diy solar

diy solar

First Small Buy 4 x Lishen

halfwave

Electron Sorcerer
Joined
Nov 18, 2020
Messages
12
Hello everyone, first post and I want to thank everyone for sharing their knowledge and experience here. In particular those that have written up their experience on how to order (like ghostwriter) and what to expect.

A day ago I requested a quote for cells and provided basic shipment location and instruction (sea) as described by others here. Response was swift and accurate. I just completed an order through Alibaba of 4 Lishen 272aH Lifepo4 cells from Shenzhen Basen. Total cost was $430 USD, sea ship, DDP including credit card fee (I'm in KS, USA). Pretty reasonable total cost and I can't wait to receive them. Intended use is a diy 12v portable power source for when I'm in the middle of nowhere doing astronomy imaging (traditionally I've used LABs). In the future I'll explore more off-grid uses.

As a first time Alibaba user purchasing with a credit card was more involved than I was used to. Since Alibaba was a different experience then AliExpress I wanted to note the differences for the few people I've seen here mentioning problems paying. Experienced purchasers already know this so you can just ignore me.

My first attempts to pay failed, this is Alibaba preventing payment, not your credit card company as I spoke directly with Capital One about it first. Alibaba sent a rejection email with a "appeal for acceptance" link. This is to prove I was the card holder and requires uploading images of your CC, billing statement and ID. Pay attention to their instructions on the appeal page as they have specific file size ranges. Approval took about 18 hours and I was notified via email of acceptance. Then when I went to complete the order the CC payment was rejected again. I had to wait for Capital One to send me an alert so I could approve the card use. I then was able to resubmit payment and everything went through fine.

Again thanks for the help here and I'll let you know how things went in a month or so when cells arrive and I top them off and test.
 
Best wishes on your purchase. The price you paid is comparable to the group buy. I prefer the group buy however as I have someone stateside to hold to the fire :)
 
Update: shipment arrived January 29th.

Well packaged as others here have noted. All cells looked in brand new perfect condition. They put a label on each cell with their name and internal resistance (IR) you can partially see in picture below.

I forgot to ask for extra bus-bars so I made some out of old copper pipe for bench use. Currently assembled in parallel and being top balance charged.
 

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Well now I know why i couldn't get a payment processed. I tried for two days and haven't been able to find any instructions past contact your card holder pop ups and continued looping Emails that got me nowhere. I am ready to roll and at a standstill. I think I may go look into the group buy link now...
 
Well now I know why i couldn't get a payment processed. I tried for two days and haven't been able to find any instructions past contact your card holder pop ups and continued looping Emails that got me nowhere. I am ready to roll and at a standstill. I think I may go look into the group buy link now...

Were you not able to find the credit card acceptance page? It has a step by step process to walk you through submitting what they want.
 
group buy
 
Were you not able to find the credit card acceptance page? It has a step by step process to walk you through submitting what they want.
Well, I am not sure if I am talking about the same page as you, obviously the one I was on didn't fly. I can say I ended up entering the card info at least 8 times through Alibaba. I will be watching for those charges! I ended up using the aliexpress portal with no problem. The cells should come by May...but if that's what saving $500-$700 bucks costs VS buying stateside. So be it.
 
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