diy solar

diy solar

Anyone purchased these Ultra Cheap 12v 100ah LiitoKala Battery?

Oh, what the heck, just ordered it anyways. I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight if I didn't ? I can't wait to see what is inside!

I will also do a capacity test and max load. I would rather get ripped off first and report on it than to have my viewers or anyone on the forum get burned. Should be interesting at this price.

If it is good, I can give viewers further warning about this company and their record. Should be a win win.
View attachment 51546
Is this the one that actually was 104ah and used B cells? Still seems like a bargain considering the price per amp hour. I’m a newb…
 
Ok so here is my findings for my battery. Be gentle, I'm sorta new to all this.

Battery: 12v 120ah 4S1P LifePO4 Liitokala from Littokala Official Store on Aliexpress.
Size and weight: 230*138*210mm and 11kg (size is accurate, unsure on weight atm)
Cost: £185 delivered to the UK. Delivery took about 3 weeks to London.
Capacity tester: 185w Constant Current Electronic load (exposed board with the fan and heatsink on with the large screen) connected to a 12v 3a supply.
Multimeters: Fluke 17B, Aneng AN113D
Bench PSU: Wamptek 30v/10a
Room temp: 20.4-21.6 degrees celsius at 76% rh

Advertised Specs
Nominal voltage: 12.8V
Nominal capacity: 100Ah
Maximum charging current: 50A
Instantaneous discharge current: 200A
Continuous discharge current: 100A
Life: 3000 cycles or more
Charging temperature: 0~45°C
Discharge temperature: -20~60°C
Storage temperature: -20~65 °C
Operating voltage range: 10.0 V-14.6 V
Overload protection voltage: 14.6 V 0.05 V
Protection voltage against overload: 10.0 V 0.05 V
Protect battery temperature: 60°C plusmn 5°C
Battery warranty: 12 months (parts and technical support are provided free of charge, customers should bear appropriate logistics costs)

My experience
Battery was fully charged using a bench power supply to 14.60v. After an hour it stabilised to 13.6v, I left it for a week while I waited for my capacity tester to arrive. Once the meter had arrived, I metered the battery again and it was still sitting at 13.6v so no loss. I connected it back to the bench power supply but it cutout within seconds, so it was fully charged. I connected the battery via 60cm 8awg cables with crimps on both ends. The leads measured 0.01v loss across their length but I reckon this may have been rounding up. I checked that the capacity tester was reading voltage and current draw correct compared to the Fluke using my bench power supply as source and it was on point. I set the low voltage cut off to 9v as I wanted to see if the bms in the battery would cut off reliably at 10v for 4s (it did).

Anyways, battery connected and load set to 0.12c ish aka 14 amps (any higher and the tester would turn off due to 185w limit). The resistance reading on the capacity tester was 0.91 ohms but I'm unsure if this was the resistance of the battery or the heating element it uses as a load.

30ah was reached at 12.8v
60ah was reached at 12.7v
100ah was reached at 11.6v
103.69ah was reached between 11.3v and 10.6v.

The capacity tester stopped at 103.69ah (1309.71Wh) as the bms killed the output. Upon disconnecting the load the battery was immediately metered using the fluke multimeter at 10.6v at the terminals and over the course of about a minute recovered to 11.3v. I re-engaged the load of 15a and it cut off again after a few seconds. My guess is that at the end stages the 15a load may have been causing battery sag or something, and if I had lowered the load to say 5 amps or less I may have been able to eke out the last 15ah of advertised capacity but my gut feeling is maybe more likely 110ah. I kept an eye on battery temperature and it never got above ambient.

My thoughts
I'm happy with my purchase, but I will get in touch with the seller for a partial refund to match the 100ah price (£10 cheaper), but I would be clutching at straws tbh. I was only expecting around 50ah if I'm honest, and in my mind I would have been happy as that's essentially the price I paid for it, so I am really pleased to reach over 100ah, even if it wasn't quite the 120ah advertised. I only tested to a 15 amp load but the specs claim a 100a BMS however I am unable to verify this. Sadly I don't currently have the means to measure beyond that as I can't find my clamp meter :LOL:. As this will be going into a mobile sound system I don't imagine needing to draw more than 15-20 amp anyway and for that purpose it's perfect, especially as it'll be a dynamic load with a big crest factor. So yeah 100ah in a compact size for £180 posted, I count that as a win for my case, I wouldn't suggest building this into any kind of array. I expect someone more knowledgeable (hello Will) will probably come along and say these are used/b grade cells as their max voltage was 13.6v so therefore 3.4v per cell, as my understanding is that brand new grade A cells should be 3.65 fully charged? Also interesting point, the specs claim max charging current of 0.5c so 60 amps and yet when I had a current limit of 10a on my psu, the battery sat at a steady 9.72amps until 14.60v and then gradually trailed off to zero. I don't know if that's an indication of anything.
Thanks Sam, I just registered for this site to find exactly what you posted. Seems to me that 103 ah for under $300 usd is a great deal. I’m absolutely an inexperienced beginner at this but I want to create a short term battery backup for my suburban home. Later on I want to add solar but for now I will be satisfied with battery backup for power outage mitigation. Thanks!
 
Yep thats the one. One thing I would like to know is how many cycles I can expect long term.
 
Excellent question, if it’s really 3,000 cycles it would be more than 8 years of daily cycles. That could really be a good fit for my future solar tied system.
 
Yeah cells tend to be 3-5000 cycles before capacity drops to 80%. Considering the cells in these are around 80% of original capacity I'm not sure how many they'll actually last.
 
Yeah cells tend to be 3-5000 cycles before capacity drops to 80%. Considering the cells in these are around 80% of original capacity I'm not sure how many they'll actually last.
I have less concern over the cycles of cells.
The BMS is very small and cheap. It may fail before the cells. And from Will's video, this battery is not service friendly.
 
How many of these packaged economy batteries are “service friendly”?

Are battleborn’s service friendly?
 
How many of these packaged economy batteries are “service friendly”?

Are battleborn’s service friendly?
Battleborn has a 10 year warranty, SOK is service friendly.
There is no warranty per say for this aliexpress brand.
 
Right and cost more than twice as much, I guess there’s going to be trade offs if price is your priority.
 
So I've bought the exact same battery off AliExpress LiitoKala 120ah and I've consistently got 79Ah on all 4 tests varying the discharge current from 5-15A. All the same results. I'm tempted to keep the battery and ask for a partial refund as 80Ah is probably enough for what I need and will take up considerably less space compared to my 2 already ageing 100Ah lead acid batteries. My question would be how long do people think this battery is likely to last given that it's labelled as a 120Ah battery but only giving 79Ah? Given that it's like 66% of the rated capacity!
 
Thanks but I have used LiitoKala cells myself.. I want to know if anyone has used this specific LiitoKala Battery. How is the build quality? The capacity? What BMS are they using?
There's no way the seller will be less shady when they can hide the cells inside a case you can't see into.

They advertise everything as new and send used crap instead.
 
So I've bought the exact same battery off AliExpress LiitoKala 120ah and I've consistently got 79Ah on all 4 tests varying the discharge current from 5-15A. All the same results. I'm tempted to keep the battery and ask for a partial refund as 80Ah is probably enough for what I need and will take up considerably less space compared to my 2 already ageing 100Ah lead acid batteries. My question would be how long do people think this battery is likely to last given that it's labelled as a 120Ah battery but only giving 79Ah? Given that it's like 66% of the rated capacity!
Good luck. I went through it twice with proof and got rejected both times claiming I didn't go from 3.65v to 2.5v, despite the chart showing this clearly.
 
Haven’t tried them but the LIFePO4 batteries I bought here in the US are around .35 usd per wh. I use server rack style 48v 5.12 kWh 100ah batteries that were $1749 usd plus shipping and taxes. The similar 12v batteries have 400ah.
 

Attachments

  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    334.1 KB · Views: 8
Last edited:
Whist scrolling Google, passed this topic.
I purchased the Liitokala 150ah battery. Now I'm totally new to this so had to feel my way around. It arrived at 13.2v and I charged it up to 14.60 at 10A. Next morning I did a capacity test at 12A drain and it was still running despite the battery at 8.2v. Needless to say, I switched it off. It pulled 121A.
Now after reading up a lot, I decided the BMS was rubbish so wanted to replace it. I purchased a Daly 100A Bluetooth bms and cut open the unit.
A little surprised as it had 8 pouch cells instead of the expected 4 prismatic cells. Regardless, cut out the BMS and fitted the Daly, recharged it and set it up to cut out at 10v. Retested twice. 120. 9AH repeatable. At £250 all in, I can't complain
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20220207_123132.jpg
    IMG_20220207_123132.jpg
    165.3 KB · Views: 25
  • IMG_20220207_005201.jpg
    IMG_20220207_005201.jpg
    193.3 KB · Views: 24
  • IMG_20220205_172934_edit_650832640062669.jpg
    IMG_20220205_172934_edit_650832640062669.jpg
    249.5 KB · Views: 27
  • IMG_20220206_234349_edit_693872211421205.jpg
    IMG_20220206_234349_edit_693872211421205.jpg
    396 KB · Views: 26
  • IMG_20220207_143229_edit_724860936651373.jpg
    IMG_20220207_143229_edit_724860936651373.jpg
    264.4 KB · Views: 27
Last edited:
Back
Top