Lead acid technology is extremely sensitive to abuse and depth of discharge. There are some that will last twenty years if correctly managed, but one screw up and that is lost.
There is a lot of BS written to promote Lipo ( all lithiums) and disparage LA and this is some of it.
Lipo is FAR more unforgiving than Lead and sorry, anyone that said otherwise has no experience with the 2 technology's or is flat out lying/ Biased.
Run a Lipo dead flat and try and recover it. Extremely unlikely and if you can it will have bugger all capacity. Run an LA dead flat and you'll recover it easily and the capacity fall off will be very small IF you only do it once. Then again, once is all you would get to do it with lipo, no question of that.
Same token, over charge a Lipo and see what happens with that when it swells up and maybe lets the magic smoke escape. I have BOILED LA and for some hours and put a load on it to take the overcharge off and they batteries were fine. Not saying there were completely unscathed but they ran as normal afterwards and only required a bit of a top up. Not like you can determine a time how long any battery will last to say how much it's life was shortened but with Lipo, one way or the other too far and its game over, dead and buried.
Be prepared to spend 10k to 20k dollars to get a decent sized bank with the 25% max depth of discharge limit for this lifespan.
I cannot comment on pricing where you are but that's ridiculously over the top for where I am unless you are talking about some pie in the sky technology or an unnecessarily large pack.
The bit about 25% Discharge is regularly recited complete and utter BUNK!
LA traction ( forklift) batteries are WARRANTED to not below 80% DOD. That is , for complete clarity, if you have a 100Ah battery you can take 80 Ah OUT of it EVERY DAY and that's what the manufacturers warrant it for.
This is easy to verify, just go to any traction battery manufacturers website and look it up. This 25 and 50% DOD for LA is ignorant Rubbish.
This isn't car batterys we are talking about or some other unfit for purpose type. Then again, even decent car starting batterys wouldn't' be terribly phased by 30% discharge especially if they were deep cycle which will handle 50% or better DOD.
I really don't know why people continue to spread this complete and utter BS about LA batteries nor make out the Lithiums are capable of things they are not. it's misinformation that only causes people to make wrong assumptions and prevents them getting what best suits their needs and is completely unhelpful. They are batteries for hecks sake, not your children you are trying to get into College. They both have their strengths and weaknesses like anything but why try to make them out something they are not? I don't ever get it but see it all the time.
Where I am, warranted 48V, 720 Ah Fork packs can be had for around $4000, often less. They are gauranteed for 5 years for solar use provided they are not discharged below 80% . The manufacturers I have spoken to love selling them for solar use. The current pulled out of them is typically much less, they are not subject to banging and vibration, not discharged nearly as much or run till the shift is over no matter how low they are, usualy set up with auto watering systems, don't have the max charge belted into them in order for them to be ready in the morning or for the next shift and overall have a Much easier life.
One Guy I spoke to said he'd never had a claim with any he sold for off grid use, wished he could say that for their intended application!
Lipo may have some advantages over LA like weight and size which is irrelevant in a stationary application anyway but in Bang for the buck stakes, LA craps on Lipo. From what I have read, also does in reliability and longevity. Read of plenty of people whom have babied the things and they have fallen over in under 4 years.
I have also read miles of BS about lipo taking much higher charge rates than LA. Again, largely BS. You can't just pump limitless power into lipo at all, not without shortening it's life of course. OTOH, while LA is Limited in charge rate, the amount of power that works out to on a 6 or 700AH pack is more than anyone is likely to have on their roof in panels unless they are running a solar farm.
Even running .2C is going to be 140A on a 700ah pack and they can take a lot more than that on bulk charge. How much solar or how big is your generator again? Also read repeatedly that lipo can be charged at a flat full rate till it comes up to Voltage. Yeah, but it's going to cut the life significantly. In reality they should be given a bult and then a top off charge at a reduced rate similar to LA. IF you want best life that is.
The LiFePO4 batteries however are not nearly as sensitive to depth of discharge as long as they are never discharged below 2.5v per cell,
And if they are run below 2.5, they WILL Be damaged and maybe unrecoverable depending how low they get.
Not a good idea to Run LA right down either but they WILL recover from it. read PLENTY of reports of people that have locked up their Lithiums through over discharge and can't get even months old packs back up. Only takes a BMS failure and they are bricked.
These batteries are less than 1/4 price of the same size equivalent of lead acid (at the 25% DOD limit!).
Again, maybe where you live when you work on BS figures like 25% DOD for the LA but I have YET to see any decent lipos cheaper on an AH basis than LA unless you are talking those Chinese Cheapies that are all the rage and have dozens and dozens of Documented failures on Forums. I have seen a lot of people that make this cheaper than LA Claim but they are inevitably quoting 2nd and 3rd rate batteries in chyna and not including delivery and all shipping costs. And of course if a cell is bad or goes tits up, you are waiting months for a replacement IF the seller Honours any warranty if there was one and you are undoubtedly up for more shipping and customs costs.
With a fork pack, go to your nearest company and get a standardised replacement off the shelf. Drop the failed cell off at the local Scrappy and you'll get 25-33% of the price of the new cell back.
In my opinion, the price of these will continue to drop and they will become almost "disposable".
Another forum fan boi myth.
There is a HUGE demand for batteries world wide especially the lithiums. They are bing put in everything these days. Tesla for one can't get enough and the production of these EV's is ramping up despite the ignorance of people thinking they are cleaner than FF vehicles increasing demand.
The production of raw materials for Litho type batteries is very limited and mainly carried out in 3rd world politically unstable hell hole countries that have little to no environmental rules and enforcement which makes it infinitely cheaper to process there than bring the materials into first world countries where enviro regulations make the cost far higher. One little conflict in these countries and production ceases and prices skyrocket.
I have NEVER seen anything in short supply through high demand get CHEAPER in price. Does not happen.
If one takes case in point, tesla power walls keep going up in price, around $1000 last year and the year before. Not aware of ANY battery coming down in price for that matter.
Lipo is as cheap as it's going to get right now. Add in supply chain problems from Convid and offshoot factors and there is no way these batteries are going to get cheaper in present chemistry and if something new comes along that will have the elevated introductory costs for a few years as well.
As far as Disposable, that's a good point. LA here is worth presently about a 3rd to quarter of it's purchase price as scrap which is also a factor in being better bang for the buck over lipo . There are limited lipo recycling facilities at this time, more in some countries than others but some places are already talking disposal fees for these batteries due to their Toxic nature. LA can be recycled at any scrap yard, not many places relatively will take lipo.
The caveat is only china is making them.
Bingo and as you allude to, the quality is HIGHLY suspect. I see most of the fanbois on solar and RV forums are all over the cheap, 2nd quality cells and the outcomes with them are hit and miss at best. If you miss, it's a lot of money down the drain or a long downtime and more cost to get a replacement... which will then never balance with the rest of the pack due to age alone.
Tesla is currently getting them from china, but Tesla is also in the process of build a US plant to make these! Question is, can anyone in the public get these from Tesla, and will Tesla's prices be reasonable and affordable?
Tesla and other car manufacturers are saying and have been for some time that supply of batteries is both their biggest limitation, headache and expense in the vehicles. If they can't get enough to satisfy their own needs (Powerwalls were halted from production for many months because of Cell shortages) They certainly won't be offering them to the public to compete with their own products and if they did, they would certainly not be cheap. NOTHING with Tesla ever is and they would put huge markup on anything with their name attached anyway.
China has very dicey quality issues, some times you can get good stuff, sometimes really bad stuff and you never know which on any particular order. Also, individuals have no market leverage when ordering from china and may have difficulty in correcting any quality complaints.
Agreed but this should have been your preface paragraph because it' is the relevant and over riding thing to everything else you said.
what good is cheap and whatever else benefit if it's unreliable or short lived?
All this " In the future" stuff is all well and good to say something will improve but it in effect never comes about because then something new comes along and it's back to square 1.
These Lipo technology's are a prime example. Every time they change the formulation it's back to the beginning again. No one knows how they will hold up in 3-5-10 years time and what the last formulation did is irrelevant because this one is different and unknown.
La OTOH being old fashioned and untrendy and heavy and bulky and all that IS well proven, known and understood. I know people personally that have had over 15 years out of proper traction batteries. I asked a Client of mine about the La " Maintenance Myth. He said he shuffles down the shed every 3 Months or so to put a bit of water in the automatic watering system and make sure the rats haven't done anything. He says a guy comes out every 12 Months, checks the gravity of the cells, removes, greases and replaces the leads and wipes them down with a rag to get the dust off and make them look pretty again.
He's been running his farm off grid for nearly 50 years and figures on 2-3 Inverters per set of batteries. He ran a Moffit Generator and then went to panels in the very early 80's.
I hear lots of people going on about " Maintenance" Like it's an endless chore yet there is nothing like the time needed on them that people spend taking the trash cans out and brining them back in every week but no one sees that as some great hardship like they make out checking battery's every moth or 3 is.
