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Basen Rocks - 16 cells delivered flawlessly

DavidSTexas

New Member
Joined
Dec 4, 2020
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13
My 16 Lishen cells arrived today. They all look great, no dents or blemishes at all. These looked like they just rolled off the factory floor. The boxes were a little worn from travel, but between the awesome foam padding and corner protectors on each case, there were no penetrations in the cardboard.

Also, someone at Basen is listening - I opened my hardware bags, and instead of the standard bolts, I found GRUB SCREWS and NUTS, 2 each per cell, plus the standard 4 bus bars... Awesome, because I had not ordered them yet! So I ordered on 12/15/2020 and they arrive today, 2/3/2021.

All cells arrived at 3.21 to 3.25 volts. I can't wait to start building.

Thanks SHENZEN BASEN and Emily Peng!

Also, thanks to all the forum members here. I would never have ordered had I not been able to read other's experiences.

I will add some pics later.
 
Thanks for posting. Great to hear after reading about a couple people getting questionable cells recently. I've got 16 lishens on their way from Basen via group buy, hopefully arriving before end of month.
 
Yeah, I must admit those posts had me a bit nervous as well. Hopefully, yours arrive in good shape too. I still have to to balance and test, but judging by looks alone, I am pretty condifdent that they will check out okay.
 
I ordered 32 from same. If the first 32 work out ok, I will order another 32. I'm interested in how things work out for you. Keep us updated please.
 
Sorry, I meant to post more frequent updates, but life got in the way.

So far, I am quite happy with the cells. The capacity increase has been insane compared to my lead acids. I had 600 AH (12v) of AGMs that were getting weak, so going to 1120 AH of LiFePo4 with more usable capacity has been mind-boggling.

That being said, it also presented challenges. I am off-grid, 100% solar. On a good day, I have 40 amps of solar coming in. That is not a lot to charge up 1120 AH, especially when I need to use some of that power each day.

I made 4 series packs with BMSs, and let them charge until each disconnected with a high cell voltage. It took just over 2 weeks to bring the cells from the shipping voltage, ~3.23 volts per cell, to the high voltage disconnect. During that time there were cloudy days, over a foot of snow in the desert, lots of time running my heater, etc.

Then I moved all solar/loads back to the AGMs, paralleled all the LiFePo4 cells, and used two 20-amp DC-DC buck converters to top balance to 3.65 volts. It took 4 days (daytime only) for the cells reach 3.65 volts and the current to taper down. I monitored the process with two multi-meters, a current meter, and a Raspberry PI equipped with a 16-bit ADC.

I reassembled the battery packs with the BMSs, and then chaos hit again. More snow in the desert, 15 degrees (F), and lots of broken pipes that I had to fix for others. I got to test the low-temperature cutoff on the JBD BMSs a few times. It works well.

So as it sits, my top balance did not take well. I am seeing high deviation, about 150mv in each pack at the top end of the charge (less than 10mv deviation below 3.45 volts), but I think that has more to do with my haphazard methods than anything else. I had nowhere near constant current during the charge process.

I had planned to have more equipment by the time the batteries arrived, as well as more solar panels, but I am playing catch-up due to a bit of a work slow-down.

I have been monitoring cell voltages, and I plan to rearrange the battery packs with cells that more closely match each other. Then I will take half offline, top balance each pack separately, and then do the other half. That should cure my problems, especially if I upgrade the buss bars at the same time.

I plan to only charge to about 3.4 volts per cell once the batteries are in permanent service, so that is below the major deviations anyway

Overall, I am happy, but as other forum members have pointed out (Steve), these are commodity cells, so some runners are expected. I am not worried at this point, because after nearly a month, I still don’t have 1 full cycle on these batteries yet. They have more capacity than I can use in several days at this point.
 
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Thanks for the update. Doesn't sound like the deviations on the extremes are unusual from what I've read.
 
Glad to see folks still ordering these.
I'm considering purchasing 4 cells for my mobile set up.
 
I ordered 32 from same. If the first 32 work out ok, I will order another 32. I'm interested in how things work out for you. Keep us updated please.
I ordered some from Basen and received them damaged. They are giving me issue. Headache dealing with Basen now. Hope yours are better shape.
 
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