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Lion Energy UT1300 at Costco again, why buy them?

Trukinbear

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I know you guys keep telling me that LiFEPo4 is at price parity with my dinosaur of a lead-acid battery, but even if you adjust for the difference between 80% DOD and 100% DOD and replace my 986Ah 48V battery with 700-800Ah of these I don't see it - you are still talking $22,400 + tax vs $4995 with tax and a 10-year warranty. I guess if these last 50 years (and I could live that long) you could break even - but I bet in less than 25 years these will be considered just as obsolete as my LAB.
 
I know you guys keep telling me that LiFEPo4 is at price parity with my dinosaur of a lead-acid battery, but even if you adjust for the difference between 80% DOD and 100% DOD and replace my 986Ah 48V battery with 700-800Ah of these I don't see it - you are still talking $22,400 + tax vs $4995 with tax and a 10-year warranty. I guess if these last 50 years (and I could live that long) you could break even - but I bet in less than 25 years these will be considered just as obsolete as my LAB.
https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/batteries/lead-acid-batteries section 5.3.2 Battery Lifetime
If you are using 80% of your lead-acid battery it will not last long.
 
https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/batteries/lead-acid-batteries section 5.3.2 Battery Lifetime
If you are using 80% of your lead-acid battery it will not last long.
Well I was just trying to find a fair comparison point... So ok I only need $19,000 instead - I don't have either, so no real difference to me. I hate to disagree with what is on the Internet, but the owner of the battery company who personally extended my warranty to 10 years says my battery is recommended to be taken down to 20% SOC/80% DOD (which I don't do). Not all batteries, even not all leads acid batteries are the same. He'll my very first novice system used 'deep cycle' WalFart batteries that couldn't be taken down to 50% more than two or three times.
 
Well I was just trying to find a fair comparison point... So ok I only need $19,000 instead - I don't have either, so no real difference to me. I hate to disagree with what is on the Internet, but the owner of the battery company who personally extended my warranty to 10 years says my battery is recommended to be taken down to 20% SOC/80% DOD (which I don't do). Not all batteries, even not all leads acid batteries are the same. He'll my very first novice system used 'deep cycle' WalFart batteries that couldn't be taken down to 50% more than two or three times.
It's not just the warranty. It's the lifetime charge cycles. LiFePO4 is 3000-5000 to 80% SoC. Lead acid is...300? There's also the half the weight and size benefit. If you do the math based on life expectancy, LiFePO4 is actually cheaper if you can such up the initial cost.
 
It's not just the warranty. It's the lifetime charge cycles. LiFePO4 is 3000-5000 to 80% SoC. Lead acid is...300? There's also the half the weight and size benefit. If you do the math based on life expectancy, LiFePO4 is actually cheaper if you can such up the initial cost.
I'm well over 300 cycles already with nearly 8 years of warranty to go (due to construction delays we operated as diesel generator inverter storage battery with no solar for over a year) - if at any time before then it fails to test at 80% of capacity or better, it will be replaced at no cost to me. If as you claim they are only good for 300 cycles it looks like I'll be in free batteries forever. LOL Seriously, I'm old on my 4th cancer which is itself stage 4 - a battery that lasts 50 years longer than I will doesn't impress me. If I'm lucky I'll live to wear this battery out, but I doubt it.
 
123,600 Ah into the battery in just the last 11 months - I believe that translates into quite a few cycles per year.
 

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I'm well over 300 cycles already with nearly 8 years of warranty to go (due to construction delays we operated as diesel generator inverter storage battery with no solar for over a year) - if at any time before then it fails to test at 80% of capacity or better, it will be replaced at no cost to me. If as you claim they are only good for 300 cycles it looks like I'll be in free batteries forever. LOL Seriously, I'm old on my 4th cancer which is itself stage 4 - a battery that lasts 50 years longer than I will doesn't impress me. If I'm lucky I'll live to wear this battery out, but I doubt it.
What kind of lead acid batteries do you have?
Flooded golf cart? Sealed cells? Never mind, I read your sig. lead antimony flooded cells. The website lists 1500 cycles, and a 5 year warranty.
Impressive.
 
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The 2200# 24-125-11 48V FLA battery in my avatar photo
There are more than cycle life advantages using LFP over FLA...
you have the battery, there is little reason for you to ever need to swap it. As long as you keep it watered, (That LFP won’t need) and as long as you don’t deep discharge it, without adequate solar to recharge it rapidly, (an issue LFP also won’t have) solar will recharge LFP much faster than SLA and far less solar will be wasted on recharging LFP due to the lower internal resistance.
if you had a solar cell 1/3 smaller than your FLA it would use your solar much more efficiently, recharging faster, and have zero fumes, and zero maintenance. AND it would last longer by a long shot.
 
What kind of lead acid batteries do you have?
Flooded golf cart? Sealed cells? Never mind, I read your sig. lead antimony flooded cells. The website lists 1500 cycles, and a 5 year warranty.
Impressive.
Mine isn't one of the 5 year batteries listed on his site - this is one of the 7 year made in USA tubular cell batteries which as long as I kept records of what goes into/out of my battery, and record temp and SG readings, charge at 100A or thereabouts, AND do a full charge every 7 days and an equalizing charge every 31 days is guaranteed to be at 80% or better for ten full years with no cycle limits. But then I went there, took the tour then met the owner/designer of the battery (Kevin), explained my needs and that I understood some sizes were harder for him to move than others, and negotiated, negotiated, negotiated. Good luck getting someone in China to do that, or pick up the phone when you call even.
 
There are more than cycle life advantages using LFP over FLA...
you have the battery, there is little reason for you to ever need to swap it. As long as you keep it watered, (That LFP won’t need) and as long as you don’t deep discharge it, without adequate solar to recharge it rapidly, (an issue LFP also won’t have) solar will recharge LFP much faster than SLA and far less solar will be wasted on recharging LFP due to the lower internal resistance.
if you had a solar cell 1/3 smaller than your FLA it would use your solar much more efficiently, recharging faster, and have zero fumes, and zero maintenance. AND it would last longer by a long shot.
With the price difference being nearly a decade of my income...

Ok, not quite... but a bunch of money (to me), that I didn't/don't have.
 
Mine isn't one of the 5 year batteries listed on his site - this is one of the 7 year made in USA tubular cell batteries which as long as I kept records of what goes into/out of my battery, and record temp and SG readings, charge at 100A or thereabouts, AND do a full charge every 7 days and an equalizing charge every 31 days is guaranteed to be at 80% or better for ten full years with no cycle limits. But then I went there, took the tour then met the owner/designer of the battery (Kevin), explained my needs and that I understood some sizes were harder for him to move than others, and negotiated, negotiated, negotiated. Good luck getting someone in China to do that, or pick up the phone when you call even.
Yes, it sounds like a great battery...

Just not better than LFP.
 
With the price difference being nearly a decade of my income...
Only if you tried to buy battleborn in that capacity.
If you did as you did with the FLA, and sourced via big battery, or another Distributor of the banks... odds are high you could have spent the same or only slightly more on LFP...
 
Only if you tried to buy battleborn in that capacity.
If you did as you did with the FLA, and sourced via big battery, or another Distributor of the banks... odds are high you could have spent the same or only slightly more on LFP...
I couldn't even get other distributors/manufacturers of industrial batteries to return my call(s). The Trojan distributor I know well, and I found out the hard way that those weren't 'real' batteries even if they were better than the faux deep-cycles from the big-box stores. I'd been working on putting this all together for years, and find Made in USA, a real warranty, and a friendly voice at the end of a local(ish) call to be worth almost as much as money.
 
Hey Truckinbear, if your current batteries work fine, why not just plan on keeping them for indefinite time, and just start like a side LiFePO4 fund where you put aside like $20 /mo (or whatever small amount you'd find insignificant to really notice), and then if you started to get to a point where the lead bank wasn't meeting your practical needs anymore, you'd have some decent deposit to drop on lithium (as it had been set aside for that)... Or is your current battery bank giving some kind of problem meeting your needs? If it's working fine, maybe just extract as much of its service life as you can...

There's nothing wrong with dinosaurs, hey you own it already, might as well get your money's worth... I know it's a lot, to 'want' to pluck down all that money at once for a new lithium battery system, but if you saved some side fund you just put aside gradually for this purpose well down the road, it might ease the pain later if you decided you needed to switch because of a real problem.

Unless of course you might be wanting to look into lithium so you can play around with it, like want to play with the technology or something... Or maybe it's for some other reason like tired of filling water, or dealing with gassing, ventilation, wasting more energy to charge and float them... Or whatever...

And, since lithium can range in price widely, for my lithium project, I did the cell level (build-your-own-battery) thing instead of turn-key battery, since it is much cheaper, and gives me visibility into own-BMS cell-level monitoring... I might go with a ready-made battery for a situation where I needed compact, portable, sealed, easy to move around battery, but for an indoor, home use battery bank, I would prefer to go with cells and build my own bank to get cheapest price, most kW/h for the buck...
 
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You already mentioned why LFP is better:

"IF you can guarantee a full charge every 7 days"
"IF you can equalize once a month"

Those are two mighty big 'IFs' - there are damn few totally off grid households that can guarantee those two, most of them end up sitting at partial states of charge for very extended times - or spend a hell of a lot of money on fuel to charge their batteries.

And that's why LFPs are better for off grid system: They can happily stay at a partial state of charge for years and not care. The extended cycle life is a big one too but the ability to NOT SULFATE and degrade when used in less than ideal conditions is the important one.

You might be okay with a lead acid bank if you have hydro + solar, or reliable wind + solar, or just be incredibly overpaneled (which is a hell of a lot cheaper today than just a few years ago). But none of the off gridders I've known for the last 15 years (except for one, he's got hydro) can baby a lead acid bank like you say you do - they spend a stupid amount of time futzing with their batteries.
 
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