Lithium battery user experience

[bighamsport]

New to forum, have a question about a specific battery. Looking at a pair of these:

ECO-WORTHY 12V 280Ah 2Pack LiFePO4 Lithium Battery, 6000+ Deep Cycles Lithium Iron Phosphate, 7168Wh Energy​

They are $999 for the pair. I've never bought any good batteries, Interstate, which I had to replace in 2 years, then the best Walmart had. No solar panels, but I have a 3000/6000 Renogy PSW inverter. Looking to get some really good batteries and my budget just happened to $1000. So, does anyone have experience with ECO-Worthy batteries and would you recommend them? Thanks for input.

 

[MaikaiLife]

What are you using these for? Typically most LifePo4 batteries are not suitable for staring vehicles since they have limited burst rates for amperage, typically around 100 amps.

 

[bighamsport]

Sorry, I did the typical "assume" thing thinking everyone would know what I'm talking about. Wife gets on me for that all the time. Anyway, I have a 38' Montana fifth wheel I'll be putting these in. Again, I have a 3000/6000 Renogy inverter also. We mostly dry camp, so not on shore power very often. Other than lights, we watch TV sometimes at night, would like to make toast without firing up the generator or totally draining my batteries, and running a fan or two on warmer days. Would be great to run the electric fireplace early in the morning to take the chill off as well.

 

[MaikaiLife]

I have no experience with this particular brand of batteries, but the combination of two of them would yield about 7.1kW of total energy storage and it appears the maximum output would be about 200 amps. I would suggest you utilize a balancer between the batteries to keep them in near exact balance.

So long as your inverter and charge controllers are the right voltage and you have the right size of conductors and fuses/breakers these will probably be good batteries and work well for your needs.

 

[mikefitz]

ECO-Worthy batteries and would you recommend them

There are better batteries available.
The Eco worthy 280Ah does not have low temperature charge protection and no Bluetooth communication with the BMS. These are desirable features .
Consider CHINS smart 280Ah battery.
A battery balancer is not needed if the batteries are connected in parallel.

 

[MaikaiLife]

*** Edit, I assumed you were putting these in series for 24 volts. You are correct about the not needed part. Sorry for the misinformation, I should pay closer attention when I'm multi-tasking. lol

There are better batteries available.
The Eco worthy 280Ah does not have low temperature charge protection and no Bluetooth communication with the BMS. These are desirable features .
Consider CHINS smart 280Ah battery.
A battery balancer is not needed if the batteries are connected in parallel.

I don't typically argue with people on the forums, but saying a balancer is not needed on a low-end box battery is not entirely true. Just because the batteries are in parallel doesn't mean that both batteries will charge with the exact same characteristics. I've personally monitored multiple 12V lithium batteries with and without a balancer and I can attest that the balancer does help mitigate balancing issues. My two exact batteries used to have as much as a 4% variance in charge characteristics. After implementing the balancer they are now within .03% which for $50 IMO is a small amount to pay for a balancer that will keep two 12v batteries in the closest balance possible.

I concur, it's not needed, but it certainly can't hurt and that is exactly why Victron makes these balancers.

 

[Ykdave]

Im also curious to hear some real world reviews on these batteries.

I couldn’t bring myself to buy them when I first set up my system and went with a set of ‘better’ 280ah batteries. But now I’m thinking expanding the storage might not be a bad idea and a guy can pick up the 4 pack of these eco-worthy 280ah batteries for the price I paid for 2 ($3000)

 

[Deleted member 91418]

I've also considered this battery before ($799 for each one... the CDN sucks). But I decided to pass on two factors: 1) my cooler build will not house this; they are just half inch too wide and 2) Eco-Worthy got some questionable reviews on other products. If you search up their 20/30AH models, they often have failing BMS's. Unless I felt comfortable opening their 280AH up for some 'frankensteining' I would pass on this. I'm not knocking off-the-shelf batteries; I'm currently using a PowerQueen Mini (which I now regret for it's pouch cells and iffy BMS), but it does do the job!

If you can afford it, get a premium battery. If you have knowledge in LiFePO4 building, it might be a good idea to custom build something. I can only recall two of these cheap batteries having low-temp cut-off; certainly mine doesn't.

 

[bobsh2000]

I just started looking for lifepo4 batteries. I found a review of Li-Time, Chins, and Weize from a guy named Will Prowse (Li-Time Review). BTW, he tears these down and how they are built is an eye opener. At any rate, these batteries have low temp monitoring in their BMS.