Hey - I'm thinking about getting a pallet or more of lithium ion (LiFePO4) batteries shipped to Raleigh from China. I'm not having much luck finding these batteries on the East Coast.
I'm trying to gauge the interest in splitting a shipment. I need 20 or so for my scooter. Depending on the price, I may get enough to replace the lead acid batteries in my second scooter. There's a significant discount at 100 or so cells (the exact number depends on the amp-hours of the cells). Anyone interested?

3/15/2012 10:19:37 AM

price?

Battery size/configuration? Are these just single LiPo cells?

[Edited on March 15, 2012 at 11:21 AM. Reason : .]

3/15/2012 11:20:08 AM

Going to need to offer more info man.

3/15/2012 11:25:55 AM

I'm looking at purchasing medium capacity (40-50 amp-hour) cells. They come in 40 Ah, 50 Ah, 100 Ah configurations. These batteries are larger than RC size - they're better for large-scale UPS, EV (scooter, motorcycle, car), or forklifts.

The test results from Company 1 (CHL) show that there are some very low internal resistance numbers for these cells. The anecdotal evidence is that under load the voltage drops are very small, making the batteries perform so much better than Thundersky, CALB, or GBS. So I could, for example, get by with using 18 CHL batteries instead of 20 Thundersky (but I'll get 20 and just enjoy the extra speed/capacity).
The other option is that Company 2's batteries (GBS, which are pretty good batteries, so I've heard) are discounted heavily (80 cents per Ah) in bulk right now. We'd need to get 10,000 Ah of batteries (they come in 40, 60, 100, 200 Ah cells) of the GBS batteries to get that discount.

I need 800 Ah - 1600 Ah at the most. So obviously, I need more folks to fill this level of batteries.

For those not familiar with LiFePO4 (and it's close variants), these batteries are good for 2000+ charge cycles (when treated well), so they are very long life and cheaper over the long haul than pretty much any other battery chemistry.

[Edited on March 15, 2012 at 12:01 PM. Reason : ,]

3/15/2012 11:57:39 AM

I just got a quote for the CHL batteries at $1.15/Ah, based on a shipment of 10,000 Ah. So these very good batteries would be, e.g., $46 per 40 Ah battery plus a small shipping charge.

So to summarize:
CHLs = $1.15 per amp-hour
GBS = $0.80 per amp-hour

3/15/2012 1:05:19 PM

By the way, this thread is cross-posted in "The Garage".

3/15/2012 2:13:20 PM

Cross posting is frowned upon

/site_postguide.aspx

[Edited on March 15, 2012 at 2:27 PM. Reason : proper url]

3/15/2012 2:27:12 PM