Reviews Kilovault 1800 CHLX Cold Rated 12V LiFePO4

Reviews Kilovault 1800 CHLX Cold Rated 12V LiFePO4 Solar Battery – This is the kilovault 1800 CHLX. This is a cold-rated lithium iron phosphate battery, and today we’re going to test it, and this is considered a cold-rated battery because there’s an internal heater. So, if you’re trying to use lithium iron phosphate in cold temperatures, this might be the battery for you.

Reviews Kilovault 1800 CHLX Cold Rated 12V

Max continuous output is 150 amps, the max continuous charge current is 150 amps. As well now, we’re charging at 71 amps. I just tried to tighten this down, and this terminal didn’t feel that strong. I can feel it flex. This one feels a little weak too. It just flexes a bit. Now, we have a 60 amp and a 75 amp charger connected in parallel, we’re charging it 124 amps.

Cold Rated 12V Test

If you divide 1800 by 12.8 this is a 140 amp hour battery, and what’s crazy is, that the fact that they recommend a 150 amp max charge rate, means we’re charging faster than 1C which on most data sheets is not recommended. So, I wonder what cells they’re using to accomplish this. We’re charging at a fast rate, but these terminals are not heating up that much. They’re a little bit warm, but it’s totally acceptable, and the front of the battery is getting warm. So, I assume that this is where the battery MOSFETs are.

Now, I’ve added two power supplies, and we’re charging at 135 amps, but I can’t get any higher. It’s because the state of charge is rising, so the internal resistance is increasing, and I can’t push any more current than this. Now, the current’s dropped to zero, so we’re going to do a discharge test at a high rate.

So, we have a 4000 watts inverter a watt-hour counter, we’re going to connect it to the kilovolt battery. So, this shunt can only handle 85 amps max, so we’re gonna have to do it the old-fashioned way, and I’m not trying to do a capacity test right now. I just want to see if it can handle 150 amps output.

Now, the battery is directly connected to the inverter, and we’ll do the max load test again. Right now, we’re pulling 133 amps, there we go 154 amps. Let’s see how long you can power this load for 12.4 volts, and then at the inverter with voltage drop, we’re only at 12 volts. All right, I’m getting a little bit bored. This battery will not die, it’s already been 55 minutes, and it’s still going and that took an hour and three minutes at over 150 amps to complete that test.

So, it passed this test with flying colors. We kept it above the max rated current, and it held out till the end and these terminals are at 60 degrees celsius. This battery is pretty hefty considering the capacity. Now, it’s in the freezer but to ensure that we reach a very cold temperature, I’m going to wait about a day to get this down.

Right now, we’re at negative 18 degrees celsius, and we’re going to try to charge this battery and keep in mind that this would destroy a non-cold rated battery, got 11.7 volts, it’s charging, oh wait, nope, it’s stopped. Check this out, the battery has turned on the internal heating element and reduced the charge current, and in the manual, it states that it can go from negative 30 degrees celsius to zero degrees celsius with its internal heater in 1.5 hours.

So, we’ll come back soon when it starts charging. This is taking quite a while, but that’s good, at least it’s doing what it’s supposed to. The battery is finally warmed up, and we’re charging at 70 amps. It took about an hour for this battery to heat up. We’re at 1.7 degrees celsius on the terminal, so it’s keeping it right above zero degrees celsius.

KiloVault 1800 CHLX

KiloVault 1800 CHLX 1800wH

Price: $1,345.00

The CHLX Series lithium kilovault battery includes all the advantages of the HLX Series with the added benefit of cold weather operation. Internal heating technology allows the battery to continue charging, even when the ambient temperature is well below zero. These 1800wh / 150 amp-hour LiFePO4 batteries are cold-rated, smarter, safer, and make for longer-lasting energy storage.

Open Specifications
View More Discount

Kilovault 1800 CHLX Capacity Test

Now, the current’s dropped to zero and it is done charging. Now, we’re going to do the capacity test, and I want to see if there’s any degradation after doing that charging cycle, because last week, I charged a battery in this exact same way, and I had a permanent 11 loss of capacity.

So, we’ll be able to find out in this cycle. If there was any damage, done and for this test. We’re going to pull 36 to 40 amps, and we pulled 1850 watt-hours. We pulled full capacity even below zero degrees celsius which is really good, and we discharged at a faster rate than usual. That’s incredible. I was not expecting that at all.

This battery is still cold. We’re at negative eight degrees celsius on the terminal, pretty incredible, honestly, I was not expecting it to work that well. So, the battery has passed all of my tests so far, but we need to do a teardown.

KiloVault 3600 CHLX

KiloVault 3600 CHLX 3600Wh

Price: $2,345.00

CHLX Series lithium batteries include all the advantages of the HLX Series with the added benefit of cold weather operation. Internal heating technology allows the battery to continue charging, even when the ambient temperature is well below zero.

Open Specifications
View More Discount

Kilovault 1800 CHLX Teardown

So, we’re gonna rip this apart and see what’s inside. Each screw has a lock nut and a washer, and before we take off the cover, I should also mention there are a reset button and a communication port. This BMS is massive.

The first thing we have to notice is, this thing is over-engineered even though it’s rated for 150 amps. This could probably handle 200 amps. I mean look at how many conductors are feeding. This MOSFET bank, they’re also using the expensive 200c insulation on these wires. We also have another circuit over here, and this feeds the heaters on the cells.

So, if we remove the BMS, we have a bank of cells, this is the battery, and we have heaters on the left, and heaters on the right. Every single crimp and connection looks perfect. All of the busbars are completely overkill for this application, and you’ll notice that part of the balance cable is the temperature sensor, and this is centrally located on a busbar.

It can have an accurate measurement of the cell’s temperatures, and these are glued down pretty well. I don’t know if I’ll be able to remove all this stuff. I notice that these are glued down to the wall and then, they put the cells in second.

You can watch the video for further detail.

Final Thought Reviews Kilovault 1800 CHLX

If you compare this battery to the competition with other cold temperature-rated batteries with internal heaters, this one is much cheaper. So, this is a good battery. I like it. It’s at a good price, but what do I dislike about it, so first off, the one thing that I have to say is these terminals do not feel that strong when I tightened them down.

Next, it’s pretty heavy. If weight is an issue, I probably wouldn’t get this one, and I would go for something a little bit lighter. This is about the same specific energy with the case and BMS and all as a Battleborn battery, but as you can tell, there are multiple small cells. The heaters a large BMS a huge case. That’s probably why it’s so heavy.

The next potential downside is that you cannot connect more than 4 of these batteries in parallel, or series, which is fine for most people, but you need to size your system accordingly. This would be a bummer if you decide to increase the storage capacity of your system later down the road. So, size your system accordingly, and buy the larger version of this.

If you need more capacity, so this battery passed all of my tests. The low-temperature protection is pretty cool, I like how it heats itself up and then starts charging at a full rate, once it hits that temperature threshold.

View More Kilovault 1800 CHLX Helpful Reviews