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Felicity Solar batteries

justlikethat

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Apr 24, 2020
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So I've been researching a long time which lifepo4 batteries to purchase for my system...
Felicity Solar, an Alibaba manufacturer that buys cells, puts then in a box and sells them. They said they currently have CATL cells. So catl is the biggest manufacturer also supplying to Tesla etc. They said they use 16pcs of 13ah to make 48v 200ah. So they use small 16 small batteries to make one big one, what do you guys think of that? They sell it for 1500 USD.
Thanks
 
Am I reading something wrong here? 16 13 ah cells would make a 48 v nominal 13 ah battery. The cells are in series that adds voltage not amperage. In parallel you would have a 208 AH battery at 3.5 vdc nominal voltage.

All my cells are CATL and have been great. But I bought mine through suppliers in the US to avoid getting ripped off or waiting 2 months for cells.
 
Yes they made a mistake with that and will check tomorrow.
Any other suggestions please? Should I buy it???
 
They use their own BMS by the way
 

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Am I reading something wrong here? 16 13 ah cells would make a 48 v nominal 13 ah battery. The cells are in series that adds voltage not amperage. In parallel you would have a 208 AH battery at 3.5 vdc nominal voltage.

All my cells are CATL and have been great. But I bought mine through suppliers in the US to avoid getting ripped off or waiting 2 months for cells.
I have never heard anything about them. Looking at there site and at the manual that battery looks pretty good for that price. You could build one for less with more capacity but it would not be as nice as that one for that price. That is if that's the battery they actually send. I have a pretty bleak view on unvetted vendors from china. Maybe someone else can chime in about Felicity Solar. That battery does look pretty nice. Although what is the freight on that ?
 
A few hundred bucks, I have a forwarder and I'm in the Philippines.
What I'm concerned about is the cells. How do I know if they are new and good quality?
It's so tricky and such a gamble right?
 
Right. Ask them what cells they use and if they top balance and test them for capacity. See if they will send you test reports on the cells and the completed battery, The more they don't tell you the more I would not buy it.
 
This is what they've sent.
 

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That looks pretty legit. I like the design of this battery. Those cells look pristine.
 
I recently got 2 batteries from Felicity Solar advertised as 48v 200Ah (10kwh), model LPBF48200-S. They arrived functional but one of them had damage on the case (i opened it up and checked battery terminals and were "ok" and cells were CATL and looked pristine with welded busbars connections). I connected one of the 48v batteries to my growatt inverter, model SPF 3000 TL LVM-ES. Charged them up to 56V inverter reading with solar and I could not get inverter to read a stable 57.6V max as stated in the manual, but oh well it would not hurt. I connected a small fridge load (about 80 watt average), turned off the PV input, and measured consumption with a killawatt meter as a capacity test (i have no shunt). After about 60 hours the battert SOC lights were blinking red, meaning <10% SOC according to the user guide. The killawatt meter read only 5kwh. The growatt inverter app (shine phone app) was reading a total discharge of 6.4kwh at this point, maybe adding the inverter self consumtion to the 5kwh discharge from the fridge(?). So a 6.4kwh discharge should be about 36% SOC of a 10kwh battery, not <10%SOC. Thats my experience so far.

Any idea what could be going on here? I thought maybe the cells are not properly balanced inside or they falsely advertised it as a 200ah pack, when it may be 150AH...
 
Oh, also something interesting for me as a first time owner of a PV system with lifepo4, when the SOC lights were blinking red (<10% SOC), the inverter was reading a battery voltage of 51V. The battery user guide specifies a voltage range of 48V - 57.6V, so would it make sense to be at <10%SOC with 51V? Maybe the SOC lights indicator is bad? Just contacted Cecilia from Felicity Solar who has been very responsive.
 
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Ok people, here an update. Some bad and good news.

BAD NEWS

1) The shortfalls in capacity where related to the actual capacity of the battery I got. I opened the case an checked the cells. They are CATL FFH3D3 cells with readings of 3.2v 275Wh on the QR code sticker. The whole banks is 48v 16S, but made of 16 pairs of these cells for a total of 32 cells. So... if my math is correct, this would give me 86Ah cells, so 172ah pairs, 16 of those pairs in series for a total capacity of 51.2V nomial at 172Ah = 8.8Kwh. They sold the battery as 10kwh. Cecilia explained to me that this is because when fully charged, supposely at 59V, you reach the 10kwh advertised. I dont think that is fair and have not been able to charge for more than 56V without the BMS shutting off the battery. Even the user guide that came with the battery states a max. charge voltage of 57.6V. So I settled with a bulk charge and float voltage of 54V to chill out and hopefully avoid cell bloating and long term issues.

2) The second battery I ordered did exactly the same. I was not able to charge beyond 56V without the bms shutting off. Ok. However, after I discharged the first 1.5kwh the battery shut off with a high temperature fault. After dozens of troubleshooting messages with Leo, an engineer from Felicity, and several hours of texting resistances, voltages, etc. Etc... the issue was the termistors in the temp. line were bad. Then all of the sudden the bms got stuck in "power on status" and the battery wont event turn on.

GOOD NEWS

1) They are sending me a replacement bms and temperature lines to fix the bad battery.
2) They communicate on time and are very willing to help me out.
3) Got a Victron Smart Shunt and are doing another battery capacity test to have a more accurate estimate, using the 56V as 100% SOC.

Will keep the forum updated on the replacement parts and the smartshunt results as I think these batteries (LPBF48200-S model) deserve some review.
 

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Ok people, here an update. Some bad and good news.

BAD NEWS

1) The shortfalls in capacity where related to the actual capacity of the battery I got. I opened the case an checked the cells. They are CATL FFH3D3 cells with readings of 3.2v 275Wh on the QR code sticker. The whole banks is 48v 16S, but made of 16 pairs of these cells for a total of 32 cells. So... if my math is correct, this would give me 86Ah cells, so 172ah pairs, 16 of those pairs in series for a total capacity of 51.2V nomial at 172Ah = 8.8Kwh. They sold the battery as 10kwh. Cecilia explained to me that this is because when fully charged, supposely at 59V, you reach the 10kwh advertised. I dont think that is fair and have not been able to charge for more than 56V without the BMS shutting off the battery. Even the user guide that came with the battery states a max. charge voltage of 57.6V. So I settled with a bulk charge and float voltage of 54V to chill out and hopefully avoid cell bloating and long term issues.

2) The second battery I ordered did exactly the same. I was not able to charge beyond 56V without the bms shutting off. Ok. However, after I discharged the first 1.5kwh the battery shut off with a high temperature fault. After dozens of troubleshooting messages with Leo, an engineer from Felicity, and several hours of texting resistances, voltages, etc. Etc... the issue was the termistors in the temp. line were bad. Then all of the sudden the bms got stuck in "power on status" and the battery wont event turn on.

GOOD NEWS

1) They are sending me a replacement bms and temperature lines to fix the bad battery.
2) They communicate on time and are very willing to help me out.
3) Got a Victron Smart Shunt and are doing another battery capacity test to have a more accurate estimate, using the 56V as 100% SOC.

Will keep the forum updated on the replacement parts and the smartshunt results as I think these batteries (LPBF48200-S model) deserve some review.
Oh no!
Charging up to 59v is over the maximum recommended 3.65v for Lifepo4 cells!
They are pulling your leg...

I don't think it's a fair statement to say that the missing capacity can be achieved by over charging the cells.
There is very little capacity in the upper knee of the charge curve of Lifepo4 cells.
If you were able to charge up to 56v, that would be 3.5v per cell, which with enough absorption time is considered 100% SOC.
Charging to 59v would be 3.6875v per cell.
I doubt if you will get that missing 1.2kwh from charging to 59v.
In order to prolong cell lifespan, it's not recommended to charge to 3.65v anyways (maybe once in a while just for proper top-balancing).

That's my opinion anyways.
If you have a PSU and maybe a capacity tester, you could check my theory by charging one cell to 3.5v, and then do a capacity test on it, to see how many Ah you get.
Then charge it again to 3.6875v (or better 3.65v for safety) and then do another capacity test. See how many more Ah you get, and then calculate that delta times the number of cells you have.
If you got 1.2kwh, then I'm wrong...
 
Any updates on this? I have two LPBF48200 connected to a Victron shunt? What would be the necessary parameters
The Victron smart shunt gave me a total draw of 7kwh at 20%, as expected from a 8.8kwh battery. So the conclusion about the capacity issue is that these LPBF48200 batteries are NOT 200ah, NOT 10kwh, they are 172ah = 8.8kwh.

Attach screenshot with parameters for the victron smart shunt with these lifepo4 batteries. Lead acid would be different.

FYI, im having more issues with the battery that works. The other day a high cell voltage fault came on, but the whole battery was at 53V, then the high cell voltage fault went away randomly but the SOC indicator light was at 25% when It was really around 90% at 53.something volts. I disconnected the negative cable going from the cells to the bms and discharged the battety down to 25% with my inverter without the bms being connected (with a small 160watt load). I reconnected the bms, to "synch" it back, and charged back up to 55.2 volts and the SOC lights catched up again showing 100% SOC. God knows what unbalancing issues this might bring.

Still waiting the replacement bms and temp. Cables for the battery that is not working.

The BMS they use seems to be very defective. I even ordered two overkill solar 16S 100amp bms as spare parts because I don't have much faith these will work for long. At least it seems possible to replace the BMS. Replacing the balance leads will be difficult, though, because they are not bolted, they are welded. I guess if the day comes, I will cut, strip, and crimp the original balance leads to the ones in the overkill bms (in the correct order, wich takes patience measuring continuity for each lead at the connector which is different than the overkill solar bms)

I hope you don't have any issues with yours. This has been very stressful for me as a newbie, but for the price ($284/kwh), relative to other options in Puerto Rico, I can't complain much...
 

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Any updates on this? I have two LPBF48200 connected to a Victron shunt? What would be the necessary parameters for them?
Oh, and if you have 2 batteries in parallel, the real battery capacity would be 172ah × 2 = 344ah. If you want to assume each battery is 200ah, as advertised, tell the shunt the 2 batteries together are 400ah and see how many Amp/hours you get at the deepest DOD you are willing to discharge. For me that was 20%.

For definitions of the parameters in the victron smart shunt check out section 7.1 in this article: https://www.victronenergy.com/media...tml#UUID-37b15df6-8521-aa94-3dfd-7f1d92e7f6f4
 
Thanks, I have your same configuration with the batteries, I will be testing them as soon as I return home in a few days. I was charged $4,500 per battery.
 
Thanks, I have your same configuration with the batteries, I will be testing them as soon as I return home in a few days. I was charged $4,500 per battery.
Wow. I paid about $2,500 for each battery including all shiping and customs fees to Puerto Rico. I bought by sending a whatsapp message through the Felicity Solar website, then I was forwarded to Cecilia Wu from Felicity who sent me an offer through Alibaba. Maybe mine are different to yours because with these people are full of unkowns. Would like to know how yours do!
 
Wow. I paid about $2,500 for each battery including all shiping and customs fees to Puerto Rico. I bought by sending a whatsapp message through the Felicity Solar website, then I was forwarded to Cecilia Wu from Felicity who sent me an offer through Alibaba. Maybe mine are different to yours because with these people are full of unkowns. Would like to know how yours do!
Ran a test today, DoD 90% 50.4V 345Ah Consumed. 5hrs test duration with (1) 36K minisplit, (2) 12K minisplits, lights, tvs, etc. 3k to 4k discharge watts constant
 
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