Two GC2 sized alternatives to BattleBorn: Discover DLP-GC2-12V and Relion 12V120-GC2-LT

[Atom Tan]

I have been looking for other GC2 sized alternatives to the Battle Born BBGC2H Group GC2 size heated batteries, because I have felt a bit like the BB's are expensive for their specifications.

I'm looking for alternatives that are less expensive and higher performance. If nothing else, I'll find out if there's anything similar out there.

I have found two so far that look better on paper, Discover's DLP-GC2-12V and Relion's 12V120-GC2-LT.

Both are heated and have low/high temp protection.

Manufacturer	Discover DLP-GC2-12V	Relion 12V120-GC2-LT
Max Continuous Discharge (A)	200	160
Max Continuous Charge (A)	120	60
Capacity (Wh)	1536	1536

I dont' have prices yet, but suspect they will be more expensive.

Does anyone have any feedback on or experience with either company? I've seen some traffic about Relion on this forum, but any functional problems people have had seem to be not battery related (bad charger, etc).

 

[Atom Tan]

The Discover is not yet available for sale, but the Relion Insight 12V120-GC2-LT is available, at $1495. Yow.

I found this video from Relion discussing how the Insight batteries are made. Looks pretty robust to my untrained eye, but would be interested in others' thoughts. They have several UL, CE, and IEC listings pending.

The BBGC2H is about $0.83/Wh, while the Relion 12V120-GC2-LT is about $0.94/Wh.

Choosing the Relion would get me a battery that has better charge/discharge rates and 336 more claimed Wh of capacity in the same footprint, which may be worth the premium to me as I'm trying to cram as much energy into the space I have available as I can.

The Relion has a heatsink for the battery/BMS, which is exposed at the top of the battery case. Might be an interesting application for a Pelltier cooler or something similar to keep the internals of the pack cool even in a hot car.

It also turns out that the max discharge and max charge rates are not fully correct. They claim the 12V battery will discharge at 160A until empty, 175A for 5 minutes, 250A for 2 minutes, 350A for 15 seconds, and 400A for 5 seconds. Recommended max charge is 60A, but it'll take up to 100A before BMS kicks in. This would handle inverter surge demand pretty nicely, assuming you cable and fuse appropriately.

They also indicate that parallel connections don't double discharge rate, but rather add at 75%. They suggest the 25% is to account for variance in individual battery discharge rates.

It generally sounds like they are being very conservative with their specifications. I'm interested.