Happy 13th birthday to my LiFePo4 battery bank

[Substrate]

Well, not mine, but those of op Main Sail, a frequent poster over at Cruisers Forum in LFP and also at the Marinehowto. com site.

Very glad to hear he's on the mend!

Essentially 400ah of Winston prismatics, still pulling full capacity after 13 years and more than 2300+ cycles. Essentially low CV's, minimal absorb, a conservative LVD, and a change or two of bms. Man, time flies. See his posting about the 13th birthday on the Cruiser forum.

All these years he has documented his working with LFP, and I've been following him since about 2010 watching his progress and testing, and sharing all these years. Well done!

The point is, that with proper care, one *can* avoid the seemingly inevitable 10-year chemical aging. Even with cells from waaay back then when all we had to play with were Winstons, Calbs, GBS, and maybe a Sinopoly or two.

Most importantly, he hung in there with all of us, when many just ditched the DIY market as fast as they could. Thanks, Main Sail !

 

[Bud Martin]

How about the other equipment, I.E. solar charger controller, inverter, etc, are they holding up well too?

 

[Substrate]

I think so. He goes into that into more detail on the marinehowto site.

Brings back memories. One could take a week's vacation and read the still active thread that started back around 2010....

9 or 10 years ago, this was the first video I watched of his, long before "influencers" got paid to shill product. That level of hands on detail was unusual then. Will's videos reflect this same sort of hands-on honest spirit. After watching it, my wallet magically opened.

 

[toms]

Awesome stuff. I’m a couple of years behind him - learnt a lot in the early days.

Interesting that most of the lessons regarding making LiFePO4 work well in stationary applications still haven’t sunk in to the majority. When this forum started it reminded me of 2010 all over again (often still does).

Most of those that got it right early with their LiFePO4 stopped visiting the internet because they got sick of people who had been playing with these cells for 5 minutes telling people that had been using the cells for over a decade that they were doing it all wrong.

Those that got it wrong disappeared to avoid the “i told you so”. And so the cycle repeats

 

[Substrate]

Ah yes, the repeating cycle.

Mostly because most don't know the basics, and get overwhelmed with info from those who don't design their LFP bank according to a "system level" approach AND an "application level" approach and are fed generalities. Makes it too confusing for the honest seeker.

Most discussions are quickly sidetracked, whether by enthusiasm, or by knowledgeable trolls knowing how to get an engineer's dander up and create 300+ message threads that just dribble into noise.

 

[Substrate]

Most of those that got it right early with their LiFePO4 stopped visiting the internet because they got sick of people who had been playing with these cells for 5 minutes telling people that had been using the cells for over a decade that they were doing it all wrong.

Heh, yep. Back then many didn't know that there even was a difference in lithium chemistry, and so treated their cells like what they knew - LiCo and variants. Actual specs were sometimes hard to find, and when Winston's had a 4.0v "max" charge, that seemed close enough to what they were familiar with - the non-lfp top end of 4.2v.

So they set their CV to 4.0, and quickly plated the cells, not realizing that the 4.0v was the level that immediate damage started to occur - not that it was to be used that high in normal use.

What made it even worse was reading from some other that in a sub-c application using these cells, it was often touted to bring cells to the very edge like this - at least once - as a commissioning / aging final stage. Again, that was mis-read as being ok to do this each and every cycle.

Then there was the age old problem of trying to shoehorn a programmable bench power supply into being a battery charger (most aren't), and instead of measuring the voltage setting with a multimeter, and *leaving it alone*, some would change the voltage after connecting batteries and forget about it overnight.

They'd come back in the morning with the cells reading 4.9v each, with the test bank in a swollen accordion-like U shape. You could actually hear your wallet cry.

Ah, the bad old days.

 

[chess-equality]

Glad to see a "positive" and not an LFP horror story for a change.

How many cells did fail on him? Would cells really fail catastrophically fast all of a sudden even with proper care?

Or maybe the cells of old are just that good and robust.

 

[Substrate]

I don't know and can't speak for his earlier testing with Thundersky's, but I'm sure it helped expose some of the well-intentioned, but technically wrong info one was exposed to back then. Wild west time.

But some things never change. 100+ message threads trying to educate and help a guy get his prismatics running right with a bms. But something is wrong, nothing is playing out like it is supposed to. More messages, more testing.

Then finally someone asks:
"Where did you get your cells from? What company did you buy from?"
"Oh, I didn't buy them. I found them in a dumpster at the beach"

Like today, lack of critical detail up front can lead to endless speculation. BMS makers running away from the diy market. Knowledgeable types just hanging it up.

AND, every discussion of LFP is peppered with the "I'll just change out my fla's twice" in the cycle-life wars and thread derailing. Sad.

That's why I really thank Main Sail, Will and others seen here and elsewhere with the strength to hang in there.

 

[toms]

I don't know and can't speak for his earlier testing with Thundersky's, but I'm sure it helped expose some of the well-intentioned, but technically wrong info one was exposed to back then. Wild west time.

But some things never change. 100+ message threads trying to educate and help a guy get his prismatics running right with a bms. But something is wrong, nothing is playing out like it is supposed to. More messages, more testing.

Then finally someone asks:
"Where did you get your cells from? What company did you buy from?"
"Oh, I didn't buy them. I found them in a dumpster at the beach"

Like today, lack of critical detail up front can lead to endless speculation. BMS makers running away from the diy market. Knowledgeable types just hanging it up.

AND, every discussion of LFP is peppered with the "I'll just change out my fla's twice" in the cycle-life wars and thread derailing. Sad.

That's why I really thank Main Sail, Will and others seen here and elsewhere with the strength to hang in there.

I find it hard to convey info online also. Where i live there are hundreds of people using off-grid power. A decade ago when i first got my LiFePO4 everyone said i was crazy. One by one my neighbours have got me to install a system like mine as their Pb systems (and some pro-install lithium systems) failed.

It’s sometimes difficult to watch people setting up systems or using methods that i know from experience will lead to premature failure, but i have also learnt that the majority feel secure following the latest youtube trends, (much like a decade ago when the likes of Jack Rickard were responsible for the needless destruction of thousands of LiFePO4 cells as people mindlessly followed his advice)

 

[Substrate]

I know what era you are coming from - my daily round trip through diyelectriccar and cruisersforum forums. All the while keeping an eye out for the application differences that might not apply so strictly to my general purpose sub-c application.

An actual A123 engineer on another forum might have been the one who tipped me off about the "knife edge" of 3.4v and to either go above or below it when doing things, because different cell materials act differently at exactly 3.4v. Sure enough, when testing I noticed this vagueness in expected results. Mostly because the diy people he was conversing with were using counterfeit / gray market old stock you name it.

Gotta' stop bringing back memories - it's making me itch to put together a 400ah 4S prismatic bank!