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Really cheap LifePo4 Battery (Is it Real?)

aleamadoc

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Joined
Jan 7, 2021
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Hello Everyone, I live in Guatemala, Central America, and I was looking for a system and a provider came to me offering this battery

ZTE ZXDC48 FB500


Really Cheap 100AH 48V at US. $500.00

Does anyone had any experience or knowledge on this battery?

Googled and searched in youtube but in google theres small amount of people talking about how good it is, and in youtube 0 Results, lol.

Thank you in advance.
 
The page still hasn't opened for me.

People here build LiFePO4 batteries cheap, but not that cheap.

Snoobler apparently got further than me. The the web page link he posted seems to be about bread and babies, not batteries?
 
Those are built by ZTE, one of the major Chinese telecom manufacturers. Like Huawei, they build a line of batteries to support thier telecom equipment. Probably not cheap quality either. This is the link you are looking for:


ZTE ZXDC48 FB101 is listed right on the page.
 

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So the price isn't believable, at least for new authentic product.
Either built with salvage cells (which could be OK) or not actually made by this company.
 
Well I Visited a site where they have the inverter and a huge battery bank picture attached, it seems new to me but I wasn't able to capacity test, I think I will buy one and disassemble it.

I could send it to Prowse but lol sending from Guatemala to USA its expensive.

I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks,

edit: Found them in Alibaba also, searching for the model but it says $500.00 - $3000.00 / Piece being the later the more credible price, send them an email to get the price and why the difference..

Best regards,
 

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@snoobler Thanks. Been extremely busy lately so hadn't gotten back on until now.

So that price really isn't that far off from what I've heard about in the past. A local installer I know has used the Huawei versions of these (100AH) and I got the impression he got them direct from china very cheaply. He never said an exact price but I'm thinking it was close to what you're getting offered. That said, as I recall, Huawei makes a model that looks identical on the outside but actually has AGM batteries on the inside. If you're able to buy one and tear it open to confirm, could be worth the $500.

The only downside I would say is that they probably aren't going to have any protocol that is compatible with any inverter system you may go with. It may not be an issue but for example the local installer had issues with the internal BMS units burning out and eventually took the units out of service last I saw. That said, they told me a few details of what happened and IMHO they were improperly installed/operated out of spec. Plus they didn't even hookup the inter-module communication so I don't believe it was a fault of Huawei's engineering. That's just my opinion though.
 
Well Mystery SOLVED!

First let me tell you, when the provider came with the battery, it wont seem new, he argue that it came that way from china, so in shipping it got scratches, but it was new, he says so.

I got it and asked for warranty, he replied, for bad use there is no warranty, for factory defects its 1 year, but for the sake of science and more people coming in contact with these I paid the $500.00 say my farewells and disassemble the supposed LifePo4 Battery.

It was no surprise when I found Li-Ion Pouches.

Its a 3S, these are the Pictures.

bat1.jpeg
bat2.jpeg
bat3.jpeg
bat4.jpeg
bat5.jpeg
bat6.jpeg

So if Anyone else ask, is not LifPo4 its Li-Ion, I will charge them to full and do a capacity test and get back to you, I do not have testing tools so I will Use a Kill-A-Watt meter and a camera recording to see how good or bad are the cells, I will use this as an UPS Replacement for my home data center, although cuz the inverter speed to switch from utility to battery its kind of long, I still need the UPS but it will provide longer, very much longer run times (lets hope).

I'll report back wen the test is done,

Best Regards.
 
I just double checked but ZTE is a Telecommunications company first & foremost, this equipment is designed for that purpose and level of use. Just like the Huawei gear mentioned. None of this is cheap "slap dash" bargain basement stuff to start with. It is meant to support their telecoms gear after all.

The BMS has a respectable heat sink, the wiring looks very well done, in fact the entire assembly looks quite good from the pictures. Looking at the harness from the BMS to cells, that is quite a serious assembly. That has to be a smart BMS of some sort and considering it has interfaces, the trick will be to find out how.

There are LiFePO Pouch cells as well as other chemistries in pouch format. Further investigation like getting a label, part numbers etc would help sort out what exactly is there.
 
How do you know these aren't LiFePO4 pouches?
O did not knew that lifepo4 puches existed until Steve pointed that it does.

reviewed the pouches but they dont have any seen marks at least without disasembling the pack which I did not do cuz pouches are easy to damage.
 
LFP cells will typically be 3.3-3.4

The data sheet linked indicates LFP, and the operating voltage range implies 15S. There appear to be 5S worth of pouches per block.
 
Well with a load of 250watts it ran for 22ish hours 21:53 min. before the mpp charger/inverter cut off, seller told me to discharge it at 44v no less, so i configured the mpp to stop pulling energy at 44v, internal bms of the battery never triggered.

One strange thing was that the battery as soon as it started discharging it turn on the alarm led, since i dont have any manuals or documentation i do not know why, now its charging and alarm led has gone off.

So for me its a great battery for $500.00 seller said he have a lot more of those so ima get some more, you can paralell 10 for a 48kwh battery bank.

One thing that i noticed when i dissasembled the battery is that was really clean, everywhere, so i think if not new they been in a really clean environment cuz not a single dust surface.

Datasheet says that its made for 15 years 6000 cycles, so if degraded lets hope i can squish at least 3000 cycles.

Thank you to everyone.
 
Did anyone else notice the BMS is made by Pylontech? Should be a good unit.

@aleamadoc That's around 5.5kWh or so. Sounds like new considering those modules are rated at 4.8kWh.

You may already have this by now but here is the manual if it helps. These have RS232 and RS485 for monitoring. The solid alarm light is stated as either charging or discharging protection.

@ $500, from I can see of these, I would probably get several as well. Too bad you aren't local lol.
 

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  • doku.pub_zxdc48-fb101-lithium-ion-battery-user-manual-v10.pdf
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If you look into the manual provided by @the_colorist it does list quite a lot of specs.
This also matches the datasheet as @snoobler pointed out.

One thing I noticed: it isn't talking about Lithium-ion, but about Lithium-IRON.

More interesting is page 39. That page lists the default parameters for the cells.

For its alarm triggers
Single cell LV = 2.6V
Single cell HV = 3.8V

And the actual protection thresholds are 2.0V / 3.9V.

These values do match LiFePO4.

Li-ion is 3.7V, and charging up to 4.2V. So if it were Li-ion, it wouldn't work with the default settings? Looks much more like LiFePO4 to me.

For the price, the raw cells are much cheaper, but its very likely these are much better matched and aren't A- or B-graded cells. Also, including a (by the looks decent) BMS and nice mountable case I think $500 is a pretty good deal if you take the whole package in consideration.
I think this $500 unit is much better quality (both case/bms) as better cells than most commonly DIY builds using cheaper grey market cells.

You might be able to access the BMS also, or at least read its parameters since RS232 and RS485 are pretty common. You can hookup a rPI or similar and build your own display. Worth a try to see if the BMS for example puts out anything usable.
If its a Pylontech, you might try https://www.photovoltaikforum.com/thread/118958-pylontech-us2000b-daten-über-konsole-rs232-auslesen/?t=118958&start=10




1610358244735.png
 
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Hello Everyone, I live in Guatemala, Central America, and I was looking for a system and a provider came to me offering this battery

ZTE ZXDC48 FB500


Really Cheap 100AH 48V at US. $500.00

Does anyone had any experience or knowledge on this battery?

Googled and searched in youtube but in google theres small amount of people talking about how good it is, and in youtube 0 Results, lol.

Thank you in advance.
Hi I am also in Guatemala and interested in the sistema . Maybe we can interchange info .
 
Did anyone else notice the BMS is made by Pylontech? Should be a good unit.

@aleamadoc That's around 5.5kWh or so. Sounds like new considering those modules are rated at 4.8kWh.

You may already have this by now but here is the manual if it helps. These have RS232 and RS485 for monitoring. The solid alarm light is stated as either charging or discharging protection.

@ $500, from I can see of these, I would probably get several as well. Too bad you aren't local lol.

if their BMS are pylontech somebody have software to monitor the battery, please share it
 
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