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Lifepo4 cells moreexpensive than a full lifepo4 battery 🧐

Blukiz_pr

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Joined
Sep 11, 2024
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Puerto Rico
I am new to photovoltaic systems and recently installed a system that I bought used but I need new batteries. Making the comparison between buying a chinese lifepo4 battery vs buying individual chinese cells and diy my own battery I have seen that the individual cells are more expensive. What do you think about buying lifepo4 batteries and dismantle them to make my own batteries with a better quality BMS? I am considering batteries with 24v and 100ah as my system is 24v .
What do you think you who have more experience in this?
 
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You are ALWAYS better buying the voltage you need than using 12v batteries to build them serially.

Price - cheaper batteries - anything 100ah or less at whatever voltage is going to be cheaper than building that same voltage or very similar in price.

For larger batteries 200ah are similar with the advantage just a bit towards diy. Depends on the bms selected.

300ah and larger advantage is towards diy by a fair margin.

As for buying batteries and using the parts to build larger ones.. the cells are welded together a lot of the time. Cutting them apart you risk heat transferring to the cells unless you are exceptionally careful. Then you have to figure out how to attach bus bar. And if you say converted 12 to 24 you would need to spend money on a bms for the 8 cells to protect them.

Were it me I would just buy the LiTime 24v battery and call it a day.
 
I just ordered my 6th Li-Time 24V 100 ah battery after seeing Will do a tear down on them. The current price (just went down today!) with a 10% Brand promotion puts this battery on your porch for $392.

I have been running 3 of these in my system since Spring and could not be happier!
LiTime 24 v 100 ah Battery On Amazon.
 
So the best idea would be to buy high capacity cells with quality BMS. Where can I get good quality cells? I see that everything is made in China and they all claim to have type A cells. It is a little difficult to stop thinking that they are all the same quality. Thanks to all for the replies . You are awesome .🙏🏽

I don't DIY to save money. I DIY because my batteries are better 😬
 
So the best idea would be to buy high capacity cells with quality BMS. Where can I get good quality cells? I see that everything is made in China and they all claim to have type A cells. It is a little difficult to stop thinking that they are all the same quality. Thanks to all for the replies . You are awesome .🙏🏽
I don't know what shipping is like between the mainland and PR, but if you can order from 18650 (Georgia? Or near there) or Ezealco (Texas) they are reputable resellers of good quality EVE cells.

The "A Grade" stuff is all made up anyway, the best cells go to the EV and grid battery manufacturers. Whatever we're getting was probably always rejected for some reason but it might be something we'd never notice like the cell wall is 1mm outside of their QA standard for flatness. Maybe sometimes they really are EV spec cells that got sold off when a batch didn't find an EV buyer for some reason.

Worst case is you get B stamped QR codes or faked QR codes, that means they failed so bad the manufacturer defaced them to mark them as defective. 18650 and Ezeal are not known to be dishonest, 18650 does cell B grade / defaced but they tell you. Ezeal only sells intact QR code cells afaik.
 
I don't know what shipping is like between the mainland and PR, but if you can order from 18650 (Georgia? Or near there) or Ezealco (Texas) they are reputable resellers of good quality EVE cells.

The "A Grade" stuff is all made up anyway, the best cells go to the EV and grid battery manufacturers. Whatever we're getting was probably always rejected for some reason but it might be something we'd never notice like the cell wall is 1mm outside of their QA standard for flatness. Maybe sometimes they really are EV spec cells that got sold off when a batch didn't find an EV buyer for some reason.

Worst case is you get B stamped QR codes or faked QR codes, that means they failed so bad the manufacturer defaced them to mark them as defective. 18650 and Ezeal are not known to be dishonest, 18650 does cell B grade / defaced but they tell you. Ezeal only sells intact QR code cells afaik.
Thank you for the advice 🙏🏽
 

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