How good is Felicity solar LiFePO4 batteries

Started by Cuteajax, July 05, 2021, 05:16:31 AM

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Cuteajax

Does anyone have experience with LiFePO4 batteries manufactured by Felicity Solar (a Chinese company)? How reliable is the product?
Outback VFX3024E Inverter
Midnite Classic 200 Charge controller
6 x 320 Watts Monocrystalline Solar Panels
450 AmpHr @ 24 Volts Battery bank

cjbamenda

Interesting to stumble across your post and question. I've had a set of Felicity 24v LiFePO4 batteries installed for about 2 months now. Thus far, they seem to work great. They are a big improvement over my aging/failing AGM batteries. Here in Cameroon, I was surprised to find that the lithium batteries are within a reasonable price range as compared to the other common batteries in the market: Gel. If one compares the cost vs the expected life span as well as the usable capacity (DoD), the lithiums come out on top in both longevity and cost over time, cost per cycle, etc. Thus far, I'm a fan. I hope they prove to be

The one real downfall is the fact there is no lithium setting in the Classic. It requires some investigation and decisions to be made how best to make the Classic settings work with lithiums. There are clear instructions, but there are still grey areas as to what are the optimal voltage settings to prolong their life (i.e., not charging them up to 100% all the time).

The other issue to me is that there is sparse technical info about the Felicity batteries. I've not yet had a chance to really open one up to see what all is inside. Hopefully one of these days.

The only other user of these batteries I've found in my research is a Texan married to a Filipana. They bought Felicity batteries for their house in the Philippines. He recently reviewed them that they have been working fine for ~10 months. They have a YouTube channel called "Texas Filapino."
Classic 150 + Whizbang Jr.
Felicity LiFePO4 3 x 200AHr
Outback FX2024E

ClassicCrazy

Quote from: cjbamenda on January 20, 2022, 10:53:45 AM
Interesting to stumble across your post and question. I've had a set of Felicity 24v LiFePO4 batteries installed for about 2 months now. Thus far, they seem to work great. They are a big improvement over my aging/failing AGM batteries. Here in Cameroon, I was surprised to find that the lithium batteries are within a reasonable price range as compared to the other common batteries in the market: Gel. If one compares the cost vs the expected life span as well as the usable capacity (DoD), the lithiums come out on top in both longevity and cost over time, cost per cycle, etc. Thus far, I'm a fan. I hope they prove to be

The one real downfall is the fact there is no lithium setting in the Classic. It requires some investigation and decisions to be made how best to make the Classic settings work with lithiums. There are clear instructions, but there are still grey areas as to what are the optimal voltage settings to prolong their life (i.e., not charging them up to 100% all the time).

The other issue to me is that there is sparse technical info about the Felicity batteries. I've not yet had a chance to really open one up to see what all is inside. Hopefully one of these days.

The only other user of these batteries I've found in my research is a Texan married to a Filipana. They bought Felicity batteries for their house in the Philippines. He recently reviewed them that they have been working fine for ~10 months. They have a YouTube channel called "Texas Filapino."

Glad you found a good deal on lithiums.
Take a look at Will Prowse channel on youtube.
He tears down a lot of lithiums and critiques their build quality.
https://www.youtube.com/c/WillProwse/featured
Seems like there are lots of brands or rebranding of lithium packs and the insides could change over time.

Larry
system 1
Classic 150 , 5s3p  Kyocera 135watt , 12s Soneil 2v 540amp lead crystal for 24v pack , Outback 3524 inverter
system 2
 5s 135w Kyocero , 3s3p 270w Kyocera  to Classic 150 ,   8s Kyocera 225w to Hawkes Bay Jakiper 48v 15kwh LiFePO4 , Outback VFX 3648 inverter
system 3
KID / Brat portable

cjbamenda

Thanks for the info on Will Prowse. I've seen his channel and videos. Felicity, as I understand it, has focused most strongly on the African market. However, I was surprised to see they also have an online sales outlet in Georgia, USA!

As for packaging and repackaging, I believe that most of the LFP cells are coming from a few manufacturers in China anyway. There's just the question of quality/grading that seems to vary. It is difficult to know with a company like Felicity and many others. US-based companies like SimpliPhi provide long warranties and premium cells. However, they are also quite a bit more expensive. Their prices are far above what is feasible for the larger part of the African market in general.
Classic 150 + Whizbang Jr.
Felicity LiFePO4 3 x 200AHr
Outback FX2024E

ClassicCrazy

I just looked at their website for usa . They include shipping in price which is nice. But they only offer one year warranty.
But who knows how long many of the other places selling inexpensive lithiums will be in business so warranty might not mean much.

Larry
system 1
Classic 150 , 5s3p  Kyocera 135watt , 12s Soneil 2v 540amp lead crystal for 24v pack , Outback 3524 inverter
system 2
 5s 135w Kyocero , 3s3p 270w Kyocera  to Classic 150 ,   8s Kyocera 225w to Hawkes Bay Jakiper 48v 15kwh LiFePO4 , Outback VFX 3648 inverter
system 3
KID / Brat portable

boB


What I am hearing is that Li battery manufacturers are changing their requirements for charging parameters quite a bit so a hard-coded setting for even a particular Li battery might be a problem.

The "closed loop" method would be better where the BMS just tells us what to do.  So when someone buys a new lithium battery, it would be taken care of by the manufacturer themselves.  It would be near impossible to make a lithium setting in a charge controller to constantly keep the setting up to date especially for so many different systems.

Until that communications comes, it is best if the Li manufacturer documents their system properly and adjust the Classic or whatever to the proper settings for your particular battery and BMS.

Even then, I am seeing a WHOLE lot of issues with Li BMS's not being able to hook up to a normal inverter without crashing the BMS.  Check out Will Prowse's  DIY solar forum...     https://diysolarforum.com/     and especially the thread  "Schneider xw pro 6848 not powering up with eg4 lithium battery"

It kind of shows how badly some of these lithium systems work without a "pre-charge" resistor.  Even with that, it is kind of hard to get some of them running correctly.   Then again, some of them just work...  I think that Blue Planet systems might be the best but I'm not sure if they're even perfect with every inverter out there.   Problem appears to be the capacitors on the battery side of the inverter.

I think that our B17, as big as it is, might be OK with LiFePo4 batteries though because their inverter modules already pre-charge because of the hot-swap circuitry that is built in.  We don't know for sure though.   

I got off on a different subect there... Sorry.

boB
K7IQ 🌛  He/She/Me