AOLithium (48V) Buyer Feedback

[Detritalgeo]

Hello,

There were a few posts over the last few weeks about these packs.. mostly because the company has limited customer support.

Buyers can post their collective feedback here, the results are still inconclusive. It seems the BMS hardware and software has undergone some revisions since Will did his first impressions video. Their price is also 50% less than that video so they seem to be selling.

Lets try to get honest feedback here so potential buyers know what they are getting themselves into. I have heard that the BMS shunt may not be able to detect small loads... some bench testing should figure that one out.

Also feel free to share where you are located, when you ordered and when the shipment arrived.. this can help others since the shipping updates from AOLithium don't exist.

Fun Fact, AOLithium seems to be a brand within the HONGSHENG GROUP company and as of 6 months ago were looking for dealers at the EES show in Germany. So they exist but appear to contract out all North American logistics and support...

Owners: @noobie, @Derka181, @dstar ,...

 

[Detritalgeo]

Also I have heard some people having difficulty establishing BMS communication but others have gotten Solar Assistant to work. If you have found something that works let us know.

 

[Derka181]

Also I have heard some people having difficulty establishing BMS communication but others have gotten Solar Assistant to work. If you have found something that works let us know.

Yes bms won’t work with most all in one inverters . It’s not a deal breaker for the price

 

[noobie]

So far I don't have a DC clamp meter to measure low currents on the battery cables, to see if things match what the BMS shows.
It's possible that the display just shows 0A and actually is counting it, even if the current is low, but someone may be able to confirm.
It would need a confirmed draw, maybe 20W and see if the BMS shows anything.

My battery setup at the moment:
1 SOK
2 AOLithium
They are paralleled together.
Currently all at different SOC based on the BMS display. SOK is 64%, 1 AOLithium 44%, 1 AOLithium 42%(they were all different from the beginning)

So far, I just noticed that with my pretty constant winter(run more stuff on it in the summer) load of 0.8A at night(measured with a Victron 1000A shunt), the SOK current showed about 0.5A, and both AO lithiums showed 0A.

There's a margin of error on the shunt I bet, but there was a small discrepancy of 0.3A unaccounted for.
As stated above, I don't have a DC clamp meter at the moment to measure whether there is actual current being drawn from the AOLithium batteries in this scenario.

If a higher load is placed on the battery bank, then the BMS showed a load that was accurate.

As of now, I'm still slowly charging them up, and they just power our internet and hot water heater(natural gas with power vent).
We've had really cloudy days, and when we do get sun, I have a lot of shading in the winter.
Unfortunately my lot is small(town house) and the only location I have that isn't the roof is the north eastern side of the house.
So as you can imagine, the house shades the panels a lot in the winter.
Summer is no problem.

The % SOC is on the way up slowly though.

As to my location: I live about 2h from their warehouse in Toronto.
The delivery was a little more than 3 weeks after the order.
The order in my case, was delivered by DHI Logistics via a box truck.
I received a phone call from someone at that company to arrange the delivery and the person came a few hours later.


I don't have an inverter or all in one that has communication at the moment, so I haven't tried anything with that.
The manual states that the first 4 DIP switches are for the battery address, and then the 5th and 6th are for setting the communication protocol. They claim that it works with pretty much everything, but it seems still hard to get working I guess.

 

[Detritalgeo]

Thanks for the info.. Yeah I wonder if the BMS display firmware has some limitation about displaying low amp draws or if it's just not detected at all.. May be good idea to see how balanced the cells are over time.

There was another guy that said he bought a bunch but his account seems to have been wiped from the forum.. Too bad. "seanogrady" or something like that.

 

[edharveybc]

I have some units that have been shipped - heading to western Canada. I'll post my findings when they arrive.

@noobie there is a setting in some shunts called "current threshold" or similar name, you'll find it in your Victron shunt as well - it causes the shunt software to ignore currents under a certain amout, close to zero. Typically it is done to wipe out the effects of transient currents affecting low-use systems over time. Probably the firmware in the BMS has this setting too high. I think if the system is getting a full (or close to) charge every day or so the recorded loss likely won't be an issue.

I think it would be worth finding out if this BMS can be re-flashed, or some settings modified through the RS485 interface.

 

[noobie]

@noobie there is a setting in some shunts called "current threshold" or similar name, you'll find it in your Victron shunt as well - it causes the shunt software to ignore currents under a certain amout, close to zero. Typically it is done to wipe out the effects of transient currents affecting low-use systems over time. Probably the firmware in the BMS has this setting too high. I think if the system is getting a full (or close to) charge every day or so the recorded loss likely won't be an issue.

The Victron shunt is set to 0.10A.
It could be possible that the BMS has a similar threshold.
In my case, 0.8A total(30W or so) with 0.5A shown on the SOK leaves 0.3A split between 2 batteries and would be like 7W per battery. So yeah it's not really a huge deal, unless you ran it like that for months and months starting at an already low SOC, and relied on the BMS estimation of SOC. Then theoretically you could run it down to dead without knowing.

 

[Aak]

I bought my battery one month ago on ebay it's been running three weeks now spent many hours and never got the battery to communicate with the inverter lvx6048 battery works fine I have 4 24 volt redodo wired 2s2p and the AOLithium wired to a buss bar and it's working great sadly it's winter in central Maine and the sun is hiding.

 

[dspence73]

I just got my aolithium's working with my EG4 18Kpv and it was Dip Switch # 5 needed to be up on the master battery (if you have more than one) and it speaks EG4 aka Luxpower fine. You can give that a try.

 

[edharveybc]

My batteries are in Edmonton, BC bound any day now. I was able to get the contact number of the carrier they are using and for Western Canada it's "Western Canada Express". They were really good at letting me know where things are and Aolithium should have provided us with this information from the start.

If anyone wants the contact of the person I spoke with at Western Canada, please DM me. There are lots of complaints around shipping and even people thinking the whole thing is a scam because of the silence - this is a big improvement.

 

[Detritalgeo]

thanks, i may try that.. I guess they can ;look for the shipment based on name and delivery address?

 

[edharveybc]

thanks, i may try that.. I guess they can ;look for the shipment based on name and delivery address?

Correct - they looked it up by name / phone number for me. You can go to Western Canada Express' site and find the numbers there for the different offices. Edmonton put me on an email thread and gave me an expected delivery date of this Friday. They were really very helpful.

 

[edharveybc]

Received two of four units today, not sure where the other two are yet but the ones that arrived are VERY well packed and are charging right now. Delivered at 30% SOC as expected. The connectors are a bit unique and have a positional locator that rotates to allow orienting the cables in any direction - was not obvious at first.

 

[Kremer]

I’ve been balancing my two for 6 days now. The balance current is silly slow. Allowing me about .2V/day. I’m at 55.2. High cell is 3.612, low cell is 3.370. It’s going to be a while….

 

[edharveybc]

I’ve been balancing my two for 6 days now. The balance current is silly slow. Allowing me about .2V/day. I’m at 55.2. High cell is 3.612, low cell is 3.370. It’s going to be a while….

What's the average current you are pushing into the packs at this balance? Until I get these units to my remote house I'm limited to a dinky 5A 48v charger I picked up on Ali. I have ~100A solar capacity to charge them with once they are in their final location.

Two other units arrived today, AOlithium made good on their delivery, but it was a bit chaotic.

 

[edharveybc]

thanks, i may try that.. I guess they can ;look for the shipment based on name and delivery address?

Did you locate your order? I have all 4 of my units now, they were delivered in two batches.

 

[Brucey]

I’ve been balancing my two for 6 days now. The balance current is silly slow. Allowing me about .2V/day. I’m at 55.2. High cell is 3.612, low cell is 3.370. It’s going to be a while….

That seems like a huge disparity coming from the factory.

 

[edharveybc]

That seems like a huge disparity coming from the factory.

Mine were all within .05v of each other out of the box

 

[Kremer]

Mine were all within .05v of each other out of the box

At the factory like 30% charge? I think mine were all pretty nearly 3.2V out of the box, but there’s a lot of variability in SOC at that voltage. Charge it up and watch them diverge.

 

[Kremer]

What's the average current you are pushing into the packs at this balance? Until I get these units to my remote house I'm limited to a dinky 5A 48v charger I picked up on Ali. I have ~100A solar capacity to charge them with once they are in their final location.

Two other units arrived today, AOlithium made good on their delivery, but it was a bit chaotic.

Less than a tenth of an amp. They are on constant voltage, which I bump up a hair at a time as the high cell allows.

 

[edharveybc]

At the factory like 30% charge? I think mine were all pretty nearly 3.2V out of the box, but there’s a lot of variability in SOC at that voltage. Charge it up and watch them diverge.

I'll monitor but so far one of the units is at 95% SOC and still sitting at less than .05v difference per cell. I'll have better numbers once I get a solid charge into them and let them settle for a few days.

 

[Detritalgeo]

Did you locate your order? I have all 4 of my units now, they were delivered in two batches.

Yeah but the last mile delivery agent was Comox Pacific Freight.. So likely the loads are getting passed around to trucks with the best rate. They called to organize delivery on Monday.

 

[Kremer]

I'll monitor but so far one of the units is at 95% SOC and still sitting at less than .05v difference per cell. I'll have better numbers once I get a solid charge into them and let them settle for a few days.

Oh wow.

 

[Brucey]

Oh wow.

Might be worth getting a hold of ao lithium support.

 

[Kremer]

Might be worth getting a hold of ao lithium support.

I have, sent them photos of the indicated imbalances a couple days ago.