16KWh more LiFePO4 Batteries - 4* 12volt 314Ah - 1587

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:05]Hi, and welcome to my playhouse. And today, we have a brand new video, and we're going to improve my big house battery. Um, I got a new car. I showed you that in the last video.

[00:00:17]It's out there. I even managed to get it dirty now. That is an electric car, and it eats uh power like nothing else.

[00:00:25]So, I need to store some more power for the car. So, I have purchased uh four new batteries here that we're going to be having a look at. And therefore, this video is sponsored by electric tape.

[00:00:41]This is a very nice brand. It's bought in Lidl.

[00:00:44]And uh this brand here is uh is a better brand.

[00:00:48]And it's a German brand, and this was given to me by a subscriber many years ago. And why is this video sponsored by electric tape? Well, because uh this battery brand reached out to me and wanted to work with me.

[00:01:02]And I wanted to do this for batteries.

[00:01:04]These are 12-V 314 amp hours, and long story short, they were too stingy to actually work with me. I wanted to do this project, which uh is four batteries, and it's it's a considerable amount of money in batteries. So, I didn't even ask the company to supply all of the batteries. I I asked if they would supply a couple, I would buy the other couple, and that way split the difference. And yeah, they they were too stingy. But then, I actually went ahead and bought all the batteries myself. And even [snorts] then, they didn't want to actually work with me.

[00:01:42]So, I am not going to name the company today. You might be able to figure it out, but my thought is if they want to be stingy and uh unreasonable to work with, well, how are they going to act if you have a problem with their battery.

[00:01:57]So, I am not going to advertise them, but >> [sighs] >> yeah, I did purchase four batteries and I don't think I will recommend the company. So, um let's get on with it.

[00:02:10]So, these are very nice and big lithium iron phosphate batteries.

[00:02:16]I said they are 12 V.

[00:02:18]That means that there are four cells in here and they are 314 amp hours. I have done videos with with these cells before. I I have assembled a couple of big house battery banks where you put 16 of these cells in and each of these plastic boxes has four of them and there are four batteries. So, we get up to about 16 again. So, combined these four batteries will give me the 48 V or actually the the 51.2 V that my house battery supplies. These are very nice heavy beasts.

[00:02:58]They they are very heavy.

[00:03:01]Um I had to get the smart edition with the Bluetooth thingy inside just because the other ones were sold out. I really didn't I would have liked Bluetooth in one of them and then the three others that wouldn't matter. But, these batteries they have an internal BMS 200 amps and they brag about it on the label here. There is 4,019 watt hours of capacity in each of these batteries.

[00:03:31]That is a lot in a battery like that.

[00:03:34]I [snorts] used to have lead acid batteries in my basement.

[00:03:39]I had 24 of them and each of those lead acid batteries they had about 1,000 watt hours.

[00:03:47]So, this one which is about the same size and actually also about the same weight, but it has four times the capacity as that old lead acid battery that I had down there. So, these four batteries more or less replaces 16 lead acid batteries that I started my battery bank with in the basement many years ago. I didn't actually start there. I actually started with old used car batteries.

[00:04:15]They didn't do too well. But, the idea to have four batteries here, I'm going to bring them into the basement at some point, but for talking, this is better. [clears throat] So, we're going to place this next to it here.

[00:04:31]And we can see we have all the terminals right there.

[00:04:35]So, we need to make a 48-V battery bank out of this. So, to do that, I have purchased some stuff.

[00:04:43]Uh let's see. This isn't it.

[00:04:46]I needed to connect these batteries together, and on the uh previous batteries, I have used a bracket like this to go between the the battery terminals from um not across that, that would be stupid, but from one to the other. And this just happens to be ever so slightly uh too short.

[00:05:10]That sucked. But, my good friend Jonas, he also he just built a battery at his place, and he got some brackets uh for his system, so um and he had some leftovers, so I asked if I could have them, and I could.

[00:05:28]And they are exactly the same length, so that didn't work out either. That sucked. So, I went and I um I purchased some cables for it. Annoying enough, these were I think they were about $5 each. They were 29.99 Danish Kroners each.

[00:05:51]Oh, was it But then I was looking around in the in the store. This is This is Biltema.

[00:05:58]So, this battery is actually it's kind of a battery terminal thing. But I was walking around and I found these things, wire clamp. They are for mounting pipes on the wall, I guess.

[00:06:13]Something. I have no idea. But I thought that looks very much like like this one.

[00:06:19]Just bend it. So, um yeah.

[00:06:23]I think it might be longer than than this one. So, I actually took one of them and I straightened it out like that.

[00:06:32]So, this one and that one is the same thing.

[00:06:36]I used a hammer for it. And wouldn't you know, it's just a little bit too short. It's not going to make it.

[00:06:44]Dang it.

[00:06:45]I have I have ordered the right length of these. Uh It It turns out there's 9.5 cm or 95 mm across there. So, all my good effort And this box was about the same price as as one of these cables. So, it's kind of a shame that it didn't Uh so, I could have There was six in this. So, I could have had four two uh sets of batteries in one of those stupid boxes if it had been that much longer.

[00:07:18]So, that's a bit of a shame. So, I'm going to I'm going to be using these.

[00:07:22]One there, one there, and one there.

[00:07:27]So, they are way too long and they're going to be replaced as soon as I get those longer uh bracket for it. Uh But yeah, I had to do something. This is I don't like this solution, but I um Uh I got I got lazy. I could probably just have cut that and put connectors on.

[00:07:50]Or I could maybe even make three of them, but yeah, we're just going to go this route until the connectors come.

[00:07:58]Okay, a little behind-the-scenes look.

[00:08:01]Um Yeah, it might come to a surprise to you guys, but these heavy batteries don't move themselves into the basement.

[00:08:10]It's a lot of hard work getting them. 30 kg a piece or something like that. I don't actually know precisely how much they weigh, but they are heavy. So, it's the next day and these batteries has magically uh gotten themselves into the basement.

[00:08:27]Uh they are 28 kg a piece. So, um yeah, they're not exactly lightweight.

[00:08:35]They they are kind of heavy. So, um also have a piece of this uh oh um fiber plaster board that I'm going to be setting them on.

[00:08:48]I don't know why, but yeah, for some reason I want them a little bit off the ground. So, here we are in the battery room.

[00:08:58]And uh now that we are not naming this battery because they were impossible to work with, I would really like to highlight the other battery companies.

[00:09:10]These are what cycle batteries, and as you can see, I have a lot of those. And that was about the same um deal that I did. I purchased some of them and then I got a couple of them for free. And uh yeah, that has worked out really well for me, at least. I and what cycle is I'm still talking to them.

[00:09:31]Up here we have Time USB, which I have also worked with. And they sent me all of these four little batteries for a tiny little project when I wanted to try this uh four batteries out for the first time.

[00:09:47]And the OG is Redodo battery who uh sent me uh Hmm, did I get two? I think I got both of these.

[00:09:57]Or did I buy one of them? I forget. I think I got one and I purchased the other one. But, yeah, that has worked out really well for me. Uh and I have a a really large battery bank here. And one of the reasons why I wanted Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:10:15]Yeah, you really didn't have to do that, so.

[00:10:18]One of the reasons why I wanted to test these batteries out is the form factor.

[00:10:23]I don't know if you can see it, but it very much looks like that these batteries are going to be able to fit uh in a shelf.

[00:10:31]And four of these batteries are 16 kWh, whereas the What Cycle batteries over here, four of these What Cycle batteries, which are 24 V, 100 Ah, 100 Ah, well, they are like 10 kWh on a shelf like that. So, with this other form factor, I will be able to fit 6 kWh more in each of my shelves. That is a rather big saving in space.

[00:11:06]So, What Cycle and this other brand, I think they came out of the same factory. I would very much recommend What Cycle over this brand because I have had way better experience with the communications with the company.

[00:11:22]Uh and yeah.

[00:11:25]So, I'm going to do a little bit of measuring, see if they actually fit in there.

[00:11:30]So, I have my measuring thingy, and I thought these shelves were 80 cm, but they're actually 90 cm. That is perfect because two of these batteries are just about 40 cm. So, that makes it 80 cm. But, as you can see over here on the shelves, there's also a piece of wood. Oh, you can't actually see that.

[00:11:55]There's actually a piece of wood that I put in to to stabilize it so that the Yeah.

[00:12:03]These I think they are good for 165 kg each shelf.

[00:12:09]But, let's not trust that too much. Just look at that.

[00:12:14]I haven't got the last one. It's just out in the other room, but they are going to fit perfectly there.

[00:12:22]Four batteries and there There's even space to spare. They're not all the way to the back.

[00:12:27]I'm not going to put them all the way to the back because I want access to the terminals. But, over here, these batteries, which is 24 V 100 Ah, they're all the way to the back. And we are also these has this balancer on here or battery equalizer. We are also going to be putting that on these batteries over here. And just to be perfectly clear, What Cycle, Lime USB, and Redodo, they all have different sizes of batteries and capacities. And I know for a fact I haven't checked the two other brands up here, but I know for a fact that What Cycle has the same form factor as this brand, which is not going to be named, so I could have picked What Cycle, but but at the time of purchase, these were having an offer, and What Cycle was not having an offer. And I just checked the weight of the batteries, which were 28 kg, and I could see that these had actually gotten 260 euros more expensive than when I hit the button on them and purchased them. So, so right now there is every chance in the world that what cycle or Times USB or Redodo is way cheaper.

[00:13:45]Here is a Redodo tiny battery. It's a 12.8 V. Uh but it's a tiny little 6 amp hour battery. And you might know this form factor. It's very widely used in UPS's and scooters and stuff like that.

[00:14:00]So, yeah. I thought that we would have to activate these. Normally, when you get batteries, uh lithium ion phosphate batteries, they are in a sleep mode for transport. And to activate them, you have to put a little bit of current into them, like charge them a little bit.

[00:14:20]Uh and I was just going to connect this battery to them, but when I connect it with my my trusty Chinese multimeter here, let's just hear her.

[00:14:33]DC voltage measurement 13.35 V.

[00:14:38]Yeah, she says that there's 13.35 V on it. So, and I just tested one of the other ones, and that's also activated.

[00:14:45]I'm going to test the ones that I have put in here. They're a little bit harder to get to, so just to make sure that all of them are active.

[00:14:53]This thing is ever so slightly noisy today.

[00:14:56]Uh the time is 9:32, I'm guessing 5.3 kW in, and I'm charging my car out there, and and the batteries, and oh, we can actually see that if we go over here, we should have some current coming in.

[00:15:12]24 amps getting into this battery.

[00:15:16]And that means that the other batteries are also getting a lot of power in.

[00:15:21]Might be able to see that if we press here, we are getting a total of 48 49 amps into the Mhm.

[00:15:32]while charging.

[00:15:33]So, that is cool.

[00:15:35]It's a really good idea to keep these plastic caps on here as long as possible because each of these batteries can supply 200 amps and probably a little bit more before the the safety protection switches off. So, um putting something over these terminals would be a very bad thing. Another thing that I didn't think about is I have ordered the brackets to to to go over here.

[00:16:02]And with me making this spacing for this wooden pole to support the next shelf, well, that is going to be too short over there, so I will have to rethink that when those brackets gets here. So, yeah, it changes all the time. I can assure you this thing is very quiet when I'm not filming.

[00:16:22]Um I have these balancers. These are special because these balance 225 V 25.

[00:16:30]25. What are they?

[00:16:35]25.6 V batteries and they make sure that they're in balance. Up here I have four 12 V batteries and I have a different balancer for that.

[00:16:46]And that makes sure that all of these batteries are in balance and and all good. And yeah, shout out to the company that makes those balancers and Crystal who is who's selling them.

[00:17:00]Uh not as much this one. That is available anywhere.

[00:17:04]But these for 224 V or 25.6 V batteries, not a lot of companies sells those.

[00:17:12]So, uh yeah, I've been working with Crystal on that one to get battery balancers for all of these.

[00:17:19]Well, I actually have five sets.

[00:17:23]Each of these two these two batteries is about 5 kW. So, I have five of them. So, that's So, that is about 25 kWh of battery capacity.

[00:17:32]And uh yeah, we're also going to be putting a balancer on the new new ones. Uh you can get them in different uh thoughts. This one is a You just connect that and it balances everything and it's fine. But, it doesn't show you anything and I really like that display thing.

[00:17:49]So, we have another one here which also does not show you anything, but this one has Bluetooth. So, you can actually connect your computer or your phone to it and you can see how the batteries are doing with this one. It's a little bit heavy, but this one has a connector. So, I thought, "Hmm, a connector. I like that." Because then you can you have a cable for it and you can connect a different cable. So, I could take this one and put it up together with these batteries and take that one and put it down here with these batteries, which I'm probably going to do for this video just for video purposes so that you can see what's going on.

[00:18:30]Oh, the sun is really happy outside. 6.

[00:18:34]29 2 6.3 6.3 We're making a lot of good power. We need somewhere to store it.

[00:18:43]So, I have put in some cables. Well, I should probably show you that.

[00:18:47]So, we can go down here.

[00:18:50]You can see that I have put uh screws in and I've connected the batteries. Uh this is It's not tight. This is just temporarily. These are going to be replaced, but uh we want to see something working. So, um I'm going to tighten them up a little bit. We're just going to see it working. And then I'm going to use these awesome plastic tools that Tobias, one of my patrons, made for me. So, it's it's plastic tools so that you are not messing around with metal around here where you could short circuit a battery like this.

[00:19:24]And so, I had I asked Tobias very nicely if he would 3D print some tools for me and he found this online. So, he didn't actually he didn't cat this, but he printed it out for me. So, I can now take this and I can put it on uh the the bolt or the fastener.

[00:19:47]Ah, I forget what those things are called.

[00:19:50]I guess it's a bolt on this.

[00:19:53]And they will fit. This one is 30 30 mm. We had to make the hole a little bit bigger because the drawing was 12 mm, so Tobias fixed it. And I also have a 15 mm one here, which originally was a 14 mm, so it was expanded a little bit.

[00:20:14]And lately, he printed me two new ones.

[00:20:18]Uh same configuration, but these should be in a harder plastic so that I would be able to tighten them bit more. I can't feel the difference, but I know these are the harder ones.

[00:20:30]And these with with labels on which has seen good wear are the older ones. So, that's cool. So, I have connected one of these cables for the balancers. So, I was actually about ready to put the balancer on and I thought you want to see that when all the smoke comes out of something.

[00:20:50]Oh, we need to film that. It's good entertainment. Here it goes.

[00:20:55]Uh I think this can only be connected one way.

[00:21:00]I hope.

[00:21:01]Yeah.

[00:21:04]Let's see.

[00:21:06]Let's do that.

[00:21:09]There.

[00:21:10]When we get all the wattage just it takes a little bit for it to There we are.

[00:21:17]to stabilize so we can go in and we can see them.

[00:21:22]So So what this will do it will steal a little bit of power from the high battery and put it to the low battery.

[00:21:30]But there isn't really any difference here so all the batteries are well balanced.

[00:21:39]Okay, I'm getting there.

[00:21:41]Uh I have mounted the black cable which goes in there naturally and there am I Yeah, the other side and I have put some some black insulation tape over it because I don't want this to short out anything while I'm working on it. So now I'm going to I'm going to loosen the the red one here which I hadn't tightened at all. So I'm just going to just going to use this by itself for a little bit.

[00:22:11]Remove the screw or bolt and put the this uh it's more of a breaker.

[00:22:21]I don't actually uh I want to be able to disconnect the battery bank and for that I'm using this thing here. It's a little bit underrated.

[00:22:33]It's um Uh this doesn't turn very well with these in it.

[00:22:41]There.

[00:22:45]Yeah, it's um it's for 80 amps but with all the batteries that I have here, I don't know I don't need each of the battery banks to to supply that much.

[00:22:56]So each of the battery banks are 80 amps except this one over here which can do the full 200 amps.

[00:23:06]Yeah, I uh I don't actually want it to do all of it. Just want it to to add to it.

[00:23:17]So, we're going to tighten this.

[00:23:28]Make sure that is good and tight.

[00:23:33]Guten Tag. Guten Tag.

[00:23:35]So, there we are.

[00:23:38]Yeah, that's not going to move.

[00:23:40]So, that goes into that.

[00:23:42]And then I just need the piece that goes from here and over to the bus bar, which is outside of view. So, bus bar's over here.

[00:23:54]So, I'm almost there.

[00:23:57]Ooh, over 7 kWh coming in. That's not every day I see that.

[00:24:03]7.1 That means that this battery over here is seeing 37 amps coming in.

[00:24:13]So, yeah, that's cool.

[00:24:16]So, I have connected everything.

[00:24:21]I thought.

[00:24:23]DC voltage measurement 53.42 V.

[00:24:29]Okay, so we have 53 V coming out of the batteries.

[00:24:34]Awesome. I'm going to disconnect this switch.

[00:24:39]There. So, when I connect it to the bus bars, it's not actually connected before I connect that thing.

[00:24:48]This thing is totally uh stupid.

[00:24:52]>> to enter standby state. It's about to enter standby state.

[00:24:57]Who the heck did the translations on that one?

[00:25:03]Okay.

[00:25:05]I'm going to wire these two new batteries into this mess over here. So, um yeah, be right back.

[00:25:11]Okay, everything is connected.

[00:25:15]And I'm about ready to turn it on. And it just happens to be that right now the battery voltage up here is well, 53.

[00:25:23]What is What happened there? 53.25.

[00:25:28]And down here it was 53.

[00:25:31]Was it 38? And that is not far off.

[00:25:35]So, I think the sun just went behind a cloud. So, I think it's the perfect time to uh to do this. And the battery status is at Let's zoom in on that.

[00:25:48]It's right now at 45%.

[00:25:52]So, let's see if it changes when I when I activate this.

[00:26:01]There we are. We just connected 16 kWh of power to our setup.

[00:26:08]Battery voltage seems good.

[00:26:11]They are all equalized.

[00:26:14]And up here is about the same.

[00:26:19]Not much happened.

[00:26:23]So, maybe over here we didn't check this. Well, actually right now nothing is coming into this.

[00:26:33]So, maybe these batteries are lower than everything else and are taking all the charge right now.

[00:26:39]Uh could be.

[00:26:42]It seems to be working okay. So, the sun keeps uh flickering forth and back. So, 1 second power is coming out of the battery like right now. We are actually drawing 300 watts from the batteries. And the second second, the sun comes up and we are pumping power into the battery.

[00:27:05]So, right here it's actually I think we're getting power into this battery because it's I expect it to lower than all the other ones. So, this one is actually taking power in while this one I think is is Well, it's not a lot.

[00:27:21]Okay, so not a lot of It might be balancing a little bit with the other battery packs because it was a little bit lower than the other ones.

[00:27:32]So, these batteries were the smart version with the with Bluetooth inside of them. So, they do actually have an app that I have uh found in the found in the manual how to do that. And um yeah.

[00:27:48]It actually finds all the batteries really nicely. So, I'm connected to one of them and then I can connect one of the other ones. They don't actually agree on the state of charge of them.

[00:28:00]So, not all of them are equal state of charge.

[00:28:05]64%.

[00:28:11]And I am not entirely sure if I'm picking the the same one over and over again. But, yeah.

[00:28:20]And I think uh that one is at 70%.

[00:28:26]So, yeah. They they don't actually agree. And But, this one has something that I haven't seen before. Uh if you go to parameters and battery parameter settings, you can actually set different stuff here. Um So, if right the the battery protects itself at 300 amps.

[00:28:53]This discharge overcharge protection 300 amps.

[00:28:58]So, that is apparently possible to alter that in here.

[00:29:03]I'm not going to touch it, but yeah, you can you can do stuff. Uh on the other hand, you can't see all four batteries at once. You can only go in and see one at a time. So, yeah. And it's sometimes is the Bluetooth is a bit dodgy.

[00:29:21]So, here in the manual, and I would expect this is about the same for most of the brands.

[00:29:27]Um it says up here that well, first we have the right battery 314 amp hours uh with smart and no smart. And you're supposed to charge it with 62.8 amps maximum. It can take 200 amps maximum, but well, standard you should charge it with no more than 62.8.

[00:29:52]It can discharge 200 amps. And then it's overcurrent protection is those 300 amps, which I just showed you where you can go in and set those. Overcurrent charge protection is 210 amps plus minus 10 amps.

[00:30:07]And the weight yeah, that is that is pounds. We don't work with that. And the size we don't work with that either. That is in inches, so I don't know why this manual is delivered to me when all the measurements are in well, foreign.

[00:30:24]So, this new battery addition is going to be doing very nicely at my setup here. With the new electric car, which is it has 100 amp hours of battery capacity. So, 16 amp hours extra, well, that is a a uh a good add-on. It's about 16% of what the car is.

[00:30:46]And a normal day forth and back from work will drain the car's battery with about 20 amp hours.

[00:30:53]So, in in that case all of these and one more will be depleted on one day at work.

[00:31:02]These are cool.

[00:31:04]And it's it's sound activated. I kind of like that. You should think that they it would keep active with all the noise down here, wouldn't you?

[00:31:13]Ooh, the spooky basement in the background. So, I'm very happy with this battery add-on. Not very happy with the company that didn't want to work with me after all, but yeah, okay. After this many years of doing YouTube, you have to find some company that just tries to screw you over sooner or later. So, but yeah, thank you very much for watching my videos. Do subscribe to my channel so that you can see me again and have a really nice day.

[00:31:40]Bye-bye.