BLS battery LIFEPO4 from AliExpress have you ordered lately

[RV Truck Camper]

Has anyone order a BLS battery from AliExpress in the last month or so? Been tracking mine and it has appeared to have stopped in Hong Kong. BLS keeps saying it is in the US but I have seen nothing to comfirm this.

 

[RV Truck Camper]

In your experance where has it been better to order larger capacity batteries? Alibaba or AliExpress?
What batteries have you had better luck with?

 

[Berniep]

I also have some on order from BLS on aliexpress. I ordered on march 11 and its been in ready for dispatch since I have not contacted them because I heard it could take 6 weeks to get them and the tracking on aliexpress is unreliable. Hoping some others can chime in on what to expect. at what point I should contact them etc.

 

[AndreL]

I ordered the 4X 105AH cells on 27th Jan, they just arrived yesterday. Took about 4 days to get from LA to Washington on FedeX. Tracking on Alibaba showed HKG for ever. That's 70 days. The cells look ok but could be used as the terminals all have a circular score mark. I'll post picture shortly.

Also they have been paralleled and top balancing for 12 hours @3.65V and still drawing about 1Amp.

I have 4 of the 280AH cells that are discussed on the thread below. They are excellent.

Xuba Electronics: DEAL - 280AH LiFePo4 cells. Purchase & Review

Captain!- I suspect what matters also is time at 1C. If you might run air conditioner at 75% duty cycle for hours it would be different than five minutes of microwave to boil water for your tea. Then again your bank capacity wouldn’t support high C rate load for hours. I think you can predict...

diysolarforum.com

 

[AndreL]

 

[AndreL]

Warning: Do not buy BLS 105AH cells. They are useless and you cannot draw more than a few Amps before voltage drops significantly. I have put in for a refund.

 

[Dhowman]

Warning: Do not buy BLS 105AH cells. They are useless and you cannot draw more than a few Amps before voltage drops significantly. I have put in for a refund.

105 or 150? If the later, lots-o-folks here have those and haven't mentioned that. Waiting for my last box before I can test mine though.

 

[AndreL]

105 or 150? If the later, lots-o-folks here have those and haven't mentioned that. Waiting for my last box before I can test mine though.

105AH not 150AH. Unfortunately they all have a deep score on the terminal and scuffing on the case.

 

[AndreL]

Has anyone seen the circular scratches on 150AH BLS cells?

They are claiming that their testing caused the damage to the terminals and the scuffing of the blue heat shrink wrapper is normal. Their last message was "You don't need to worry!".

However pack also failed to top balance with one cell always lower voltage while the others were good. It took ~35AH extra to bring that last cell, on individual charge, to the 3.64V condition.

 

[Berniep]

Mine just showed up in California on fedex. I got an alert from my fedex account taht I had a shipment headed my way. The tracking on aliexpress still doesnt show it lol. Due on the 20th so a little over a month,
not too bad.

 

[RV Truck Camper]

Bernie same here, FedEx sent me a notice yesterday. According to the them due here this Friday. Wait to see if they are new unmarked post cells.

 

[Dhowman]

Check the busbars that come with 'em when they arrive. My 150's did not come with the right ones. BLS is rectifying that and the package (w 4 of my 16 cells) that FedEx lost. The just sent replacements for both. Due in 5 weeks to so though. Nothing to be done about that. They say they're opening a US Warehouse though as soon as this COVID thing passes. They would really like to streamline the logistics of getting these kinds of things to us quicker than they're able to now. They sound like they genuinely care when $&^ like this happens.

 

[AndreL]

Update on the 105AH cells. I cleaned up the scratches and bus bars that were supplied and managed to top balance though 2 cells were at touch difficult.
Then discharged at 21.5A in a 0.2C capacity check without break and the AH was exactly 105AH.
At 2.8V I bottom balanced to 2.95 volts each individual cell by selective cell charging bypassing BMS while still configured in a 4S pack.
Now charging up on solar.

Btw I ordered my cells on 23rd Jan and they took till 6th April to arrive. Was bad time to order. Seemed like forever to arrive so be thankful.

Let me know how your tests go please.

 

[AndreL]

Set up and battery balance

 

[RV Truck Camper]

Received batteries 4-17 order 2-28. Tops of 190AH are clean and scratch free. I do not have BMS yet, hopefully next week. All cells where less then a hundredth of a volt. That's the only volt meter I have at the second. Next week will try testing.

 

[RV Truck Camper]

Received batteries 4-17, ordered 2-28. The 190AH batteries have clean terminals. Do not have my BMS yet, maybe next week. The bus bars it came with are 70mm long x 12mm wide x 1.5mm thick. Seem a little small to me. More later after I get to test them.

 

[RV Truck Camper]

Doing some search in the package found eight bus bars. More than enough to double them.

 

[Berniep]

OK I got my 150ah cells. Packaging was top notch, by far the best I have seen for a Chinese shipper although I have not ordered something this expensive or massive. The whole thing is basically laminated in packing tape plus plastic corner protectors. I only opened one cell package but It had no marks on the terminals and the blue plastic looked good to me with only a very light scuffing visible when you help it up to the light just right. They look absolutely brand new to me.

One problem. There are no buss bars or hardware. I took everything out of the box and there wasn't anything else in the box. Unless they are in one of the other individual cell boxes looks like I'll be making my own. I'll do a more thorough search later in the week when I get a chance to get them all unpacked. My power supply to top balance them is not here yet anyway.

 

[RV Truck Camper]

My busbars, studs and nuts where in a package stuck down in between the cells.

 

[Berniep]

Ok I searched very thougholy but they arent there. I told them that I didnt want to wait andwould get some screws locally and just needed the size. Whoever I was chatting with sent a picture of the tapping machine display lol. Thats pretty good service imo. BTW the size is m6x1. Pretty happy so far.