I thought I would give my experience with the new US distributor of Winston LiFePo cells: Balqon. So far I am very happy with them. My 1472 pound 48kw LiFePo pack shipped to my marina in five days, from the time I ordered. (I have had Amazon orders take longer) They came in wooded crates with plenty of padding. So they get high marks in the shipping department. The shipper even broke one of the pallets so I am glad they where well packed.
I ordered 16 1000ah cells: http://www.balqon.com/store.php#ecwid:category=2736691&mode=product&product=11905253
They offer a five year warranty on the above web site, I am not sure what that covers and they did NOT include any written warranty card with the cells. I did some research on the company before I made an order this expensive. It is publicly traded so who knows they might even be around long enough to honor any warranty claims. They did include instructions on how to do the first charge. Apparently I need to charge them "slowly" under (.5CA) the first time to 4 volts.
The cells where damn heavy over 90 pounds apiece, it took me half the afternoon to get them all on the boat. They are on the back deck and my bow is now sitting a little high ;-)
I know few of you will be ordering packs this big, I have to feed two Electric Yacht 360ibl's. But they do have some smaller cells with built in CAN bus controlled BMS: http://www.balqon.com/store.php#ecwid:category=2897128&mode=product&product=12658249
That might be a good fit for some of you.
Next step in my project is building the battery boxes, testing each cell, and installing the BMS. You can follow my slow slow progress here http://www.deny.org
No comments:
Post a Comment