Hi Candy, I've been emailing you about this. I want 50 pieces 200Ah cells. If I order tomorrow, Tuesday through Carl Clark, can you get them shipped before the holidays?
Thank you. I have taken to just keeping them at 25C (80F) all year round (im in detroit) via heating pads under the batteries. I just wanted make sure I wasnt lowering their life that way.
Hi dexion, I'm very interested in your heating pads. Could you give us some details ie brand and part number of them? Also how are you controlling them? Can you post photos too? I've been thinking of what to use for this too as I know these things won't heat up like lead batteries do so I'll need to keep a little heat on them. Sure would be a big help if you'd share your knowledge!
Unfortunately they came with the car (solectria force) but people have used waterbed heaters and soil heaters. There is a controller in the battery boxes to control the heaters. They seem to max at 90F.
Subscribing. I am looking more and more into Hi power batteries. I hope you all will keep us updated. I have already dealt with Carl (in Midvale, Utah) for other EV parts and I am very happy with his service and attitude in general.
If you can afford to buy the new Winston Batteries with Yttrium you'd be much better off than with Hi-Power Cells. I got my Hi-Power because I got a good deal. I still like mine because of the price I paid, not because of the quality. They are good but are 08 batteries and not as good as others like TS or Calb. So I will continue to use mine until I can get the new Winston batteries.
If you can afford to buy the new Winston Batteries with Yttrium you'd be much better off than with Hi-Power Cells. I got my Hi-Power because I got a good deal. I still like mine because of the price I paid, not because of the quality. They are good but are 08 batteries and not as good as others like TS or Calb. So I will continue to use mine until I can get the new Winston batteries.
If you can afford to buy the new Winston Batteries with Yttrium you'd be much better off than with Hi-Power Cells. I got my Hi-Power because I got a good deal. I still like mine because of the price I paid, not because of the quality. They are good but are 08 batteries and not as good as others like TS or Calb. So I will continue to use mine until I can get the new Winston batteries.
hello all
just wanted to tell everyone about our situation. and/how hi power and the electric car co made everything right.
my name is kevin from topeka electric motor, we have showed you our 2000 s10 truck. topekaelectricmotor.com this is were it can be viewed.
we have 48 cells 200 amphr. with reap bms.
shortly after we had the truck running our bms found that we had some weak cells, these cells wouldnt hold the same substainable charge, we made 3 long test runs to try to get over the 100 mile mark, the batteries all performed exactly,the same to about 75miles. and then you could watch the voltage levels lowering considerably faster on these cells than the other cells. we had 10 cells showing these signs. you could put the truck on the charger and these 10 cells would come back to the correct voltage and all 48 cells would end up .030 volts from highest to lowest. like i said we did this test 3 times, loging voltages per cells and total volts per mile. aslong as you only drove less than 70 miles and then recharged, the cells performed exactly the same,you wouldnt of know there was a problem, until you went over that range and you then had these lower cell issues. without a good bms it would be hard to find and prove these issues.
hi power batteries say they have a 2 year warranty, well after all the documention and proof, we had 48 new cells show up at our shop today. we will be installing them this weekend.
big thanks to carl clark (electric car co ) and hi power batteries. stand up companies are hard to find these days.
Yttrium is a reactive metal that was used in the TS battery chemistry to basically contaminate the matrix but what that does is hold the matrix together better so it does not collapse over time near as fast. So what it is there for is structural integrity and increased the cycle life by a considerable amount with out really affecting the performance of the battery. Very little is used but that is all that is needed. Kind of like mixing carbon into iron to make steel. A little goes a long way. So now 70% DOD is up to 5000 cycles. Not quite doubled. Old style at 70% DOD was set at 3000 cycles.
Yttrium is a reactive metal that was used in the TS battery chemistry to basically contaminate the matrix but what that does is hold the matrix together better so it does not collapse over time near as fast. So what it is there for is structural integrity and increased the cycle life by a considerable amount with out really affecting the performance of the battery. Very little is used but that is all that is needed. Kind of like mixing carbon into iron to make steel. A little goes a long way. So now 70% DOD is up to 5000 cycles. Not quite doubled. Old style at 70% DOD was set at 3000 cycles.
Yes they are. Rickard is using them and he is getting them for his Escalade project too. I'd love to get them. Found out that TS was before Calb and that Calb is licensed to use the TS technology. So TS gets paid by CALB but only Winston (TS) uses Yttrium in the cells to increase the life of the cells. Price is no different than before. The older ones are still great. But the Y ones are much better. So my pick is the the Winston Batteries. They hold the patent on these cells. Others pay to use the technology. So Winston is the top of the line when it comes to these LiYFePo4 cells. Not exactly sure where the Y is to be put with the designation.
Did some looking on Alibaba, and ran the numbers on one example. I came up with roughly 150wh/kg on one of them but I don't know if that can be trusted. Do you know if the energy density is any different? Last I heard the "Blue" sky energy LiFePO4 version was top of the food chain with 115 wh/kg with cells like mine being around 90.
So my pick is the the Winston Batteries. They hold the patent on these cells. Others pay to use the technology. So Winston is the top of the line when it comes to these LiYFePo4 cells. Not exactly sure where the Y is to be put with the designation.
I have an early set of the Thunder Sky Yttrium cells. The data sheet lists them as being Thunder Sky LiFeYPO4 cells with the part number designated as TS-LFP60AHA. These are the ones I was slapping around to 5C in the Datsun that are now going in the Buggy. Right now I cannot get the Winston site to load the MSDS sheets but at one point remember seeing that there was actually more Yttrium than Iron.
I have noticed that CALB has upped the stored capacity. The current cell they offer, in the same size as the TS 60 amp hour cell, is now rated at 70 amp hours.
The other factor to consider is cell matching. So far from what I've seen CALB has the edge on that. I actually consider close grouping more important than the difference between 3000 and 5000 cycles, since 3000 cycles on a 50 mile pack is already 150,000 miles, and an imbalanced pack can kill cells quickly.
CALB is the Density Champion but they still are sitting at 3000 cycles at 70% DOD. As for quality control? I'd almost bet one would be hard pressed to truly find any major discrepancy between the two companies. One may be a bit tighter on that control but the differences for our uses are not what I would call critical. Were talking thousandths of a volt differences and may be a few AHs differences. So you have a cell that is rated at 200 AH and it tests out to 220 AH. Wow, you got 20 free AH or a 20 AH fudge range to play with. I'd go with the Winston batteries. The differences in capacity and voltage from the factory are so small I think its a non issue. Remember that these guys are not building these batteries for us. They are building them for customers that need thousands upon thousands of them for vehicle projects. Big companies. They just don't mind selling to you. Money is money after all.
The groupings are close. Work within the parameters you have and that extra 2000 cycles for the same price is a pretty big friggin deal. These batteries are already a pretty big friggin deal to begin with. Even the worst of these LiFePo4 batteries out surpass the best of any other battery made that you can buy today.
I'll disagree. Closer capacity makes management much easier. Matching your cells closely makes life easier and less likely to damage an individual cell. I'm not talking about getting extra capacity, I'm talking about getting each cell capacity to closely match all the others. I'd much rather have all my cells at 210ah instead of a range from 210-220 since the extra capacity of those over 210 can't be used.
It would be true but you purchased a cell with 200 AH and that is your basis of your setting up your cells. Not the extra that is built in. I would bet that most of the cells from Winston or CALB are close in voltage and capacity. To the point that it is truly is not something you have to worry so damn much about. I see so many making such a doo about what has been shown to work reliably for quite some time. The problem I see is that every one is trying to squeeze every ounce out of every cell every cycle. It is just such a waste of time and effort. You could actually be out enjoying your drive instead of fretting so about such small differences if you set your pack up properly.
It is a much too do about nothing. It's like trying to scrape out every ounce of unneeded weight from your car to get that extra thousandths of a second off a blast from one green light to the next on your street car. What a waste of time.
I agree it would be good to have the capacity close. They are.
Its fine to disagree.
I just don't plan on wasting the time or fretting so.
Actually that extra is being used. With the extra you actually get to use the full 200 AH with some to spare. Now if you have a pack that has cells that are like 180 AH and some with 220 AH then you may have some troubles but the cells don't come that way new. They just don't come with such a large variance.
I'm talking about the extra capacity between 210 and 220 ah, you can only use up to 210 ah. Simple fact is the cells will likely track more closely over time if they are at the same capacity. OEM's are concerned with matching cells and so should we. Remember the video from Jay Whiticare and what he stressed? Match those cells. I'm taking his advice. Until someone reports what their batch of TS cells come in at we don't know how close they really are. We do know how close the recent batches of CALB's are, and we do know that previous batches of TS cells have not been as close. Hopefully the new ones are closely matched. Pick whatever cells you want, but I'll continue to recommend that people get closely matched cells, just as Jay Whiticare did. Also the extra cycle life of TS is projected, not documented as far as I know.
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