Kings Lithium Battery Capacity Test - After 5 Months Of Heavy Use

[@evil17]

Good job mate. Kings sells lots of stuff because it is cheap which appeals to many for different reasons. Kings Batteries and inverters stand up to many name brands for a fraction of the price. Their batteries have good prismatic cells and a quality BMS inside. I have seen many teardowns and abusive tests where their batteries and inverters perform well beyond specs. One test deemed a failure because a loose terminal was found inside the battery (A rare-ish QC issue), the battery past all tests, current , power, etc, but did show a warm spot on the IR camera at one terminal & when pulled down for further inspection a slightly loose internal terminal screw was firm but not torqued to spec was considered the reason for this warmer spot, but it still delivered beyond specs current of 240A for that BMS and over spec on watt hrs. I have seen much worse builds and issues in name brands than what that test showed. I like that you can run a 3000W inverter with a single 300A battery which makes for an easy and powerful install to any weekend camper or work vehicle. A nice upgrade from Kings would be to add BT connectivity with a decent shunt accuracy to their lifePo4 batteries.

[@joelhiggs9056]

Great video mate, very informative.. well done legend 👌

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

Thanks mate

[@detlyn]

I’ve got two of the Kings 120 amp lithium‘s and I couldn’t be happier coming up to 3 years old now and like you I run Victron for everything else Solar controller, DCDC charger, shunt. For the price of the kings battery if it ever fails I’ll buy another one no problem at all.

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

The Kings Lithium batteries are close to the price of a higher end AGM battery of the same capacity but have all the advantages of Lithium. Before the Lithium LFP battery was invented, I ran AGM on my smaller set ups and the larger 6 volt L16 size flooded lead acid to run my house (8 batteries to make up a 48 volt system). The L16's I use to get around 6 - 8 years of service life and the smaller AGM around 4 years. Now if the Kings Lithium only last 4 years then I have not lost out at all in cost but I have gained a heaps of advantages that Lithium brings. If I get 6 to 8 years from the Kings battery I have equalled the old L16 batteries service life for around a 1/4 of the price and gained all the advantages of LFP. I think Kings have lifted their game in quality compared to what they use to be like when they first started.

[@evil17]

Kings Batteries and inverters stand up to many name brands for a fraction of the price. Their batteries have good prismatic cells and a quality BMS inside. I have seen many teardowns and abusive tests where their batteries and inverters perform well beyond specs. One test deemed a failure because of a loose terminal was found inside the battery (A rare ish QC issue), the battery past all tests, current , power, etc, but did show a warm spot on the IR camera at one terminal & when pulled down for further inspection a slightly loose terminal, firm but not torqued to spec was considered the reason for this warmer spot, but it still delivered beyond specs current of 240A for that BMS. I have seen much worse builds and issues in name brands than what that test showed. A nice upgrade from Kings would be to add BT connectivity with a decent shunt to their lifePo4 batteries.

[@TradieTrev]

You know you're gear mate! I wish I could ask the same for all of my clients.

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

lol, thanks mate

[@FleurMann-b3d]

What are your thoughts on bms drawing enough current to drift the shunt that far?

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

@@FleurMann-b3d I think it is in my setting, I will have to have a play around with them and see how it goes.

[@retrozmachine1189]

never mind, someone already said it

[@kayboku7281]

people will say dont do this, but i battled with 2 x kings 12 volt 200 amp hour batteries, they would work great, but then they just would not charge properly, this happened a bunch of times. So i took the BMS out, and just run them with no BMS, its been about 6 months now of them wired in an off grid system and they are still working great. I think there is a LOT of BS when it comes to lithium batteries

[@retrozmachine1189]

"It won't happen over night, but it will happen".

[@MiniLuv-1984]

I've got a kings 60AH running in parallel with two well used, 100AH AGM's to power a water pump now for over 6 months and so far perfect.

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

?? is the Lithium battery in the same circuit as the AGM batteries ?? Although it will kinda work, it will be drawing from the Lithium battery until the voltage drops, then it will start drawing from the AGM's. Not a good battery combination but if it works, then I guess worth experimenting with it.

[@MiniLuv-1984]

@@TheSimpleLivingAussie Yes, they are all in parallel. It works well using a programable charger. The AGM's are almost always fully charged and the LiFePO4 varies between 20% (12.8V) and 100% (13.8V) while the AGMs go between 75% and 100% SOC. (Because I can set the charge start and charge stop voltage on the charger).

[@craigtomkinson2837]

Lovely Ep and test,

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

Thanks mate

[@wholle0]

Great information Glen great video. What is the warranty period for those batteries?

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

They have a two year warranty. They also advertise as only having 2000 cycles to 80% which is well under the industry standard of 5,000 cycles to 80%. I am guessing maybe due to the cell grades however for the price that is still pretty good. au.adventurekings.com/120ah-lithium-battery.html

[@AlanCarter-g7p]

Recommend to insulate all exposed battery connections

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

This system was a test system and is now removed, used on a different project.

[@FleurMann-b3d]

Have you got your solar charge controller power out running through your shunt? If not you will get that result on your shunt due to parasitic draw, same thing happened to me. Took a while to work out what was going on

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

yeah everything runs through the shunt.

[@FleurMann-b3d]

Great setup, there needs to be a logical reason why it has drifted that far out within 5 months. Perhaps because you are post bms on both batteries? There would be some loss there. Depending on bms you could be loosing up to 6ma on each battery which would work out to be about 42 amp loss over 5 months.

[@67hr74]

Hi Glen, I didnt think 12v Lipo4 liked being connected in series. Quite a lot of suppliers say so, ok to wire in parallel, though. I have been known to be wrong though😅. Quite a lot of info on that brand when you delve into them..

[@griffinsgarage2023]

it depends on what type of BMS the battery is running. The mosfets in the BMS need to be ablle to handle the higher voltage. There are many BMS'S that can handles up to 60v no problem. but some of the cheaper ones cant.

[@67hr74]

@@griffinsgarage2023 Thanks for that info 👍

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

Yeah these Kings 120Ah batteries can series up to 48 volt but the older 100Ah Kings batteries could only stay at 12 volt due to the voltage limitations of the BMS. Now-a-days with off grid power becoming more popular, you see more LFP battery manufacturers using BMS's that can handle higher voltages.

[@67hr74]

@TheSimpleLivingAussie thanks, I did follow your link and go have a look @ them. Cheers.

[@philg2468]

So your shunt says 80%. What voltage have you entered in the Shunt settings? This is the voltage at which the shunt recalibrates to 100% - I set mine at 14.1V for 12V system but expect you'd want yours set to 28.2V or therabouts?

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

28.8 if I remember, maybe I drop it a little. I have my 48 volt system set to 56 and it calibrates fine which will be equivalent to 28 on my 24 volt system. So I will set it to 28 and see how it goes.

[@Solar-42]

I've had my 2 Kings 120Ah in series about 18 months cycling around 40-50% daily keeping essential IT and eBikes charged. I don't bother testing them just note the typical charge required to get them to 100% is around 1.8kWh per day from a 1kW peak array. So far 1100kWh since a regulator reset last year. Might do a discharge test if I get time. Trouble free so far.

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

I have been very impressed with these batteries so far. I have had questionable experiences with Kings gear in the past, but I think they have upped their game a bit and coming out with some half decent quality for the price.

[@arthur3578]

Looking good. I hope they last as long or better than your old lead acid batteries

[@TheSimpleLivingAussie]

They should do. Kings advertise as only having 2000 cycles to 80% which is well under the industry standard of 5,000 cycles to 80%. So I am not sure on the grade of cells they are using. However I found I use to get around 3 years out of 120 Ah AGM batteries before experiencing major performance losses, that is just over 1,000 cycles. So if the Kings Lithium's get twice that I will be happy for the price those batteries are, not to mention the power performances Lithium gives compared to AGM.

[@MiniLuv-1984]

@@TheSimpleLivingAussie When their time has come, I've found AGM's capacity falls off a cliff but the LiFePO4's gradually lose capacity.

[@bildad1234]

Looks like your shunt isn't resetting, but you never gave us a look at shunt history. Set your shunt Charged voltage to 28V. Set your tail current to equal approx 4A so 3.5% Peukert exponent 1.05 Charge efficiency 99% I see you have networked shunt and solar controller. and it looks like you are using Absorptiion 28.4V so all good there. Go into solar controller scroll down to Absorption Time leave it at 2 hours but add Tail Current and set at 2A. Now when your batteries reach 28V and the current drops below 4.2A for 3 mins your shunt will reset. Your solar controller will stay in Absorption until current drops below 2A or 2hour time limit is up. This should make it far more accurate SOC

[@bildad1234]

I just looked again and in the controller history your absorption actually timed out 2hours. now if you add tail current in charger to 2A you can lengthen absorption time longer I set mine to 4 hours but I am usually only in absorption for 30 min before the tail current setting is reached.