Where can I buy LifePo4 grade A prismatic cells in India?

[rimgeaper]

I come across a lot of IndiaMart vendors selling LifePo4 cells and I don't know which ones are reliable. I can't find anyone selling known brands like EVE, CATL or CALB. If any of you have purchased them from Alibaba do share your experience.

 

[skt907]

I purchased few from Robu.in sometime back for a project it worked fine.
If you don't find exactly what you are looking for, you can call them up, sometime they can source it for you.
In my experience they have been reliable.

 

[kuduku]

I come across a lot of IndiaMart vendors selling LifePo4 cells and I don't know which ones are reliable. I can't find anyone selling known brands like EVE, CATL or CALB. If any of you have purchased them from Alibaba do share your experience.

Check Youtube , like UTL factory tour ,

And call up

 

[rimgeaper]

I purchased few from Robu.in sometime back for a project it worked fine.
If you don't find exactly what you are looking for, you can call them up, sometime they can source it for you.
In my experience they have been reliable.

Was it the Orange brand cell? What capacity did you purchase and did it have a QR code at the top between the terminals?

Check Youtube , like UTL factory tour ,

UTL seems to sell complete batteries while I'm looking for just the cells. I found a company named MDS enterprise on YouTube but their website doesn't work and their last video was on March.

 

[rsaeon]

UTL seems to sell complete batteries while I'm looking for just the cells. I found a company named MDS enterprise on YouTube but their website doesn't work and their last video was on March.

They're active on Whatsapp though their replies are short and not as articulate as their videos. They seem knowledgeable about what they're selling.

 

[6pack]

They're active on Whatsapp though their replies are short and not as articulate as their videos. They seem knowledgeable about what they're selling.

no mention of the lithium batteries on their website though. i wanted to know the price of a 150AH lithium battery to use with home ups and thought of checking their website.
are lithium batteries even compatible with 12v home ups systems?

edit: seems prices are 40k+ for 100AH batteries. not worth it imo, compared to lead acid ones.

 

[rockyo27]

From what i've read and seen....lifepo4 are better compared with lead acid batteries if to be used with lead acid based ups and inverters and afaik should be used with balancers rather.
Not much i know about them, but i will be getting into these in next 2 yrs when i will be moving to my own house as LA batteries usually last there warranty period ot max 1 year more.

 

[rsaeon]

There are two types of Lithium batteries, Li-Ion and LiFePO4. LiFePO4 is what I'm interested in since it's safer, but it's not as energy dense as Li-ion.

LiFePO4 is very close in compatibility to regular lead acid batteries, but it depends on what your UPS/Inverter float voltage is. If it's ~13.5V then LFP battery packs are a drop in replacement (always with a BMS). If it's higher then it gets complicated. Some information about this here: https://diysolarforum.com/threads/r...e-for-diy-lifepo4-batteries-sticky-post.5101/

MDS Enterprise has a Whatsapp catalogue with their products and prices:

edit: seems prices are 40k+ for 100AH batteries. not worth it imo, compared to lead acid ones.

Especially second hand ones — I bought a 100AH Quanta battery that's at 85% capacity for 5k last week. I like Amaron Quanta batteries because they have detailed datasheets with capacity, discharge rates with Peukert's law taken into account, charge rates, state of charge based on open-circuit voltage, etc. That said, flooded batteries just last longer.

 

[rimgeaper]

Especially second hand ones — I bought a 100AH Quanta battery that's at 85% capacity for 5k last week.

Wow where did you buy them from and did you test if they really had 85% capacity and not lower?

 

[rsaeon]

I've been seeing a local reseller on and off the last couple of years on OLX, I finally messaged him and asked about what they had.

did you test if they really had 85% capacity and not lower?

So this question has a multifaceted answer. Amaron publishes datasheets for their Quanta batteries, the datasheet for this battery shows a State of Charge chart based on voltage at the terminals with nothing connected to it. I charged the battery at 13.8V for 24 hours, let it rest for an hour and then measured the voltage and cross referenced the chart:



I measured 13V, so that's right around 85%. However I could be reading this chart completely wrong (or what it's for) so I'm going to do an actual capacity by connecting a few headlight bulbs and see how long it takes to reach the safe cut off voltage that's in another table on the datasheet:



I'm thinking a 18A load (4x 55w bulbs) until the voltage drops to 10.2 should return a value that's close to 72AH (85% of 85AH). The maths get a bit mathematical at this point and I might need to consult with someone more intelligent than me to figure this out. But that'll be sometime next week.

The multifaceted part of the question is what exactly is the capacity of a lead acid battery? Again, from the datasheet, this depends how much load you're putting on the battery and how long you want to use it:



If we want to use the full capacity of the battery (discharging until 10.5V in 5 hours, for example, from the table above) then we'll get only a little over 200 cycles from the battery. Which is about 7 months of life if you have daily power cuts lasting 5 hours each. Maybe less, depending on what the ambient temperature is in your area.

But if you oversize your batteries and discharge only to about 12.5V or 50%, then you'll get almost 2x to 3x battery life.

I have a 150AH battery connected to the wifi router (way over sized) but it's six years old at this point and I did a capacity test last year and I got like 42 hours of back up time:

PC Peripherals - UPS power consumption when idle

Are all UPS brands taking this much power and doing nothing? They're NOT doing nothing. A UPS has circuitry that, at minimum: keeps the battery fully charged to be able to provide max backup time monitors AC mains for voltage fluctuation to disconnect it from PC and power it via...

techenclave.com

 

[krugger]

I had bought a few li-ion cells from Mora (mora.net.in) a few years ago. They do have prismatic LiFePO4 cells. You can check them out if they may suit your requirement

 

[n1r0]

I charged the battery at 13.8V for 24 hours, let it rest for an hour and then measured the voltage and cross referenced the chart:

View attachment 183609

I measured 13V, so that's right around 85%. However I could be reading this chart completely wrong...

This chart seems to consider voltage reading immediately after charging.
100% SoC should be 12.65V open circuit for Lead Acid.
Anything above that indicates a surface charge, so you need to wait 24 hours before measuring.

More importantly, temperature and actual specific gravity of the electrolyte (how much water you added) affects the reading.

I think you'll like this site.

 

[rsaeon]

Yeah, I wasn't too sure about when to take the reading. These are AGM's so they're sealed though I'm tempted to open them up and add water since a people have done that to recover their AGM's on youtube.

I think you'll like this site.

Battery University! haha, yeah, I'm going to love reading through that.