Replaced old lead acid batteries with LifePO4 for home power system off grid

So I finally got around to replacing my ancient 35000 watt hours of LA batteries with about 30000 watt hours of LifePO4. What a major change this is! It over doubled my usable watt hours even though the total bank has less.  With LA cells I could only use about 25-30% with the new LifePo4 I can use 60%. Voltage sag is more or less a thing of the past. With a full system load the voltage only sagged 0.1 volt with my old bank under full load it was over 1.0 volt of sag.

Simply amazing!!!

Certainly sounds like a winner. In your specific situation,  did you compile a direct cost comparison between the two battery types? I'd love to see the numbers if possible,  while still keeping the vast performance improvement in the back of my (rapidly shrinking) mind. Thanks for this post, it helps to shape  my decisions

For the combination of home energy, farmyard vehicle propulsion, and potentially future EV purchase, I continue to try to keep up with developments in solar energy and storage.  While very tempted to sink money into LiFePO4, I'm more inclined to spend only 'dabbling' amounts of cash here and wait to see where battery storage is heading.  So much change in the battery industry and with sodium ion battery technology moving quickly, that may turn out to be a less costly and more eco-friendy option in the near future.  Wife uses an electric Polaris 4X4 Ranger for farm chores and we are sticking with lead acid for the time being, but I will likely test LiFePO4's in my electric golf cart which also is a farmyard 'go-fer' vehicle. As we reside not far from the Canadian border in the northern Plains (USA), I was very encouraged by a bar-stool discussion this past week with a gal from Germany.  She was mentioning her family farm in a mid-central location of that country where she had helped her father install a solar system that is grid-tied, yet supplying a good portion of their home power.  Germany has a decent committment to solar and likley subsidizes these installations (??), but I'm not sure about that.  At any rate, successes in northern regions have me still leaning towards solar integration (or stand-alone?) with grid for our remaining days here.  Just seems from my limited experience so far with that technology to be extremely under-utilized at this point.

Rico Loma wrote:Certainly sounds like a winner. In your specific situation,  did you compile a direct cost comparison between the two battery types? I'd love to see the numbers if possible,  while still keeping the vast performance improvement in the back of my (rapidly shrinking) mind. Thanks for this post, it helps to shape  my decisions

No when I bought these last year my thinking was if I treat them right they would be the last batteries for home power I'll ever need to buy as they will in all likely hood out live me! They were rated for 8000 full cycles or roughly 22 years. Then after much research I had also determined that keeping the battery cells between 20 and 80 percent would double and maybe even triple the lifespan. So now we are talking 16,000-24,000 cycles or days. Well there are 365 days in a year and 16,000 divided by 365 that's roughly 43.5 years and I feel I'll be lucky if I live another 25-30 years....  These are Eve 280AH cells and I have 32 of them in a 16s2p arrangement. I also got them on sale with free shipping for under $4,000. To me that's a no brainer as $4,000 would barely pay a power bill for 3 years for a small extremely efficient house.

I purchased them from the 18650 battery store.

You hit the 16 d nail on the head. That was exactly the type of thinking I hoped for, so thanks Larry

I have 1500+-ah of series/parallel 24 volt L-16 type lead acid US Batteries. No grid here anywhere close.
Looking at Battle Born's website, for American tech, I would likely need about 15,000USD worth of heated batteries, to replace them. Mine cost, in 2023, about 2600USD through Oasis Montana, no sales tax, picked them up in Missoula, no freight.
LA batteries, for all their apparent shortcoming are:
Stone
Axe
Simple.
....and pretty dang heavy.
Been around for well over a hundred years. I'm not sure I want a battery that takes it's own brain to function, even if that brain is American made.
We leave our home 4-6 weeks in the early winter, the temps inside get down to about 10F.  Therefore the self heating batteries. Our winter sun is actually decent. My snow covered yard opens to the south, our lake freezes/snows over. One big reflector. Solar panels work better in the cold.
You could spend less for LiFePo I'm sure. But if you told me you believe the circuitry and safety features of some cut rate Chineese battery you bought on TEMU/AliBaba/Amazon, for which you will have NO recourse in 2-4 years, were equivalent to the units sold by a Nevada based company, I would say my belief is you are delusional. In my mind because of complexity and 'newness' of tech, the lithium is not yet close to proven.
Go to the Battle Born website and look at the list of tests and compliances they subject their batteries to and provide the same data for the batteries you seem to want to recommend to me.
I may or may not not get 3000 cycles to death a LiFePo battery seems to promise, but I never run my batteries to less than 70%, and the 4v lead beasts these batteries replaced lasted about 30 years. I don't kid myself that these batteries are the equivalent of the 4V KWatts we had, but I also could apparently replace my US Batteries like 5-6 times before the cost breakeven for lithium is approached.
My only caution for a high capacity LA like these is to mind the charge rate they like for bulk charging. These batteries like almost 40A of charge to begin.
300W panels are cheap, charge controllers and cabling are not, doing that on a budget is tough, possibly not having to panel up is a plus for lithium. Some of the current charge controllers or control/inverter options no longer support three stage LA charging, something else to consider.
Battery prices in Canada are quite high. I can buy in the States and pay the 10% duty and come out money ahead, even with currency conversion.
When your lithium batteries are 15 years old you can tell me how wonderful they are/have been.
I'll be waiting/listening.

Tommy Bolin wrote:I have 1500+-ah of series/parallel 24 volt L-16 type lead acid US Batteries. No grid here anywhere close.
Looking at Battle Born's website, for American tech, I would likely need about 15,000USD worth of heated batteries, to replace them. Mine cost, in 2023, about 2600USD through Oasis Montana, no sales tax, picked them up in Missoula, no freight.
LA batteries, for all their apparent shortcoming are:
Stone
Axe
Simple.
....and pretty dang heavy.
Been around for well over a hundred years. I'm not sure I want a battery that takes it's own brain to function, even if that brain is American made.
We leave our home 4-6 weeks in the early winter, the temps inside get down to about 10F.  Therefore the self heating batteries. Our winter sun is actually decent. My snow covered yard opens to the south, our lake freezes/snows over. One big reflector. Solar panels work better in the cold.
You could spend less for LiFePo I'm sure. But if you told me you believe the circuitry and safety features of some cut rate Chineese battery you bought on TEMU/AliBaba/Amazon, for which you will have NO recourse in 2-4 years, were equivalent to the units sold by a Nevada based company, I would say my belief is you are delusional. In my mind because of complexity and 'newness' of tech, the lithium is not yet close to proven.
Go to the Battle Born website and look at the list of tests and compliances they subject their batteries to and provide the same data for the batteries you seem to want to recommend to me.
I may or may not not get 3000 cycles to death a LiFePo battery seems to promise, but I never run my batteries to less than 70%, and the 4v lead beasts these batteries replaced lasted about 30 years. I don't kid myself that these batteries are the equivalent of the 4V KWatts we had, but I also could apparently replace my US Batteries like 5-6 times before the cost breakeven for lithium is approached.
My only caution for a high capacity LA like these is to mind the charge rate they like for bulk charging. These batteries like almost 40A of charge to begin.
300W panels are cheap, charge controllers and cabling are not, doing that on a budget is tough, possibly not having to panel up is a plus for lithium. Some of the current charge controllers or control/inverter options no longer support three stage LA charging, something else to consider.
Battery prices in Canada are quite high. I can buy in the States and pay the 10% duty and come out money ahead, even with currency conversion.
When your lithium batteries are 15 years old you can tell me how wonderful they are/have been.
I'll be waiting/listening.

If we are all still around in 15-30 years I'll be happy to.

I built my system from parts so I can also replace parts as needed IE: the BMS / brain if it goes bad