Discover LiFeP04

Wheelman55

Any opinions or knowledge (Dave A) on these batteries...other than the high price?   They (Discover Batteries) say that they've been working with Schneider; recently hiring one of the Schneider execs to help expand the North American market.  Curious.

http://discoveraes.com/

Dave Angelini

All true but the real tipping point for me will be when the shunt is designed into the BMS and calibrated for accuracy by the battery manufacturer. I want an estimate of life left and definitely do not want to be paralleling batteries less than 10 KWH.

I do not think they do this yet and at the price they want they have work to do. If I am wrong I would be happy to hear it!

Wheelman55

Thanks Dave. Appreciate your knowledge. 

Dave Angelini

Anything for sunny Terlingua!

Graham Parkinson

Hig Price is right - Was quoted $10,000 Canadian for one battery and we would need two or three! Seems like a great product and would be buying them if only mass production could bring price down in near future.

Dave Angelini

All of the LFP are around $1000  (US) per usable KWH. The Discover will come down but they only recently are on the US market.

Graham Parkinson

Not exactly about Discover LiFePO4 (LFP) batteries, but of general interest re factors in the price of Li batteries (price of cobalt in particular) :

GENEVA, March 6 (Reuters) – The car industry is moving towards making electric car batteries with a higher ratio of nickel, Ola Kaellenius, Daimler board member responsible for research and development, said on Tuesday.

High cobalt prices have been pushing manufacturers to adjust the recipe for the batteries used to power electric cars to reduce the amount of cobalt and increase the nickel content.

Each electric car battery uses between 8-12 kilograms of cobalt. More than half of annual mined supply of cobalt is sourced from Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kaellenius said carmakers had also tried to increase the operating range of electric cars by experimenting with the ratio and mix of nickel cobalt and manganese in batteries.

"The main trend is toward NMC," Kaellenius said, referring to nickel manganese and cobalt. "We saw a mix of 1:1:1 then we went to 6:2:2 and now some suppliers are even talking about 9:05:05," Kaellenius said of the ratio of materials.

The auto industry currently has a range of different battery recipes competing for use in battery cathodes.

One is NCA, or lithium nickel cobalt aluminium oxide, produced by Panasonic and used by Tesla which competes with NMC, lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide.

Chinese manufacturers use a composition called LFP which has a lower energy density but also does without cobalt, while Japanese carmakers use LMO, or lithium manganese oxide, which is used by Nissan and LG Chem.

just starting

I paid 2450$ for 16 one hundred amp 3.2v fortune cells with a 4K cycle spec at 80dod with a .5 c rate