going lithium

[john fox]

well, I pulled the trigger on a 36v EPOCH lifepo4 battery.
delivery date eta feb 8 23.
this is not a good looking hobby cart or family pleasure cruiser.
my cart is more of a farm implement. could be hauling shovel rake and hoe to the garden today, a chainsaw to a tree needing to be cut up or hauling the sprayer for weed control.
not looking for speed.
longer battery life, less maintenance is more what I want.
anyway I'll let Y'all know how this works out for me.
I went with the EPOCH mainly because it's a somewhat local pick-up, no shipping needed.
good price, and it has most all the things I hope I will need, heated, low and high temp sensors etc.
it's not a high performance 300+ ah discharge rate only a 50 amp charge rate etc. but I don't need the high performance to get around the place or go down the dirt road to see a neighbor.
anyway I'll see and let Y'all know the good and the bad about it, from my perspective.
John, waiting patiently.

[dundeebarnbuggy]

Interesting. I use my cart on my farm too [dairy/cash crops] and as it is used/off the charger from 6 am to 10 or 11 at night, I need a pack that keeps itself [somewhat] warm 24 hour a day. Will your Epoch batt do that? Lithium is very interesting to me as I use up a FLA pack [Crown 190s] in a little over 2 years. One other question, when you do trip the BMS will it reset automatically?

[john fox]

sorry I can't answer many questions I don't have the battery yet!
delivery eta Feb 23.
but the specs do say it IS internally heated. don't know if it's heated enough for your location tho?
I live in Georgia so that wasn't the highest concern of mine.

my old 6v batteries would need to be replaced soon and the price of the EPOCH was only about $500 more than lead so I thought there would never be a better time than now to go lithium.

I expect if/when EPOCH gets to be more well known and prove to be worthy the price will go up.

[augiedoggy]

Originally Posted by john fox

sorry I can't answer many questions I don't have the battery yet!
delivery eta Feb 23.
but the specs do say it IS internally heated. don't know if it's heated enough for your location tho?
I live in Georgia so that wasn't the highest concern of mine.

my old 6v batteries would need to be replaced soon and the price of the EPOCH was only about $500 more than lead so I thought there would never be a better time than now to go lithium.

I expect if/when EPOCH gets to be more well known and prove to be worthy the price will go up.

Something to keep in mind with many of the internally heated lithium batteries.

These batteries are mainly designed for solar use and often the heaters dont turn on unless theres charging voltage going into the battery. Basically the bms senses voltage coming into the battery and does not allow the battery to accept the charge but instead turns on the heating pad for a period of time until the battery is warmed up enough to safely be charged and then the bms allows the voltage to be redirected and charging to occur.

This is not how they are all set up and some bms units allow these setting to be changed by the owner through a bluetooth app because not everyones use and conditions are the same. The batteries can sometimes be setup to maintain a certian temp regardless if theres charging voltage coming in but if the heater just turned on when freezing conditions are met for too long the heater would just kill the battery.