Best Practices for LiFePO4 Battery

[poloman]

Guys,

With your suggestions (previous thread) + searching the forum decided to order LiFePO4 24v 100ah battery from sun-thing28.

Is there is anything i can do to longer the battery life?

Cause one of my 'coworkers' dealt with Lithium batteries before. and first lasted and stayed strong 1year +, second(same) died after 3 months.

Also dogman dan noted that sun-thing28's chargers sucks.

One Ebay vendor with some feedback here at ES, is a guy called sunthing. We do know he ships pouch packs. His chargers suck, but that's easy to fix.

Which charger should i buy instead of default sun-thing28's?

 

[wesnewell]

Don't pull more than a 1C discharge and don't go below 20% soc. Should last at least 5 years that way.

 

[dogman dan]

Perhaps I was a bit harsh on sun thing.

As long as the charger functions fine, it will be ok. It won't cause early death of the battery. I just meant the cheaper chargers had a relatively high failure rate, as all cheaper model lead or lithium chargers do. A particular one may last for years, another fail in days or weeks.

For longer lifespan, easy discharges with lower amps if possible helps. 100 ah, means you can discharge at 100 amps, and still be a pretty easy one the battery discharge. So likely you are ok on that.

Also good, don't discharge till it's completely empty unless you must. Ideally, stop at 80 ah or so. 80%.

Heat helps batteries degrade, so if possible, do what you can to keep it cool. Shade, paint the box it's in white vs black, etc. Ideally it would be at room temp, vs a flaming hot garage.

If it gets stored a long time unused, try to store it as cool as possible without freezing it. Don't charge a frozen battery. Put a battery that has been stored a long time on the charger continuously for several days before using it again. This will help balance the pack again. The bms is slow to do that.

 

[dnmun]

i think someone mentioned their sunthing charger went to 60V which is too high so it needs to be adjusted down to 57.7-58V or so because most if not all BMSs use the 3.60V balance voltage now.

that Vpower charger is famous for blowing the ICL right away but it doesn't seem to have been happening lately so maybe or surely they got a better source for the ICLs.

 

[poloman]

Perhaps I was a bit harsh on sun thing.

As long as the charger functions fine, it will be ok. It won't cause early death of the battery. I just meant the cheaper chargers had a relatively high failure rate, as all cheaper model lead or lithium chargers do. A particular one may last for years, another fail in days or weeks.

For longer lifespan, easy discharges with lower amps if possible helps. 100 ah, means you can discharge at 100 amps, and still be a pretty easy one the battery discharge. So likely you are ok on that.

Also good, don't discharge till it's completely empty unless you must. Ideally, stop at 80 ah or so. 80%.

Heat helps batteries degrade, so if possible, do what you can to keep it cool. Shade, paint the box it's in white vs black, etc. Ideally it would be at room temp, vs a flaming hot garage.

If it gets stored a long time unused, try to store it as cool as possible without freezing it. Don't charge a frozen battery. Put a battery that has been stored a long time on the charger continuously for several days before using it again. This will help balance the pack again. The bms is slow to do that.

Is there the specific charger you can recommend?