This is why there's a bit of a turn to locally made batteries with open and honest product info. Marketing is all great until you dig a little deeper. Well done Craig! The notion that Australia has lost the ability to manufacture is a myth. Sure we can't economically make the cells or BMS's, but we sure can design, assemble and test them to a high standard right here on our own land. Full disclosure... Yes I make batteries under the brand PowerPaul Australia. We cop a lot of flack but also take a lot of pride in what we do. We don't operate for profit alone, and our priority is improvement instead of profits. Making money happens by accident because of that attitude.
I'm with you Alex. With the paralleled cells, the BMS is looking at an average. There could easily be hidden bad cells within each group. Nice test Craig. Looking forward to the DC to DC test. The cable lengths should be the same. Kinda silly of their engineers to design otherwise.
I installed two 240a/h batteries (lithium) and have had nothing but trouble always running out of power, had two replaced under warranty, still same running out off power. I ran test with same draw as you and the victron multi cut out at 12.2v and after load removed it when up to 12.5, soc 20%, -280 a/h have I missed something where is the 480 a/h I paid? I love your videos really gets the brain ticking.
Conductors in parallel need to be the same, length, type, and cross section area otherwise just like in your video the currents will be inequitable. 10AWG is 5.2mm2 so that short one certainly makes me feel uncomfortable. If it was up to me my preference is however many S but 1P. I like the idea that the BMS is looking at the individual cell itself and not a string of cells where a healthy cell could mask an unhealthy cell and without doing a discharge test you can’t readily know. Good review! If you can get more load on it you might be able to exasperate the result further as below. Heat produced = i^2×R×t, assuming R is constant, which I know as temperature increases it will go up. But for the purpose of the exercise heat produced is directly proportional to square of current. So,if current is doubled then heat produced is increased four times the inital value.
hi Craig, I know there expensive to get your hands on but testing some of the off grid home battery setups, in particular the expandable server rack style will be interesting. Especially with all the talk about installing batteries in people houses. Thanks
Thanks for doing this review, I was considering buying a 2 hand one of these for $1000. Think I might pass. I am new to lithium and have a 125ah Invicta bmpro in my Jayco. I am having troubles with BMS cut out while trying to get solar charge into it. That bms cuts out and the voltage jumps up to the 14.2v saying 100% full, when it is not. Is there a fix for this problem of the BMS rejecting solar chatter. I tried today discharging the battery to very low, hoping to reset the BMS. The battery accepted solar better ,but eventually shot up to 14.2 volts again. The battery is 3-4years old but I am not the original purchaser. I hope I can get this resolved, there $2k!!
In the end it’s making name plate but it is a concern that the wires are varying lengths. I have had this battery in service for 2 years in my boat as a house battery and I made that choose on cell construction and quality. It looks like that same quality from the 100ah invicta batteries have not made it to the 200ah, at least with the wire lengths. Still has prismatic cells as advertised. In saying that it has been very good in application for me over the 2 years to date and I have 7 years warranty to cover it. BTW this is a $1800 battery ATM. Not $2200.
Come to think of it, why would you buy that Invicta battery for 2200 bucks when you could have the smaller and better Victron 200ah battery for roughly 1500 or so, plus the cost of the separate BMS they require. The BMS might be 300 bucks or so, so that's roughly 1800 for the Victron all up. Am I right or is there something I haven't taken into account?
There is abit more like the FETs etc to accompany the BMS. But yeah it’s a lot of money, a large foot print and feels like someone needed to crack the lid on it so consumers know what they are actually getting
Thanks for revealing where the LiFePO4 automotive batteries are at by at least some brands. Maybe accountants and marketing are responsible for short cuts. For that price this company needs to do a practices reassessment.
Would have been good to scan the QR code from the cells to get more information about them. And the numbers off the BMS. So how does the app work? It's showing 4 cells not 32! So it's measuring a group of 9 and what taking a average of the voltage? It's just deseptive and disappointing, no doubt there are other higher end batteries the same!
I reckon that -ve cable lengths are a big problem. I like the approach of paralleling all those cells - it averages the cell parameters. The price is silly by a factor of 2 at least.
WOW just goes to show you never know what’s under the lid! Didn’t make capacity, using 32 small 25ah cells! Why? Has to be heaps cheaper! Wiring and connector issues, and obviously the app is not reading four cells but a group as someone has already said! I wouldn’t be happy forking out over 2K for this! Great test!
