't have any erroneous claims in the marketing material whatsoever.
 
robby said:
Fortress eFlex 5.4KW battery has a fully active balancing BMS. Takes 15 minutes to balance out the batteries.
I have four of them.
View attachment 103963
Click to expand...
I'll be happy to start representing the Fortress eFlex 5.4KW battery if you can get 4 of them delivered to my location for about $6-8K shipped (apparently I couldn't get two of them here for that).

That is a really awesome battery bank that you have, I love it. It already can talk to Victron I believe right? WAY BETTER THAN OUR BUDGET BATTERIES ALL OF THEM. From this perspective I agree with so many of your posts. But at the price point I was staying with lead acid banks which is kinda hell by comparison to cheap LiFePO4?

I stand corrected on my "server rack battery form factor statement" then! This really expensive one, like twice as much money WTF, has an active BMS! I definitely don't consider a battery that costs more than twice as much in the same league with the ones I bought. I would rather buy a high end BMS and put it in my lifepower4's probably, or put these existing batteries in a low demand application (because they are working just fine), and do a DIY LiFePO4 bank with nice active BMS for my next project (14kwh from 280's???).


"But the AGM battery works" complaints are based on not understanding how important a robust BMS is to a LiFePO4 battery, probably a bad idea to use the cheapest one and then push it to the limits. The fact is the AGM was able to push many more amps inrush than the BMS, and they need to learn if they want to get the newer tech. They're welcome to buy $4000 batteries instead too, or have somebody charge to figure it all out and install all of it and deal with ongoing issues. Good candidates for BMS upgrades if they're technical and they already bought the cheapest one.

I don't have that many posts, doesn't take that long to find one with me questioning why the guy refused to wire his RV for current sharing correctly or buy a clamp meter. And we need a meter with inrush to really get to the bottom of these questions, as well as people who are willing to improve their obvious wiring issues.

I would LOVE it if somebody would post REAL DATA showing how ineffective and pathetic the current handling is on my BMS compared to an SOK. And then, for EG4 to respond with an explanation, either being a firmware update, reasoning why the existing BMS hardware cannot handle as much, or admit the cells wouldn't be able to hold up and that's the reason it's limited. I'm also a really big fan of my LiFePO4 upgrade and it happens to work for me here (both my inverters could start on 1 battery if I needed to in an emergency...)

Lifepower4's are working great for my cabin in the jungle. I'd put that Fortress eFlex in a datacenter (and I'm sure they are).
 
HighTechLab said:
While similar in function, the SOK and EG4 use totally different BMSs, from different manufacturers in completely different parts of China. Side-by-side the hardly resemble each other.

@Koldsimer could speak to the point of the SOK having a much better time with the startup load of his inverter versus the EG4's he was using (but ultimately returned). We make absolutely certain our battery meets spec... it doesn't have any erroneous claims in the marketing material whatsoever.
Click to expand...
It was pretty simple in my case. The lifepower 4 battery would not start my inverter under any condition. There is something wrong in the bms settings and Signature Solar couldn't figure it out over the period of 2 months. I tried the lifepower batteries on another system- same exact results. First try with the SOK and had instant success. The battery started and ran my system fine with just one battery. Ran loads up to near 100a and it didn't flinch.

Keep in mind, this system had worked flawlessly for 2 years with FLA batteries prior to trying the lifepower 4. The system also started and worked perfectly with Discover lithium batteries.

Nice to hear that the SOK uses a different bms. Not only does this bms not seem to have any issues starting inverters, Current Connected has a much better grasp of the workings of their bms/battery and i'm confident they could easily make any adjustments necessary to help an end user that might have problems.

I've also closely monitored the batteries while in use and the SOK charges and discharges slightly faster than the lifepower LL. Cell voltages are much closer in the SOK than the eg4. Two of my eg4 batteries have cells nearly 200mv apart- even after several hours at 100% soc at 57v.

In summary, SOK is a much better battery. Better build quality, better bms, better user interface, better lcd functions, better vendor with outstanding after sale support.
 
Lilikoi_Heavy_Industries said:
I'll be happy to start representing the Fortress eFlex 5.4KW battery if you can get 4 of them delivered to my location for about $6-8K shipped (apparently I couldn't get two of them here for that).

That is a really awesome battery bank that you have, I love it. It already can talk to Victron I believe right? WAY BETTER THAN OUR BUDGET BATTERIES ALL OF THEM. From this perspective I agree with so many of your posts. But at the price point I was staying with lead acid banks which is kinda hell by comparison to cheap LiFePO4?

I stand corrected on my "server rack battery form factor statement" then! This really expensive one, like twice as much money WTF, has an active BMS! I definitely don't consider a battery that costs more than twice as much in the same league with the ones I bought. I would rather buy a high end BMS and put it in my lifepower4's probably, or put these existing batteries in a low demand application (because they are working just fine), and do a DIY LiFePO4 bank with nice active BMS for my next project (14kwh from 280's???).


"But the AGM battery works" complaints are based on not understanding how important a robust BMS is to a LiFePO4 battery, probably a bad idea to use the cheapest one and then push it to the limits. The fact is the AGM was able to push many more amps inrush than the BMS, and they need to learn if they want to get the newer tech. They're welcome to buy $4000 batteries instead too, or have somebody charge to figure it all out and install all of it and deal with ongoing issues. Good candidates for BMS upgrades if they're technical and they already bought the cheapest one.

I don't have that many posts, doesn't take that long to find one with me questioning why the guy refused to wire his RV for current sharing correctly or buy a clamp meter. And we need a meter with inrush to really get to the bottom of these questions, as well as people who are willing to improve their obvious wiring issues.

I would LOVE it if somebody would post REAL DATA showing how ineffective and pathetic the current handling is on my BMS compared to an SOK. And then, for EG4 to respond with an explanation, either being a firmware update, reasoning why the existing BMS hardware cannot handle as much, or admit the cells wouldn't be able to hold up and that's the reason it's limited. I'm also a really big fan of my LiFePO4 upgrade and it happens to work for me here (both my inverters could start on 1 battery if I needed to in an emergency...)

Lifepower4's are working great for my cabin in the jungle. I'd put that Fortress eFlex in a datacenter (and I'm sure they are).
Click to expand...
Did you know that SigSolar has ok'd some people with the short circuit protection issue to use another SigSolar approved bms?
 
Kornbread said:
Did you know that SigSolar has ok'd some people with the short circuit protection issue to use another SigSolar approved bms?
Click to expand...
Yep I saw that but yet we still have people on here who do not believe there is a problem:rolleyes:
If you have Six of them then you really do not notice the issues. That makes sense because that is slightly over 9KW (6x30Ax52V) that you can draw from them without an issue.
I can draw 10KW of Continuous Power from just two eFlex's.
 
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RichardFromEG4 said:
Other than the warranty issue - off the top of my head I know the BMS are from different manufacturers but the actual battery cells packs are identical.
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Good Evening Richard, I watched your videos regarding the EG4 II Batteries as well as other recent owners who have purchased these from Signature Solar. I went to purchase these from signature Solar today August 5th 2022 and noticed the picture of the 48volt EG4 II doesn't have the
Fuse on the top right. Did the model change or was this an old picture? Please advise as I would like to order these asap. I waited for an hour on hold today from Signature Solar, but no one picked up and they are closed over the weekend.
 
AnimalsBestFriend said:
Good Evening Richard, I watched your videos regarding the EG4 II Batteries as well as other recent owners who have purchased these from Signature Solar. I went to purchase these from signature Solar today August 5th 2022 and noticed the picture of the 48volt EG4 II doesn't have the
Fuse on the top right. Did the model change or was this an old picture? Please advise as I would like to order these asap. I waited for an hour on hold today from Signature Solar, but no one picked up and they are closed over the weekend.
Click to expand...
What the Bleeeeep!!!
I saw your post and thought Hmmm what is he smoking and then I go and look and yeah the Circuit Breaker is gone.
I would not be a happy man if I ordered one thinking it had a breaker and then received one without it.
 
robby said:
What the Bleeeeep!!!
I saw your post and thought Hmmm what is he smoking and then I go and look and yeah the Circuit Breaker is gone.
I would not be a happy man if I ordered one thinking it had a breaker and then received one without it.
Click to expand...
Chinese product .... they often change specs.
 
Honuz said:
Chinese product .... they often change specs.
Click to expand...
Change is putting it mildly. They removed the only thing that protects the BMS from a Short circuit!
Unless they put in an internal class T Fuse the BMS is going to be the first thing to fry if anything goes wrong.
 
3fordasho said:
Everything charges just fine, no alarms. Two times over 3-4 months I've had the inverters randomly switch over to grid power to supply loads when the battery SOC was well above the set point where they should switch over (ie battery SOC at 80-90% and the inverter starting pulling grid power instead of running the batteries down to the 25% SOC set point). Both times this happened the inverters switched back to battery power on their own once the batteries were fully charged again. Not sure why this happened a few times and no one else seems to have any ideas either but since it happens so infrequently I am not too concerned. If it does start to happen more often I will simply switch off grid input to the inverters. Very rarely do I need grid input and when I do I could switch the breakers back on.
Click to expand...
Seems that issue is happening quite a bit, happened to me, and is around if you search for it. I don't have the smart batteries, just some dumb LiPo4 100ah hooked up in series parallel 4s2p 48v setup, and a Victron SmartShunt, to monitor their SOC, since the Growatt don't have a built in shunt and can't monitor dumb batteries, this is coming from the seller and manufacturer. Although the Growatt shut down when the battery bank voltage reaches the low voltage shutoff as per the Growatt settings, so how is that happening without a built in shunt and or communications with the batteries, don't have a clue. Comments? Some say they do communicate with dumb batteries, but how? But the Growatt on occasions will start drawing from the grid even though I got it setup to charge from solar only, then after a few minutes it switches back to solar or if I'm using the solar for the other system it just sits there and starts drawing from the batteries which is what want.
 
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